Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [382]
Constance Collier reported Hepburn as resting, ready to start in again on The Millionairess and make the play as great a success on Broadway as it had been in England. “I can’t tell you what we went through in London,” Collier confided in a letter to George Cukor. “Kate was really ill, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I think it is delayed shock. She has never let down since the death of her mother, and with the strain of the part and everything else, I think it piled up and really upset her terribly.” Years later, Hepburn wrote of her mother’s death and of the repression of grief that had by then become something of a tradition in the family.2 “I stood—my mother—dead—my darling mother—the only mother I’ll ever have—gone. I took her hand—still warm—unclasped her fingers from the sheet she had pulled up—and I kissed her and went down to Dad. No goodbyes. Just gone.”
The Millionairess opened at the Shubert Theatre on October 17, 1952, but where the show had been widely acclaimed in London and the provinces, the reception of the New York critics was lukewarm at best. Kate’s boisterous performance was sometimes unintelligible, even as she drew praise for the physical stamina she displayed in the part. (“Miss Hepburn can be understood clearly,” Brooks Atkinson countered. “Perhaps that’s the trouble.”) Business was fine—they were sold out for the entire ten weeks of the run—and its star was reported as being in “fine spirits and good health.”
Gar Kanin wrote Tracy at the end of the same month, saying that Gene Tierney’s mother had called him but offering nothing more. Tracy took this as a bad sign and cabled back: NO REPORT GT GUESS BAD FOR OLD TOM. Concurrently, an item appeared in Kilgallen’s column to the effect that Tracy was “facing a decision that could make front page news. If so, it will startle the public—but not show business.” A few weeks after that, Walter Winchell compounded the news by suggesting that “Katharine Hepburn’s long-time heart” would seek a “special dispensation” to marry.
Curiously, it was around this time that Tracy sent Louise and Susie, who were in New York on a brief holiday, backstage to see “Kath” after a performance of The Millionairess. Susie had already met Hepburn on the set of Adam’s Rib, but Louise had seen her only on screen, never in person, and how Spence imagined it going is anyone’s guess. Susie was completely unaware of the relationship between Hepburn and her father—they were simply coworkers as far as she knew—but Louise would remember the strained cordiality of the encounter and the attention Hepburn lavished on her twenty-year-old daughter.
That Kate was caught off guard is almost a certainty, but why did Louise do it? Did she fix her adversary with a knowing glare? Did she insert a little dig into her greeting or her reaction to the performance? Did she gain any satisfaction from having the upper hand for once? Had the column items somehow emanated from Hepburn’s camp? And was suddenly putting his wife and daughter on display Spence’s way of answering them? Or, in choosing to go, was Louise answering them herself? “Don’t ever leave me,” Spence had said to her, and she assured him that she never would.
Kanin finally wrote Tracy on December 1, saying it was about time to accept the fact that it was “good-bye Charlie” with respect to Gene Tierney. She had recently been in the papers, photographed on the arm of Prince Aly Khan, the notorious playboy and estranged husband of actress Rita Hayworth. Gar asked Ruth to call Tierney at her hotel and see if she could find out exactly what was going on, but Gordon