Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [316]
MOREY
Oh, we got along all right, Harriet, despite all reports to the contrary.
HARRIET
Yes, we’ve got along. Because we’ve both had good manners.
“One of the banes of the existence of any playwright or director,” said Garson Kanin,
is the actor, especially the star, who doesn’t really know his part. They sort of know it. In the Broadway theatre, I think it’s more common for a player to know his part. In films [it’s], “Oh, I’ll take a shot at it.” But Spencer was absolutely meticulous about learning his part, and learning it way ahead of time, and learning it so accurately. I used to kid him sometimes; I’d say, “Spencer, you even learn the typographical errors.” He learned it absolutely exactly as written. Of course, after 15 years his theatre machine was a bit rusty and he was aware of that, but it didn’t take him long—three or four days—and he was absolutely in there like a stage actor who had acted every night on the stage for 15 years.
Nearly three weeks into rehearsals, Tracy’s contract with the Playwrights’ Company remained unsigned. He now wanted, it seemed, a 25 percent stake in the show but was unwilling to put in any of his own money, M-G-M’s Rubin having advised him that an investment on his part would likely put him in “an unfavorable tax position.” Victor Samrock, the company’s business manager, took up the matter with Carroll Tracy one morning, saying they were in no position to grant a 25 percent share of the profits without a commensurate investment in the show. Tracy was, moreover, being offered the exact same terms accorded the Lunts and Katharine Cornell and Helen Hayes. Carroll said how sorry he was that the matter had not been settled in California and he assured Samrock that everything would be all right “in time.” Later that afternoon, after conferring with his brother, Carroll again sat opposite Samrock and said, “Well, if you can’t agree to Spencer’s request, then you better get somebody else.”
Conferring with Captain Garson Kanin and playwright Robert Emmet Sherwood during preparations for The Rugged Path, 1945. (PATRICIA MAHON COLLECTION)
Tracy was ready to bolt, his confidence undermined by the fractious rehearsal process that comes with any new, untried work. Samrock tried laughing the thing off, repeating the gist of their earlier discussion and ticking off the costs associated with a production on the grand scale of The Rugged Path. “Carroll was quite friendly about it all,” Samrock recalled, “and finally suggested, ‘Well, I think I’ll go up to Rubin’s office and have him call John Wharton [co-director and general counsel for the Playwrights’ Company] and maybe the two of them can settle it.’ ”
If the role of Morey cut too close at times, Tracy’s discomfort—his projection of temperament—came out in his dealings with Samrock and Wharton, where Carroll could serve as both mouthpiece and whipping boy. In rehearsals Kanin found him “imaginative, resourceful, malleable”—a revelation. What he achieved was a clarity of interpretation that stretched beyond the intelligence, personality, and stamina he typically brought to a role. “His whole approach,” said Darryl Hickman, “was to externalize as little as possible.”
Driven by an abhorrence of artifice and a natural terror of monotony, Tracy was constantly distilling the character to its essential elements, his stage effects coming wholly from within, all clean, sharp lines, lucid and completely free of the tricks “some people pull on stage.” When a scene required him to emerge from the ocean after five days of being shipwrecked, he told Kanin he would not wear an appliance designed to simulate a growth of beard.
“It’ll look ridiculous,” Kanin argued. “It’ll bother the audience.”
“No, it won’t,” countered Tracy.