Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [402]
The first full version of Bad Day at Black Rock was ready for review by the middle of September. In a story conference, Schary suggested opening with a narration and dictated other economies in storytelling. “Let’s give him a bad arm,” he said of Macreedy. “Nobody can resist playing a cripple.” He wanted the porter in the opening shot to offer to help Macreedy with his suitcase, so that Macreedy could insist on carrying it himself.
“You can’t really write a screenplay for an actor,” Kaufman observed, “because actors don’t even have the average of, say, a ballplayer who is a good hitter. If you hit the ball once at three times at bat, you are worth a fortune. An actor will interpret something and decide he wants to do it once in twenty times if he’s a star—that is, a guy in demand. So, no, I wasn’t figuring on Tracy, and anyway … I wasn’t really interested in him. I thought he was too old. [The character] was a platoon leader. I was an old platoon leader in the Marine Corps and I was twenty-five. Most of the kids in my outfit were not old enough to vote.”
Kaufman and Brooks, himself a novelist and screenwriter, went back to the director’s office to begin work on a revision. “We were only into it about ten minutes,” Kaufman remembered,
when Brooks, who was in a slow burn for either being assigned to this or because he said he totally disapproved of it and didn’t like the scene, or whatever the reason, suddenly picked up the phone and dialed. I heard him say, “Spence, this is Richard. Mill and I are working on this thing, but don’t expect anything much because it’s a piece of shit.” So he hung up and I said, “What are you doing??” And before he could answer, the phone rings and it’s Schary. He says, “Get up to my office immediately.”
Tracy had just called and told him that the director said that what we are working on for him—and him alone—is “a piece of shit.” So we go up to Dore’s office, and attending the meeting along with Schary and Herman Hoffman, who is Dore’s assistant, is Brooks, myself, and Charlie Schnee … And Charlie, when he realizes from Dore what has happened, challenges his director, who is twice his size, to step outside. He wants to hit him. Spencer comes in and Dore says, “Look, let me tell you the story.” And he starts in on some really dumb idea. He was trying his best, and I found out later that all this encouragement was because they had a play-or-pay deal with Tracy. So they were doing anything to keep him. [Tracy] was really very much a presence, and he was listening … Dore spins the story, making it up as he goes along, and it is rather silly and infantile—not infantile, adolescent. It was kind of a modern western theme, and I thought, “Oh boy, we are really in trouble.” And we were. Very calmly, Spencer said, “There are people who”—and this is a paraphrase, I never wrote it down—“consider me possibly the best actor in America. So why are you giving me this shit?” And he walked out.
Now Dore, as I say, did not do a very smart thing, but he had to do something. Later he did something that was very, very astute and that was this: When I finished the screenplay, he sent a messenger with the thing to Spencer with a note saying, “We have Alan Ladd to play the part. However, this was written for you and we thought you might like to take a look at it.” In about two hours, Spencer called back and said, “Get rid of Alan Ladd. I want to do it.” So we got him back.
Kaufman’s revision, carrying the alternate title Day of Reckoning, was dated November 4, 1953. “We simplified it and gave it the core,” Schary said. “I felt always, too, that in the original there was something lacking in the man’s point of view. I felt there was no real reason in the screenplay why this man did particularly what he did. He just came into the town. There seemed to be no reason for him beyond making this gesture [of delivering a medal to the Japanese-born father of a soldier in his