Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [379]
In London Kate was a hit in The Millionairess—more so than anyone expected—and all Tracy and Weingarten could manage was standing room. Gene Tierney was in town, making Clarence Brown’s picture with Gable, but Tracy spent a good deal more time with the actress’ mother, Belle, than with Tierney herself. “My mother thought he was the most tormented man she had ever met,” Tierney wrote of Tracy in her autobiography. “They had lengthy conversations about religion. She had returned to her Christian Science beliefs and could talk about them in an almost mystical way … A few times he asked me to lunch or dinner. He was relieved that my mother came along. These dates were perfectly respectable, but Tracy was watching the door in case Katharine Hepburn came in.”
He was also stirring up picture material, having become enthused with Nobel laureate Pär Lagerkvist’s novel Barabbas, the story of the thief spared crucifixion instead of Christ. The character’s struggle to understand the nature of Jesus, his skepticism and his yearning to believe, held special resonance for Tracy, and he sent Dore Schary a script derived from the book, eager for his reaction. Schary came back almost immediately, saying he believed the script fell “far short” of a successful project for American audiences. “Believe it excessively brutal and in many instances highly censorable,” Schary cabled. “Further feel that it is confusing in some aspects and that the final point will be remote to audiences at large.” Bert Allenberg of the William Morris office communicated Tracy’s desire to do it as an independent venture, and Schary offered to arrange a meeting with Nick Schenck to discuss the matter.1
Tracy also went to bat for Garson Kanin, who had written a comedy-drama called A Flight to the Islands. Based on a story by Elizabeth Enright, it offered a part for Tracy that was not unlike Stanley Banks, a put-upon family man escaping for a day to another town, another life. He gets a job, rents a room, applies for piano lessons, meets a girl and learns her story. Schary was enthusiastic at first, but then gave the script to Larry Weingarten, who didn’t care for it at all, and to John Houseman, who said that he wasn’t interested in doing it either. Deciding it wasn’t material that could easily be dramatized, the production chief resisted an outright purchase, agreeing instead to an option deal which took months to settle.
Schary had just announced a slate of eighty-three features either completed, shooting, or in development, fifty-three of which were to be finished by January 1, 1954. It was an absurd number of films given the economic realities of the day, and he seemed overwhelmed by the sheer volume of product. “Unable to understand reply sent me [by] Schary ten days ago,” Tracy wired Kanin in New York. “Stated all cleared, however confusion, slowness, and unawareness. You should understand by now plans indefinite. May slip from tightrope here any moment.”
He did indeed slip from the tightrope in early August—not into the bottle, as Kanin may have feared, but into retirement … or at least a declaration of it. The announcement came in Stockholm, where Tracy had gone to see Alf Sjöberg’s film of Barabbas, a work he described as “thrilling.” Resigned to Schary’s “absolute turndown” of an American version, Tracy told a man with the UP he planned to give up the movie business altogether. “When I have fulfilled my contract duties to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer within some three years,” he said, “I don’t think there is anything else left for me than quit the screen.”
The news, of course, went around