Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [338]
“I can’t face them,” I said.
“Well, you have to,” he said, and he walked me down to the set. Miss Hepburn and Mr. Tracy, they were both so quick to say, “Emily had nothing to do with it.” And in that situation, Mr. Tracy never raised his voice.
Cass Timberlane opened at the Music Hall on November 6 and was a big hit with the matinee trade, the Armistice Day upsurge carrying it to an outstanding first week total of $145,000. Variety took its commercial appeal for granted, declaring Lana Turner’s itchy performance as Jinny Marshland “the surprise of the picture” and noting that Tracy was made to “look wooden by comparison.” Turner overshadowed Tracy in most of the reviews, turning the pulpy material into something of a breakout. Enthusiasm for her work in the picture drove domestic billings to nearly $4 million, making Cass Timberlane only marginally less successful than Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a remarkable circumstance given the film’s listless pace and its unconscionable length.
The West Coast opening came amid an unusual amount of fanfare. The Kappa Kappa Gamma Alumnae Association sponsored a benefit premiere at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre for John Tracy Clinic that included a short film explaining the clinic’s mission.
Listening Eyes was principally the work of Walt Disney, who funded the short for $12,000 and contributed its director, Larry Lansburgh. To control costs, students at the USC School of Cinema crewed and helped with sets, and the color stock was donated by Ansco. “He has been very much interested in our Clinic because he has known John since he was a little fellow and was on our original Board of Directors,” Louise said of Disney, “and yet it took him five years to get around to ‘allowing’ that maybe he could make a picture about us.”
Work began in June 1946, with Louise playing herself, advising the young mother of a deaf baby girl that her child isn’t ready yet for nursery school and that, besides, there is only room for twenty children in the program. However, Louise continues, “We have room for you now, Mrs. Henry.”
The storyline closely paralleled Louise’s own experience as a parent, the baby sleeping late, the mother trying to rouse her in her crib and then taking her to the doctor for an examination. Spence, of course, spoke the narration, and when he laments that the young Mrs. Henry will never hear her daughter say “Mother,” it mirrors his own comment from some twenty-two years earlier when he first learned that he himself was the parent of a deaf child.
Modest but professional, Listening Eyes did an exceptional job of explaining the clinic and its role in the lives of families with deaf and hearing-impaired children, and in the end Mrs. Henry “experiences a moment never to be forgotten” when, for the first time, little Betsy Henry does indeed form the word “Mother.”
The crowd at the Egyptian that night was composed mostly of industry types, Lana Turner on the arm of her future husband, millionaire socialite Henry J. “Bob” Topping, Jr., Louella Parsons holding court in the lobby, a generous representation of Metro brass and contract players, many fascinated at the prospect of seeing the Tracy family together onstage and hearing from a woman who had been out of the Hollywood swim for so long there were some people who assumed she was dead.
“Mr. Tracy never talked about his family,” said Emily Torchia, who handled publicity for the event. “It was very hard for him to talk about John. I’ll never forget that night. He got up and made the most moving speech, how proud he was of John, how proud he was of