Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [309]
In the legend that grew up around Tracy and Hepburn, one of the most durable of images is that of Kate going bar to bar, after the fashion of a Gilded Age temperance song, looking for Spence. It was a notion she dismissed as “stupid” and made up: “In the first place I wouldn’t do it because that would be too public for him, and in the second place I wouldn’t do it because it would be too public for me, too. My friend, my driver then, who worked for me for forty-three years, was Charles Newhill. He used to go out publicly when Spencer was drinking [and] walking around New York City. Charles would be with him, [so] unless I were dumb, I would know he was out drinking.” Newhill, a sturdy Italian, was a former boxer who could handle Tracy and at the same time protect him from himself and the public at large. “[Spencer] wasn’t out all that much,” she added. “He’d start it and go out, but then when he began to get really seriously into it he wouldn’t go out. And I certainly wouldn’t let him go out. I’d see to it that he couldn’t go out … I was not able to solve his problems, but I was able to help him by seeing that he didn’t fall down the stairs, you know, or break his goddamn neck or just be miserable.”
Containing Tracy’s impulses and abetting them were two different things entirely and would have elicited, in Joe Mankiewicz’s estimation, two very different sets of responses. “Kate,” he said in 1992,
has a whole new characterization that she’s maintaining for herself—part Constance Collier, part Mrs. Siddons, and part some very elegant lady of affairs. There must be no touch of Marilyn Monroe–type life or Hollywood-type life. So when Kate says, “When Spencer asked for a drink, oh yeah, I gave him a drink,” well, put yourself [in her position]. This isn’t the first time we’ve been together. The whole thing of going to bed together … we’re sort of tied together now. I’m Spence and I feel I’ve got to have a drink. It isn’t like saying, “I’ll have a scotch and soda.” That saying “I want a drink” is an important mark…
He says, “I want a drink.” Now she says, “Of course, Spence,” and gets it for him. She removes him of guilt. She removes a certain amount of guilt, and that does not please Spence. That irritates him, because in a way she’s shoving booze on him. Once you get into a twisted emotion, you’ve got to be able to trace the emotion and stay with it. And when she says, “I’ll give you the drink,” does that make him happy? Spence, if he wanted a drink, part of having a drink is knowing that he’s doing something wrong and he can’t help doing it. So whenever I hear the woman say, “No sir, I gave him these drinks”—that’s horseshit. “I’m being a big woman now. I’m changing my character; I’m going back after the fact to change my characterization.” Because if she really did that, it wouldn’t have played. It just wouldn’t have made sense. Because if she said, “I’ll get you a drink,” he probably would have exploded with anger: “Stay the fuck out of my life!” You know—that life. “The last thing I want is two years from now to think of you giving me drinks! Making me hate you!”
Oh no, that’s really too easy … Once you start thinking that way about Spence, it was his guilt. But don’t forget also he would have a kind of proprietary sense about that guilt. I’ve known several like that—alcoholics. My brother was one, but not like that. The kind Spence was … they’re gone. And they not only accept the guilt, they need the guilt to see them through this thing. Spence locked in a hotel room, going to the bathroom in his pants … every disgusting thing he did to himself. “I am beating myself up.” You know? This is what my father used to do. Jack Barrymore was a different kind of drunk. Spence was a black Irish drunk.
It was at Hepburn’s four-story brownstone in the Turtle Bay section of Manhattan—where Tracy, according to her, was essentially under house arrest—that some of their worst moments took place. Whether giving him a drink or wresting one from his hand, her actions—or the words that