Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [321]
Tracy took his heaviest blast in the press on December 23 when John Chapman of the Daily News bitterly assailed him under the headline HOLLYWOOD GO HOME: “The sooner Spencer Tracy goes back [to Hollywood], the better—and he should stay there.” When the studio put out word that Tracy’s return to Los Angeles was “imminent” and that he was wanted to play the role of President Truman in The Beginning or the End, Bob Considine’s topical story of the atomic bomb, Victor Samrock seized control of the situation. On December 27 he notified the cast that The Rugged Path would close on January 19, 1946, completing an engagement of ten weeks, if not the one hundred performances for which Sherwood had so vigorously lobbied. The same day, the wire services carried the news that Tracy, solely on the strength of Without Love, had retained his position as one of the top five stars in America in the annual Motion Picture Herald poll of box office leaders.
With Robert Keith onstage in The Rugged Path. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)
The closing announcement triggered a recap in the January 2 issue of Variety, where Tracy’s departure, the paper said, would not only mean “plenty of red for the Playwrights’ Co., but a loss of employment by supporting actors.” The star’s desire not to continue, the item went on, was responsible for the fold. “It cost $75,000 to produce Path and the loss at this time is placed at more than $40,000. Show is costly to operate and virtually no profit was earned out of town. Grosses at the Plymouth have been exceptional, and it was figured Path could play well into the spring.” The paper laid the blame squarely at Tracy’s feet, suggesting the show had depended on the star’s “whims” from the start.
No mention was made of Sherwood’s negative reviews, which would have doomed the play with most any other star, nor Tracy’s positive reviews, which were practically unanimous. Variety published on a Wednesday, and Carroll called Victor Samrock the same day to say that Spence was in “quite an uproar” about it. “Am seeing the great man tonight,” Samrock promptly advised Sherwood in a letter, “but now that the play has announced its closing, I am not worried about Spencer’s innermost feelings, nor will I try to assuage his soul-searching doubts. On second thought, I will do these things if he promises to buy the moving picture rights for Metro.”
Howard Dietz called editor Abel Green and arranged for Variety mugg Arthur Bronson to meet Tracy in his suite at the Waldorf Astoria and hear his side of the story. “I take the theatre seriously,” Tracy told Bronson. “My record is good in it. The people I worked for—Herman Shumlin, the late George M. Cohan, and Sam Harris—they would have vouched for me.” He denied that he was “running out” on the play and said the show was closing “for a simple, old-fashioned reason—it wasn’t doing business.” He pointed out that five other actors had already left and that Sherwood himself was out working in California. It had, in fact, been Sherwood who insisted on bringing the play into New York when it wasn’t yet in shape. “If I had left,” he said, “the play wouldn’t have come in.” Truthfully, he told Bronson that it was the producers who gave him—and the other actors—notice, and not the other way around. He then suggested to Bronson that he had never threatened to quit—a baldfaced lie.
Samrock was disappointed that there was no spike in business when the closing notice went up. He estimated the week of January 7 at $18,500 and felt the following week would be a little better. “I frankly thought the announcement would increase business,” he said to Sherwood in a letter,
but even so, I constantly have to catch myself up by realizing that $18,000 and $19,000 is still a lot of business in any country for any play. I would like to add that the lack of increase in business has hurt Mr. Tracy’s pride (if he has any left). He has been constantly asking me to have you make a statement that the company is closing the play because of lack of business, and