Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [350]
2 The change of title—the Kanins’ original Man and Wife being deemed “dangerously indiscreet”—was the only executive mandate that stuck.
3 As it turned out, “Farewell, Amanda” was a trunk item, and Porter’s insistence on the change of name was simply to facilitate its use.
CHAPTER 24
Father of the Bride
* * *
I had been acting in Hollywood since 1944,” said William Self.
Soon after I got out here, I entered the Motion Picture Tennis Tournament, which was an annual event in those days, and I won it. All of a sudden, people knew in a vague way that there was a fellow named Bill Self who was an actor—or said he was—and a tennis player. Tim Durant called me up one day and said, “Would you like to play tennis with Charlie Chaplin?” I said, “Of course I would.” So we started doing that. And then one day Tim called and said, “We’re going to play across the street from Charlie’s at Irene Selznick’s tennis court with some mystery guests.” I said, “Okay.” I didn’t have a car in those days, so Tim had to pick me up. We went to Irene Selznick’s, and on the court hitting some balls were Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Alfred De Liagre, Jr., the Broadway producer, and Oscar Hammerstein II. Not bad company.
I was introduced and we played some mixed doubles. Tim was a pretty good player. I was by far the best player and, therefore, everyone wanted me as a partner. Tracy was the worst player; he was not too bad at hitting the ball, but he was the worst at moving. So Tracy and I became partners. Later in the day, when we all sat around after we played, Hepburn was very aggressive: “So you’re an actor. What have you done?” And then: “How can we help you?” Spencer was more laid back—I suppose he couldn’t have cared less about meeting another actor—but Hepburn kind of went to bat for me, and almost immediately at M-G-M she got me something.1 That group continued, I would say, for at least three or four months. I’d see all these people two or three times a week, and got to know them very well. At some point, Spence got very interested in me as someone who could play tennis with John. John, with all of his handicaps, was a pretty good player. Even with his bad leg, he moved remarkably well. So I started going to the ranch they had on White Oak Avenue to play tennis with John. And I played with Susie, and I played with Mrs. Tracy, who wasn’t a bad player.
When Malaya started in February 1949, Bill Self had a bit as one of Sydney Greenstreet’s henchmen. Later that spring, Self was cast as Klausner, the jury foreman, in Adam’s Rib, giving him a box seat for the filming of the courtroom scenes. “The affection between Tracy and Hepburn was rather obvious,” he said.
He would touch her, or they’d laugh about an inside joke of some kind. Stuff like that. It was all great for me, because they would reminisce a little bit about their early careers. I think that if you were around them, as I was day after day after day, it was evident that they cared for each other a great deal. And then people began to tell me things. Tim Durant would tell me what he knew about them, and so forth. I didn’t know, when I was twenty-something years old, whether they were lovers or not, but I knew they cared a great deal about each other.
Then one day Hepburn talked to me about Spence—this was fairly early—and she said, “You know, Bill, Spence and I can’t live together. We are together, but we can’t live together.” She was concerned about what I would think about Louise and the children, I guess. I think Spence was a little concerned about my seeing him one day, and then on the next day I was seeing Louise and John and Susie, and he wanted to be sure our