Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [314]
The gangling Sherwood was a founding partner of the Playwrights’ Company, a producing organization specifically established to stage the works of its five principals, who, besides Sherwood, were Maxwell Anderson, Elmer Rice, S. N. Behrman, and the late Sidney Howard. After making his report to the navy, Sherwood set about developing his new play with characteristic discipline, producing two acts and fifteen scenes in little more than a month. As was the custom, Sherwood circulated the playscript among his colleagues at the company and was ready by the end of June to bring it west, where Tracy was nursing a torn leg muscle. “Madeline and I hope to arrive Beverly Hills about July 1st,” he cabled on June 22, “and will then show you the manuscript and talk about it as planned.”
Bearing the title Out of Hell, Sherwood’s play followed the pattern of his two previous works, an earnest protagonist nobly chucking it all for the greater good of society, plunging himself into politics or, in this case, war, and suffering, in the end, a martyr’s fate. Delayed in his travel plans, Sherwood airmailed a copy to Tracy on the twenty-eighth, dispatching another to actor Montgomery Clift (who he hoped would play opposite Tracy) the next day. Tracy read the play at once, reportedly within hours, and both he and Kate signaled their enthusiasm. “I felt he had things to say,” Tracy said of Sherwood, “things well worth saying that you can’t say in a picture.”
In New York the playwright spoke with J. Robert Rubin, M-G-M’s vice president and general counsel, and the terms for Tracy’s services seemed satisfactory. When he finally reached Los Angeles, Sherwood and his wife put up at Kate’s rented house on Tower Road, where there followed a series of convivial discussions. “You may be making a mistake with me,” Tracy felt compelled to warn him. “I could be good in this thing, all right. But then, who knows? I could fall off and maybe not show up.” At six feet eight inches, Sherwood towered over his prospective star, his rugged face set off by a neatly trimmed mustache. “Spencer, all I want for myself,” he replied with a characteristic pause in the middle of his statement, “is to see this play played once by you.”
He nearly got his wish.
In their early discussions, both men expressed a preference for Garson Kanin as director, even though Kanin’s experience in directing for the stage was minimal. In London the army captain happily accepted the assignment, wondering only if Sherwood had the organizational pull to get him sprung from the military. Sherwood, working through both President Truman and his army chief of staff, General George C. Marshall, assured him that he did.
A letter of agreement dated July 13, 1945, committed Tracy to rehearsals beginning around Labor Day and an out-of-town opening “on or about” September 28. In exchange for playing Morey Vinion, Sherwood’s quixotic hero, he was to receive 15 percent of the gross weekly box office receipts. A provision giving him the option of investing in the show on a dollar-for-dollar basis was added to the contract, but it seemed unlikely that Tracy would buy in.
Sherwood’s sojourn in Beverly Hills sparked the first of a seemingly endless string of rewrites. Nobody was lacking for suggestions—not Tracy, not Kanin, certainly not Hepburn, nor Kanin’s wife of three years, actress-playwright Ruth Gordon. According to Madeline Sherwood, her husband had already done “considerable revision