Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [363]
Sturges later recalled that he and Bert Allenberg, Tracy’s new agent at William Morris, were sipping martinis that day, while Allenberg’s client was calmly drinking a cup of coffee. “Five years later we were talking about alcoholism, and I asked [Spence] how long it had taken him to get over the urge to drink. He reminded me of that moment at Romanoff’s and said, ‘You know, at that time I hadn’t had a drink for five years, but I wanted that martini and I looked at it with as much longing as the day I quit.’ So that’s what the man lived with.”
Tracy began his sixteenth year at M-G-M with a new agent, a new contract, and a new picture in Father’s Little Dividend that was previewing even better than the original. “Audience chortled and howled throughout,” Schary was advised by Larry Weingarten in a wire. “Ending played very well. Looks like this one will pay the rent.”
Tracy was preparing to go east for a Red Cross broadcast and location work on The People Against O’Hara when it was announced that he had received an Academy Award nomination for his work in Father of the Bride—his first Oscar nomination since Boys Town a dozen years earlier.
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1 This was likely Homecoming (1948).
2 Richard Houghton Hepburn (1911–2000) was a free spirit, the self-styled playwright of the family, sporadically produced. “Dick was no more eccentric than the rest of them,” Katharine Houghton said, “but he was closest to Kate in age and had been to Hollywood several times, unlike the rest of them. She had complex issues with Dick.”
3 Another frequent signature he used was T.O.T., which probably stood for “Tired Old Tracy.” He rarely, if ever, signed his correct name with close friends. To the Kanins he was “Old Tom.” To George Cukor he was always “Corse Payton,” the flamboyant Brooklyn matinee idol known for billing himself as “America’s Best Bad Actor.”
CHAPTER 25
Rough Patch
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Louise took Johnny and Susie to Europe over the summer of 1950, the last time she would likely have them together for an extended length of time. Johnny, twenty-six, was a student at Chouinard Art Institute, and Susie, who turned eighteen on the voyage over, had been accepted for the fall semester at the University of Arizona, Tucson. They toured France, Italy, Switzerland, and England, then returned home aboard the Queen Elizabeth, docking in New York on August 21.
Spence kept in touch by wire, postcard, the occasional phone call, and was there to meet the kids when they arrived back in Los Angeles by plane, their mother following by rail. “Well, it’s great to see you back!” he beamed, and on the drive home he peppered them with questions: “How was it? Tell me about it! Did you enjoy Claridge’s in London?” (He once told Stewart Granger he’d like to spend the rest of his life at Claridge’s, the service and comfort were so outstanding.) True to their tag-team existence, Spence was off to New York the moment Louise hit town, pausing only for dinner with her at Chasen’s.
Louise’s profile was looming ever larger, her work with the clinic increasingly in the news. The Los Angeles Times named her a Woman of the Year on the last day of 1950, one of eleven civic leaders so honored for works as diverse as managing the city’s philharmonic orchestra, serving on Stanford’s board of regents, and swimming the English Channel. When the Academy Awards were handed out in March 1951, it was she who attended with Johnny and Susie and Susie’s friend Donna Bullard in tow. (José Ferrer beat out Spence for the Best Actor Oscar, which didn’t seem to upset anyone very much.) The West Coast premiere of Father’s Little Dividend was held to benefit the clinic’s building fund, with Esther Williams, Cyd Charisse, Janet Leigh, Nancy Olson, Diana Lynn, and Maureen O’Hara serving as the welcoming committee. Listening Eyes was again shown, George Murphy acted as master of ceremonies, and singer Eileen Christy sang two songs. Christy and Murphy