Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [356]
He was, said Minnelli, an inspiration: “His instincts were infallible. He knew how to throw the unimportant things away, and he knew how to create the illusion of throwing the important things away too, so that they were inscribed on your mind. His way of speaking made you feel you’d stumbled on a great truth. You saw real life reflected in his face … and also strength.”
In choosing to let Tracy set the pace of the film, Minnelli took advantage of his inner stillness, a steadiness about his eyes and head that suggested simplicity while masking a furious turning of wheels. “There wasn’t a better man at comedy. He wasn’t a mugger, at least not in scenes with other actors. The facial contortions came when he was alone and unobserved.” Minnelli liked to point out a scene in which Banks mediates a reconciliation between his daughter and her fiancé and then finds himself stranded as they rush into each other’s arms. “The father is left standing there, the unwanted third man, trying to figure out a way to gracefully exit … Spencer’s reading was the essence of comedy, because it was achingly true. And he knew how well he’d done it, for no one had greater reason to feel secure about his ability than Spencer.”
Actor Don Taylor, playing the unexceptional Buckley Dunstan, hadn’t yet met Tracy when called upon to play his first important scene, the business of Kay Banks (Elizabeth Taylor) having slammed a car door on his hand. “We talked; we did the scene,” said Taylor.
“Who is this Buckley anyway?” Tracy, Joan Bennett, and Elizabeth Taylor in Father of the Bride (1950). (SUSIE TRACY)
And Minnelli said, “Well, I think I’ll have to print that.” (Meaning, “Very good!”) But ol’ Spence said [growling], “No-o-o-o-o, Vincente, no, that’s no good!” And he turned to me and he said, “I’m Spencer Tracy.” I said, “I’m Don Taylor.” Nobody had introduced us. Of course, I was mesmerized by him in every facet—as an actor, as a human being, and, you know, as a fellow man. He said, “C’mon!” and the two of us walked around the stage. We walked around twice, and we rehearsed the scene, ad-libbed a little bit, put it together, and came back, and Tracy said, “NOW we’ll shoot it.” And we shot it, and Minnelli said, “Cut! Print!”
Tracy hadn’t seen much of Joan Bennett since the completion of Me and My Gal, and her presence on the set clearly delighted him. They were like old lovers, sharing confidences and irreverent memories and occasionally even finishing each other’s sentences. “He was not quite as jovial as he used to be,” Bennett later remarked, “but he was still the good natured, wonderful actor that he’d always been.”
Each morning, Tracy would breeze past his secretary’s office (“Top o’ the mornin’ Miss G.!”) and mount the stairs to his permanent dressing room, where Larry Keethe would be awaiting him. Even a modern-dress picture required close attention to wardrobe, and it was Keethe’s job to know what tie, what suit, what shirt was necessary for any given scene, down to the smallest detail. Interiors of the Banks home had been assembled on M-G-M’s Stage 26, where Tracy was always punctual for his nine o’clock call.
With Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Father of the Bride. (SUSIE TRACY)
Bennett noticed how accommodating Tracy could be to his fellow performers, a trait that had not always distinguished him in the past. “If they wanted to rehearse, much as he disliked doing it, he would go ahead and rehearse with these people, these other actors, so that they could be secure in what they were doing.” Elizabeth Taylor, who had been at M-G-M since 1943, regarded the opportunity to work with him as a master’s class in