Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [387]
Tracy made it so eloquent, said Cukor. “He was funny and he had the authority to switch from comedy to rather serious [material] and did it wonderfully.” And in the end, after promising to stake Ruth to a spell in New York, he loses his job and can no longer count on the bonus that was to have, in part, funded the trip. She can’t go, he tells her, but her determination is fierce, and he listens with a growing sense of admiration and pride. (“He never acted listening,” Simmons commented, “which is what a lot of actors do—they ‘act’ listening.”) It awakens in him a realization that maybe she does have what it takes “if it’s gumption that it takes to be an actress.” He removes his cherished spyglass from the mantel, wraps it carefully in newspaper, and presents it to her as the most precious of commodities—a chance to do what she knows that she must.
In the hands of a lesser actor, Clinton Jones would have been a one-note performance, all bluster and broad takes, but in Tracy’s care he became an amalgam of all the fathers of the world who want something more for their children than what they had for themselves—an education, a place to live, good food on the table, and a chance to do the work they love best. “When he sold that spyglass,” Jean Simmons said, “it broke my heart.”
Cukor completed Fame and Fortune a few days over schedule. Larry Weingarten thought it too long and was talking eliminations before they had even finished. Garson Kanin, meanwhile, was in Europe with his wife, urging Tracy to join them and plying him with news of available women. (“Do you know Evelyn Keyes? Ruth and I think her a charming girl …”) While the deal for Flight to the Islands had been finalized, the script was “pretty stinkin’ ” (Tracy’s words), and he was told that if he wanted to do it—since he owed the studio a second picture in the first year of his new three-year contract—he and Gottfried Reinhardt, who was set to direct the picture, would have to go to Paris to meet with Kanin and see if it could be whipped into shape.
Tracy wanted the trip “like he wanted a hole in his head” but he also wanted to clear his schedule for an outside picture and had few other immediate options—a “lousy” book called Jefferson Sellick and a story titled “Bad Time at Honda.” Hepburn was in New York, catching the new shows with her Millionairess costar, actor-dancer Robert Helpmann, but her relationship with Tracy was at its nadir—her chronic absences having taken their toll—and she left for Jamaica with Irene Selznick before he arrived in town on February 23. Tracy and Reinhardt set sail aboard the Queen Mary on the twenty-fifth, arriving in Cherbourg on March 2. They dined with the Kanins the following night and connected with George Cukor on the evening of the sixth.
The topic of conversation wasn’t so much Flight to the Islands as Fame and Fortune, which had been previewed to mixed results. Length was a problem—easily correctable in Larry Weingarten’s estimation—but so was some of the throwaway dialogue Tracy permitted himself in the early reels. “I knew this would be a disturbing element,” Weingarten reminded Cukor, “and, of course, there is no way to cure it. Audiences insist on hearing every word and understanding it, otherwise they are annoyed and the very thing you strive for is lost.” Weingarten wanted to make some cuts that Cukor was resisting, but the quality of Tracy’s performance was never in question. “The comedy, of course, played brilliantly, and Spence’s scene at the table—where he speaks of his childhood—was applauded.”
There was a lot of tweaking of the sound, and the picture had to be redubbed because Sidney Franklin thought Jean Simmons’ voice “irritating if she uses the higher register.” At Weingarten’s urging, the sound department