Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [375]
“I was having dinner with Spence at Chasen’s,” Bill Self remembered,
and Clark Gable came in and sat down for just a talk. Spence said, “What do you know about an actress named Dawn Addams?”
Gable said, “I don’t know anything about her much. She’s a young contract player.”
“She’s playing Priscilla. She looks like she’s made the voyage before.”
“I don’t know anything about her.”
“Well, she’s sleeping with someone. I have to tell you, this girl would not be in this movie if she wasn’t sleeping with somebody.”
Gable left, and a few minutes later Benny Thau came in. Spence called him over to the table. Thau sat down and Spence said, “How’s everything?”
“Fine,” he said, and at that point in waltzed his date for the evening. Thau said, “Oh, do you know Dawn Addams?”
Costume tests were made early in March, and Tracy’s captain’s outfit, with its knee-high boots, its braided coat, and its wide belt buckled tightly up around his belly, gave him a gnomelike appearance, rendering him shorter and rounder than he had ever before appeared on the screen, a sort of malevolent Mr. Pickwick of the high seas. Then he allowed them to darken his hair, which made him feel doubly ridiculous.
As the film’s start date approached, Gene Tierney, to placate Tracy, was borrowed from 20th Century-Fox for a role that could have been played by almost anyone. Mollified, he permitted Dawn Addams to remain in the cast but drew the line at Peter Lawford, who had been set for the part of Gilbert Winslow, the affable scribe whose diary of the voyage forms the basis of a narration. “Lawford,” said Frank Tracy, “was never prepared and was kind of an airhead, I understand. And Spence did, literally, tell him, ‘Get the hell out of here!’ ”
Ten days prior to the start of filming, Lawford was shunted to the lead in a romantic comedy called You for Me and the role of Winslow was filled by John Dehner, a radio commentator and sometime actor who had recently completed a part in Metro’s Scaramouche. Filming began on March 24, 1952, on M-G-M’s Joppa Square, a grouping of exterior sets on Lot 2 that stood in for medieval Europe in scores of pictures and incorporated the Prussian castle used in Conquest (1937).
Since all the important action took place aboard the Mayflower, director Brown made the pricy decision to shoot the entire picture in sequence, keeping the whereabouts of the individual passengers and crew members straight and ensuring that the movements of the facsimile vessels matched the miniature work, which was extensive and taking place concurrent to the filming of the live action sequences. (The ship’s principal model was one-eighth the size of the one on Stage 30 and crewed by a set of mechanical dolls.) Some five months of second-unit footage had been shot off Honduras by Arnold Gillespie’s crew, covering all possible weather conditions and times of day for background plates.
“Spence got me a part in Plymouth Adventure,” said Bill Self.
I had nothing to do in it; Clarence Brown hated me, I’m sure, because he didn’t know what to do with me. I made five pictures with Spence, and in three of them I actually had a little something to do. In this one, I had nothing to do. One day, John was coming over to have lunch, and Spence came to me and said would I take John to lunch? I said, “I’d be happy to, but, you know, I’m in the first scene after lunch, doing nothing, but I’m in it.” And he said, “There’s not going to be a scene after lunch.” I said, “Oh?’ And he said, ’Yes. I have sent for Dore Schary. I’m getting out of this picture.” Now, most people would not “send” for the head of the studio, so I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “Oh, I look like an idiot in this costume, they should have gotten Errol Flynn to begin with, it’s a boring story, I regret that I’m doing it, and I’m going to tell Schary I’m out. Take John to lunch. Don’t worry about the time you get back. I guarantee they