Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [376]
Miss G., pregnant with her second child, had retired, leaving Tracy with a new secretary. For one of the few times in his career, he seemed to be having trouble breaking character between takes, and he was as irascible as Captain Jones over the fifty-seven days needed to shoot the film. He took an immediate dislike to actor Lloyd Bridges, who, as Coppin, the master’s mate, was the captain’s henchman and the most prominent member of the ship’s crew. “I don’t know why he hated me,” Bridges said years later, shaking his head. Bill Self could recall Tracy referring to Bridges dismissively as “that radio actor,” as if someone who worked in radio was the lowest form of life. “Tries to do too much with his voice” was all Tracy would offer by way of explanation.
“Oh,” said Reggie Callow, who was first assistant director on the show,
he moaned and groaned all through the picture … When we went on the deck it was raining, and the actors had to stand with the water coming down. Tracy would say, “I’m an old, old man; I can’t do all these things.” So we had to baby him. He wasn’t an old man; he was in his fifties then, but he always kept saying what an old man he was. If you gave him a ten o’clock call, and you didn’t get to him until about 10:10, he’d raise hell. He’d say, “Why am I called in at ten and it’s now ten after ten?” So I had a great idea: I said give him an eleven o’clock call, and if at ten-thirty we realized we weren’t going to get to him on time, I’d say, “Mr. Brown, would you mind skipping the next setup and set up Tracy?” So at eleven Tracy would walk in; he was always ready. I’d say, “Spencer, we’re ready for you.” And he’d say, “Oh boy, you’re the greatest.” After he did the first shot, he wouldn’t mind sitting in his dressing room for the rest of the day without being called. But he had to get that first shot on time.
Predictably, Tracy picked up a cold, which didn’t improve his disposition. The tension between Schary and the actor he professed to admire above all others only seemed to mount during the filming of Plymouth Adventure, and it came to a head on May 7, when an item in Mike Connolly’s column in the Hollywood Reporter suggested “some fur” would fly over an interview Schary had given Lloyd Shearer for Theatre Arts magazine “in which Shearer writes: ‘The old Mayer group of stellar personalities—Gable, Garson, Astaire, Pidgeon, Tracy—is just about washed up with today’s predominantly young movie-goers, and Schary must find replacements.’ ” Schary heard from “three or four sources” that Tracy was “steaming” after having seen the item in Connolly’s “Rambling Reporter” and he quickly drafted a letter denying that he ever said such a thing.
“To have this nuisance take place at any time is a lamentable experience for me,” he wrote, “but I wanted to write to you and tell you, firstly, that it should not concern you as an artist; and, secondly, that it must not concern you in terms of annoyance at me. In these awful days of tension and quick tempers and strained relationships, I must ask you as a friend and as a man of good will to dismiss directing your anger against me and the studio, because you must know, if you think about it, Spence, that such an attitude does not in any way reflect our thinking about you. I have told you before—and I’ll tell you again—I love you.”
Having just passed his fifty-second birthday—and with his repeated lamentations about being “an old, old man”—it may have been important for Tracy to prove himself with a younger woman. Kate was in London, Louise busy with the completion of the new building. The Kanins were in New York, Cukor was in Europe, Carroll and Dorothy on a cruise. Gene Tierney, at thirty-one, was becoming increasingly aware of her wild mood