Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [340]
Tracy, unhappy to be assigned a part so resolutely British, said at first that he would go to England but not make any location shots without being paid for them. Eddie Mannix, concerned he might be angling to break his contract, gave orders that Tracy was not to be required under any circumstances to make the shots, completely sidestepping the issue of whether or not he should have been given the picture to begin with.
Tapped for Arnold Holt, a ruthless, class-obsessed businessman who alternately charms and throttles his way from shopkeeper to peer of the realm, Tracy was seemingly the only star on the M-G-M roster who could reasonably be expected to handle the role—despite his refusal to attempt an accent. Having paid $160,000 for the screen rights, the studio could ill afford to lose him. Knopf engaged Donald Ogden Stewart to write the screenplay, and it was Stewart who suggested making the character Canadian, which solved the accent problem without making Tracy any happier. George Cukor’s assignment as director was a further attempt at mollification.
On February 18, Tracy dutifully set out for New York in the company of Knopf, his wife Mildred, and Cukor, but then said that he would not see the play for fear he’d be unduly influenced by Morley’s lusty performance. He thought Morley a wonderful actor, witty and florid, but as unlike himself as any actor could be. Playing a part that Morley had specifically written to be played by Morley would be little short of ridiculous, and playing it straight would naturally rob it of its leavening strokes of finish and humor. Moreover, the part called to mind Tracy’s only other attempt at a British character, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the derision it engendered. “I know Spence so well,” Louella Parsons commented, “and he thinks he’s going [to England] now, but will he actually go when the time comes? He’s not much on traveling too far from the home base.”
Louella, of course, was right. Spence joined Kate in New York on February 22 and declared he was staying put, leaving Cukor and the Knopfs to travel on without him. There was still some hope that he could meet Eugene O’Neill and loosen up Touch of the Poet for a fall production, but the playwright had been hospitalized with a shoulder fracture and, although he was receiving visitors, he deflected a meeting with Tracy. Privately, O’Neill told Lawrence Langner, “I don’t believe I could live through a production.”
Suddenly concerned he had produced no income in the new year, Tracy had Leo Morrison advise M-G-M that he would report back to the studio on April 1 and ask that his salary for the rest of the year be prorated accordingly. He was back in Los Angeles by March 21, when he met with Cukor and Don Stewart to begin work on the script. Metro was planning a wide opening for State of the Union, promising “red hot, up-to-the-minute entertainment” so timely that it would be hitting hundreds of screens simultaneously, one of “the greatest mass bookings in America’s top theaters that has ever been undertaken in the history of our business.” Indeed, the film had its world premiere in Washington on April 7, 1948, Capra seated alongside Harry S. Truman, who was mulling a run for the office he had ascended to with the death of Franklin Roosevelt.
“President Truman, according to those who watched closely—as presidential reactions always get watched—has a habit, much like a small boy watching a chase sequence, of lifting himself slightly from his seat when what he sees on the screen excites and interests him,” said Charles Alldredge, the assistant secretary of the interior. “That’s how he reacted to the story of a good man presidential candidate who almost lost himself and finally won out over himself and the bosses by appealing frankly to the people.” Truman requested a print for the presidential yacht, then ordered yet another showing at the White House, after which he announced at a capital dinner: “There will be a Democrat in the White House in 1949, and you’re looking