Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [374]
It is in Mike’s relationship with Hucko—“heavyweight champion of the world … in a couple of years”—that the true nature of his character emerges: small-time operator, disciplinarian, hustler, and patron to numerous hangers-on. When he comes down on Davie, he does so by demanding the answers to the Three Questions:
“Who made you, Hucko?”
“You, Mike.”
“Who owns the biggest piece of you?”
“You, Mike.”
“And what’ll happen if I drop you?”
“I go right down the drain.”
“And?”
“And stay there.”
Pat signs a contract with Mike and his mysterious partners and is immediately put into training: no martinis, Mike tells her, no smoking, no late hours, no men “in any manner, shape, or form.”
“What’s to prevent me from smoking when you’re not around?” she asks.
“When am I not around?”
“You don’t expect to be watching me every minute … out of every … twenty-four hours … out of every day … do you?”
“If I have to, sure.”
“Not sure I’ll like that.”
“Not askin’ you to like it. But you’ll see pretty soon I’ll trust ya. Because you’ll trust me. Because what’s good for you is good for me and you for me, see? We’re the same, we’re equal, we’re partners, see? Five-oh, five-oh.”
Despite all this enforced intimacy, there is little to suggest the budding romance between Pat and Mike other than the care on his part, the glances on her part, the underlying attraction between the two actors playing the roles, the times again when their eyes locked, even when there was nothing more than a kiss on the cheek (“for luck”) to suggest Pat’s growing affection for her rough-hewn manager.
“I remember there was a scene in which Spencer massaged Kate’s leg,” George Cukor said. “No sex implied, but it was very sexy. You sensed the empathy between these two.” Kate was stressed throughout the filming, being coached as she was in golf, tennis, baseball (the latter by Pinkie Woods, star pitcher of the Hollywood Stars, for scenes that were ultimately cut from the film), basketball, boxing, and judo (for a shot in which she clobbers two of Mike’s “investors”). She was pushing herself—fear of mediocrity, fear of being only half good—and was battling to keep her weight up. It fell to Cukor to keep the production—as well as the strained relationship between his two stars—on an even keel. “George was like a big brother to Kate and Spence,” Aldo Ray observed. “He was mother hen, nurturing them, holding them together.”
With all the exteriors called for in the script, Pat and Mike was plagued by rain delays and ran over schedule. The company moved to Ojai in mid-February, finishing up there on the twenty-first. Hepburn was worn out, unsure of how the film would piece together, and had only a few weeks before she was due to leave for England and the start of rehearsals for The Millionairess. When she left California, it was for Connecticut and Fenwick, and she would not return until summer at the earliest. Once again, she was putting a continent between the two of them, driving herself in a way that was extraordinary even for her. Tracy approached the filming of Plymouth Adventure with a renewed sense of dread, not only for the quality of the material he was playing, but for the time he would be trapped in Los Angeles when all he longed for was to be in London with Kate.
Tracy clowns with Hepburn while cinematographer William Daniels takes a reading. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)
Gene Tierney wasn’t a lock, at least initially, for the female lead in Plymouth Adventure. Schary resisted casting someone who wasn’t an M-G-M contract player, and originally the talk had been of June Allyson doing the part. The film was populated with a number of British actors, Leo Genn and Barry Jones most prominent among them. With Hepburn gone, Tracy became almost unbearable to be around, sulky and petulant. When actress Dawn Addams, relatively new to Metro, was awarded the