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instead, but Donlevy lacked Tracy’s power at the box office and the studio had an investment of nearly $3 million to protect. In November 1943 an item was fed to Louella Parsons assuring her readers that Tracy would indeed be playing the Doolittle role. “Spence is a smart boy,” Parsons commented, “even though the part doesn’t have as much footage as Captain Ted Lawson’s (the role Van Johnson will play).” He was still resisting the assignment in February 1944 when filming began on M-G-M’s massive Stage 15, where a section of flight deck from the U.S.S. Hornet had been fabricated to hold an actual B-25 Mitchell bomber on loan from the army.

The Seventh Cross finished on March 8, with Tracy agreeing to just four weeks off in lieu of the six to which he was now entitled. On April 9 he would start Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo—a three-week job—and do whatever retakes were required for Seventh Cross. Then he would have eight consecutive weeks to tour as he pleased.

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1 It’s worth noting that there was no character named Joe in A Guy Named Joe. The title came from a famous remark by General Claire Chennault of the Flying Tigers: “Boys, when I’m at the stick, I’m just a guy named Joe.”

2 Well, not quite. Hedda Hopper, aware of his cozy relationship with Louella Parsons, reported on Tracy’s aborted trip at the top of her October 27 column: “What happened to the Alaska Trip? What caused him to change his mind? The boys up there are starving for entertainment and they’ve been waiting to welcome him for many months.” It was just the sort of humiliating publicity he feared.

3 Zinnemann had codirected, with Curt Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Robert Siodmak, People on Sunday (1930), a well-regarded and widely seen German feature that was also one of Billy Wilder’s earliest writing credits.

4 “I think Spencer was afraid of emotion beyond a certain point,” Mankiewicz said, “and even devotion beyond a certain point. I think he distrusted himself because he was afraid of what might happen if he took a drink.”

5 By way of comparison, Claudette Colbert’s deal with Paramount called for $150,000 a picture.

CHAPTER 20

The Big Drunk

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The debacle of the Alaskan tour weighed heavily on Tracy for months afterward. Scores of movie figures were now in uniform, and many of the ones who weren’t—Bob Hope, Cagney, Bing Crosby, virtually all the women—gave tirelessly to the job of morale on the home front as well as overseas. Metro alone had Melvyn Douglas, Robert Taylor, Jimmy Stewart, Van Heflin, Richard Ney, and Robert Montgomery on active duty, with Mickey Rooney and Red Skelton soon to follow. Tracy’s pal Gable had enlisted with the U.S. Army Air Forces and flown combat missions in Europe. All Tracy had to show for the war effort were his hospital visits, a little radio work, and a few high-profile appearances for war bonds and the like. More than ever, his neuroses were dictating his actions, and only the scotch he permitted himself seemed to bring him relief.

Kate spent the 1943 Christmas season in Los Angeles—her first away from her family—and thought the experience “horrible.” The studios all quit work at noon on the twenty-fourth, then everyone proceeded to get drunk. The weather was hot and it didn’t seem like Christmas at all. Spence gave her some old after-dinner coffee cups, an antique silver bell, a fireplace set—poker and tongs—and ten crisp new fifty-dollar bills. When Time, in its review of A Guy Named Joe, said he was, as usual, “extremely competent,” she and Spence spent an entire evening looking through a dictionary, Tracy maintaining the words always applied to him—capable, competent, etc.—just meant he knew enough “not to fall down.” And, for as much as she could say to the contrary, he insisted there was a world of difference between “extremely competent” and “brilliant.”

Hepburn was on a campaign to film Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra with herself as Lavinia and Greta Garbo as her murderous mother. Spence, in the meantime, had arranged to visit navy bases on the Wisconsin shore of Lake