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was “not at all convinced” that Reynolds was the best possible choice, worried, perhaps, that the picture would be burdened with “the usual sweetening of songs, dances, and funny sayings” (as some early coverage had threatened). Gar urged open minds, as Ruth’s dream was to see Tracy in the part of Clinton Jones and she didn’t much care who played herself. The name of Wanda Hendrix was briefly floated, then it came down in Sheilah Graham’s column that Reynolds was out because she was “too old” for the part—she was twenty at the time—and that the role would likely go to Margaret O’Brien.

Cukor, however, wasn’t willing to give up on Debbie Reynolds quite so easily and shot a test of her in September 1952. “I’m keeping my fingers crossed,” he wrote Ruth, “I think we’ve got our girl.” But then he soured when he saw the footage and wondered if she was “exceptional enough.” Her strength was in her averageness, he said, and she had never before played a straight—that is, nonmusical—part. He suggested tricking her up a bit to give her a little character but lamented how very little of the “odd fish” there was about her. Tracy liked Reynolds, thought her clever enough but felt very much the same as Cukor. And neither of the Kanins thought much of the test, Ruth not minding it so much as Gar, who judged it a lot of “superficial nonsense.” Walter Plunkett was hard at work on Reynolds’ clothes, but the casting of the part still wasn’t settled when, on November 18, Tracy wired Kanin at St. Moritz:

MEETING S[C]HARY NOTHING RESOLVED. LOOKING GIRLS. AFRAID WORD WILL BE GO AHEAD PRESENT SETUP. UNBELIEVABLE LACK HELP BY PRODUCER. ONLY COURSE WOULD BE REFUSAL DO PICTURE WHICH OF COURSE WILL NOT DO.

With the start date fast approaching and no one else on the horizon, Tracy and Cukor went jointly to actress Jean Simmons, who was under contract to Howard Hughes and had recently starred for M-G-M in Young Bess. Simmons knew Tracy casually, as he occasionally came to the house to play poker with her husband, actor Stewart Granger. “He had the most wonderful sense of humor,” she said. “Wicked Irishman, you know—with a twinkle. I don’t know how other people felt about him; I just adored him.”

She leaped at the part and the opportunity of working with both Tracy and Cukor. Dore Schary, who had resisted the change from Debbie Reynolds, acknowledged that Simmons was more interesting, more ambiguous in her gifts, more likely, in terms of her looks, to grow into the woman who was to become Ruth Gordon. As Ruth herself wired on the twenty-seventh:

MAD ABOUT JEAN SIMMONS. SHE WILL BE ABSOLUTELY GREAT.

With Simmons set, they turned to the matter of casting the mother, a part nearly as vexing as that of Ruth. Early on, the Kanins had mentioned the possibility of doing the picture to Helen Hayes, who seemed “extremely interested” and dubious as well. “But would Spencer want me in the picture?” she asked. “He usually prefers younger girls.” They later talked of Shirley Booth, but Booth was in rehearsals for Time of the Cuckoo and unavailable. Tracy liked Dorothy McGuire, but the studio thought the $75,000 she asked excessive. Her agent, Kurt Frings, suggested Teresa Wright, whose salary was more in line with what Metro was willing to pay. Cukor said he liked Wright well enough but thought her a bit on the dreary side. Maureen Stapleton and Jane Wyman were mentioned, as was Uta Hagen (whom Garson Kanin considered “one stunning actress”). In the end they settled on Wright, Cukor having decided she didn’t have to be dreary: “I think she can have some edge and get the comedy out of the part. At least we’ll see.”

Particular care was given the design of the sets, which were as true to the original rooms of the Jones house as humanly possible, given the demands of the camera crew and the staging of the action. Cukor and Ruth Gordon made a trip to the Wollaston neighborhood where she grew up, and where there were still neighbors who remembered her. They ended up, he noted proudly, with six volumes of reference—snapshots, interiors of Mellin’s Food Company