Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [355]
Tracy, said Berman, took about a week to make up his mind. Schary recalled a more complicated and angst-ridden process, which played itself out over a period of months and followed a pattern he came to regard as typical: “First there would be reservations about the original material, followed by a crashing refusal; then a quiet talk with suggestions of how it could be fashioned to suit Spence. This heart-to-heart would be followed by a wave of enthusiasm, later dispelled when the first script was born. With doubts returned, another conference had to be called, suggestions of how to change and improve the script would be on the agenda, and finally we would have Tracy’s approval.”
Assigned the screenplay was the husband-wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, both of whom thought the book “darling.” Goodrich, moreover, had been courted by Ed Streeter as a young actress. “It’s nice to think of my brainchild sitting in your lap like Charlie McCarthy while you put ideas in his head,” Streeter commented in a letter to Goodrich.
Tracy’s vacillations brought other potential candidates to the fore, and Streeter claimed to have heard unfounded reports “ranging from Harpo Marx to Paul Robeson.” Fredric March and Walter Pidgeon were candidates, and even Charles Laughton got mentioned at one particularly grim point. “Spencer Tracy is the one I wanted,” Streeter insisted, “but I heard that he was having contract trouble. March is obviously out, Laughton is my idea of nobody, and as for Benny I would nominate Abbott and Costello. Better than that, I would nominate myself.”
Tracy was confirmed for Father of the Bride just as Adam’s Rib went before the cameras. Kate arranged a dinner at which Minnelli made his pitch. “With you,” the director told him, “this picture could be a little classic of comedy. Without you, it’s nothing.” Tracy, recalled Minnelli, was delighted. “He’d heard other people were being tested for the part, and he thought we weren’t interested in him. All he’d wanted was to be wanted. Once Spencer accepted, the rest of the cast fell into place. It took no great imagination to cast beautiful young Elizabeth Taylor as the bride. Joan Bennett, with the same coloring as Elizabeth, seemed a logical choice to play the mother.”
By then, the script had gone through two complete iterations and was headed for a third. After an initial bout of anxieties, the Hacketts did a sterling job with Streeter’s simple yet universal tale, the withering of Mr. Banks translating neatly into three acts of progressive poverty and befuddlement. His plans go awry, and his desperation is evident when he offers his daughter $1,500 in cash to elope. (She thinks he is kidding.) He eventually falls completely from his family’s notice, underfoot as the wedding planner, the caterer, and the florist take over. In the end he slogs wearily upstairs, the forgotten man who has to pay for it all, an image eventually adapted for the film’s opening sequence in which Banks, his house strewn with the detritus of a chaotic reception, massages an aching foot as he empties confetti and rice from his shoe. “I would like to say a few words about weddings…,” he begins.
Tracy’s immersion in the role permitted him to inhabit a character as cartoonish as Banks and deliver a fully dimensional human being. In a scene around the family dinner table, Stanley first learns that his daughter is “in love” with somebody named Buckley and that