Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [317]
“Because I’ll act unshaven.”
The company was large, the production unwieldy, the script unready and better suited to the conventions of the screen. The first public perfor-mance of The Rugged Path was set to take place in Providence on the night of September 28, 1945. Recalling his abrupt dismissal from the Albee Players in 1928, Tracy relished a triumphant return to the city. “The play was sold out all three nights,” he said, still harboring a grudge against the Albee stock’s old general manager, Foster Lardner, “and I’ve always hoped the bastard tried to get in and couldn’t get a ticket.”1 Kate, who was in constant attendance throughout rehearsals, appeared on the arm of Arthur Hopkins. The Metropolitan was a big auditorium, plain and thoroughly unsuited to the demands of live drama. Tracy filled all three thousand seats, and at intermission it seemed as if all three thousand patrons wanted a close look at Hepburn, who had placed herself on display in the front row. “I felt,” said John Wharton, who observed the procession, “that it was not calculated to increase interest in the soul-searching of the character Tracy was portraying. But this was minor. What was major was the inexplicable aura of failure that began to settle over the play. Except for the one scene where the men abandoned ship, the aura increased.”
It was nearly 11:15 when Tracy took his curtain line. “I’m not worried about you fellers,” he told his ragtag band of guerrilla fighters as they faced certain death in a Philippine jungle. “I wouldn’t trade you for the best they had at Valley Forge or Gettysburg or the Normandy beach-heads. You may not have much to fight with, but you know what you’ve got to fight for. That gives you dignity. And if the rest of the world—all the people back home who see the war only as a lot of little arrows on little maps—if they don’t realize what you’ve fought for, and don’t achieve it, then I say God damn them—God damn them—God damn them to all Eternity.”
“Spencer was superb,” said S. N. Behrman, “a marvelously sustained performance, very quiet, intensively felt. By that time Bob’s reputation had reached a pitch approaching infallibility. In the intermission a well-known lady expressed her disappointment: ‘Sherwood builds up a crisis for the hero which he solves by giving him a job on a destroyer where he fries eggs.’ I left the theater with Arthur Hopkins, a meditative man. He said: ‘No playwright should be given as much power as Bob has been given. It distracts him from his true vocation—writing plays.’ ”
The Variety notice lauded the play’s missionary intent while bemoaning the sight lines and the wretched acoustics of the hall, factors that doubtless informed the audience’s tepid response. There was also the vague feeling among the out-of-towners that they had seen it all before—trademark Sherwood with a coating of Hollywood star power. “Sherwood,” said Wharton, “knew something was amiss; he never fooled himself. But this time he couldn’t find the way to fix it. Tracy became worried; there was talk of closing out of town. Indeed, Miss Hepburn, whom I had known for years, made a comment one day which astonished me. She said, ‘John, I think it will take a lot of courage to open in New York, and Spencer hasn’t got that kind of courage.’ ”
“Desperate changes” were made between Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., where The Rugged Path was set to open a two-week stand at the National Theatre on Monday, October 1. Rehearsals grew tense as Tracy wrestled with all the new material, and when Kanin one day said to him, “We’ll iron this out tomorrow, Spence, okay?” Tracy reportedly threw back, “If I’m still here tomorrow!” as he stalked out of the theater. The fact that he hadn’t yet signed his Equity contract put the whole enterprise on a precarious footing, and Samrock, for one, was certain that disaster would accompany the Washington opening.
The first-night audience was studded with big names, including Justice and Mrs. Felix Frankfurter, Senator and Mrs. Arthur Vandenberg, and General and Mrs. Alexander D.