Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [343]
Unable to match Morley for dexterity and accent, Tracy delivered a performance so intense that he rendered the character, in George Cukor’s words, a “cold-blooded monster” who cloaked a string of petty crimes in an obsessive concern for the well-being of his wastrel son, the unseen but ever-present Edward of the play’s title. “It’s rather disconcerting to me to find how easily I play a heel,” Tracy remarked to Cukor. “I’m a better actor than I thought I was. When I was doing Father Flanagan, that was acting. This is not acting.”
Hepburn arrived on June 10, registering at Claridge’s and generally keeping a low profile. There was a vogue for extended takes, spurred by word of Alfred Hitchcock’s use of nine- and ten-minute takes in his recent production of Rope. They were, however, making excellent time—three or four days ahead on a particularly tight schedule—and had some forty minutes in the can by the end of the third week. “It is very largely Spencer,” Cukor acknowledged in a letter to a friend. “He is such an accomplished actor, works with such ease and surety, that we are able to do long, long scenes—five pages, in fact, which not only makes for speed in shooting but for fluency and flow in the scenes.”
“The long takes didn’t trouble him at all,” said Freddie Young, the cinematographer on Edward, My Son. “If he couldn’t remember his lines he’d just rub his nose and say something that seemed to make sense. He never dried up.” Deborah Kerr recalled him as unfailingly helpful, and her Grand Guignol descent into drunkenness and old age brought her an Academy Award nomination. “George, do you mind if I tell her something?” Tracy asked one day as they were in the middle of a scene. Kerr was done up as a woman of sixty, gingerly sipping a drink. “You know, darling,” he said gently, “when you’re an alcoholic, you don’t sip, you just throw the whole thing down.” As Kerr later remarked: “Being young and not alcoholic, I didn’t know that.”
The pace of European production being considerably slower than in Hollywood, Cukor found himself adopting Tracy’s way of working, trying fewer angles and making fewer takes. Exteriors shot at The Mall, Hammersmith, went so smoothly the company was in and out before most residents had a chance to notice. If Kate had come to London simply to provide moral support, she was doubtless relieved to be on hand when Under Capricorn began shooting on another stage on July 19. Starring opposite Joseph Cotten and Michael Wilding in Hitchcock’s Technicolor production was Ingrid Bergman, who was promptly photographed alongside Tracy, smiling broadly, only months from her historic meeting with Roberto Rossellini.
They completed Edward, My Son, on July 30, 1948, but waited until after the Bank Holiday to have the wrap party in the studio’s cafeteria, where the company presented Tracy with an autographed cricket bat (so amused he was by the terrible importance attached to the test match) and the studio sports club contributed a ball and a cap adorned with the club badge. Kate was “thrilled” with what she had seen of the picture but worried it might be “too long to keep the terrific punch going.”
Tracy returned stateside on the Queen Mary, the Stricklings again accompanying him. Hepburn followed on the S.S. New Amsterdam, where she found herself quartered next to Paul Muni and his wife. The weather was dismal, communication between