Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [395]
By Christmas, Tracy was in Palm Springs, polishing his riding skills and doing his best to drop some weight. Responding to a chatty New Year’s letter from the Kanins, he wired:
STARTED NEW YEAR RIGHT. WHOOPING COUGH. NOW DESERT TRY TO LEARN WHICH END HORSE TAKE MY PLACE. AS CUKOR QUOTE OLE WESTERN STAR ON TRAIL TO BARN UNQUOTE.
He was back in Los Angeles when Emily Torchia made a seemingly impossible bid for his attendance at the Golden Globes dinner, where he was a likely win as Best Actor for The Actress.
“Of course I’m not going,” he said gruffly.
“It’s very important,” she pleaded.
“I know. Howard Strickling told you to come down here and ask me.” He thought a moment. “Okay, I’ll go. IF you get yourself a date. And you get me a date … with Grace Kelly.”
He knew Clark Gable had been squiring the twenty-four-year-old actress around London. Having been nominated herself as Best Supporting Actress for Mogambo, Kelly was a good sport about it and went, though she declined Tracy’s invitation to go out for a drink afterward.1 “But he got so much pleasure out of teasing Clark Gable,” said Torchia. “ ‘I had a date with Grace Kelly!’ ”
That previous August, Tracy and Gable had reconnected in Paris, having not seen each other in nearly a year. They did the town, Tracy uncaring, for once, at the prospect of being seen in public. There was great camaraderie between them, and Gable had already made the decision not to re-sign with Metro, his well-known antipathy for Dore Schary being only one of the reasons. (“As far as M-G-M is concerned,” said Clarence Brown, “Dore Schary was the beginning of the end.”) The studio had offered Gable a new two-year contract but refused his demand for a percentage of the profits on his future pictures, something virtually all top-tier freelancers were getting. He resented never having gotten a piece of Gone With the Wind, which had grossed nearly $100 million, and was mad at the studio’s refusal to give him a 16mm print of the picture.
Tracy escorted Grace Kelly to the Golden Globes dinner in Santa Monica, 1954, but the actress declined an invitation to drinks afterward. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)
“He was disgusted, upset, and angry,” said Howard Strickling, “and he wanted no part of M-G-M ever again.” Gable’s final day on the lot, when he posed for a few stills and cleaned out the remaining items in his dressing room (one of which was a framed Parnell poster), came on March 2, 1954. When he drove through the back gate for the last time, having firmly declined the offer of a farewell party, Tracy was on location near the Arizona border town of Nogales, making his first scenes for Broken Lance.
Zanuck had committed to the picture in a big way, giving it an all-star cast, a $2 million budget, and the full CinemaScope treatment. Originally paired opposite Tracy on a seven-week guarantee was Dolores Del Rio, returning to the American screen after an absence of twelve years. Richard Widmark was cast as the eldest of the Devereaux sons, Hugh O’Brien and Earl Holliman his younger brothers. And filling the roles of the young lovers in the film were Fox contract players Robert Wagner and Jean Peters. Wagner, in particular, was gaining in popularity, having appeared in a string of increasingly prominent pictures, the latest of which, Henry Hathaway’s $3 million production of Prince Valiant, was set for an April release.
“He saw me in a picture I did called Beneath the 12-Mile Reef,” Wagner recalled, “and said, ‘This kid would be great.’ ” Tracy wanted him for the role of Joe, the half-breed son of Matt and Señora Devereaux originally envisioned by Zanuck as going to Jeffrey Hunter. Wagner shook Tracy’s hand at the Golden Globes, thanking him for the boost and telling him how much he was looking forward to being in the picture.
“Well, I am too, son,” Tracy said.
“The first time I ever saw him,” Wagner continued,
was at Riviera,