Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [403]
The script went to New York, where Nicholas Schenck took it to be another of Schary’s pricey morality tales—a dated story of antique prejudices—and said he didn’t think Schary should do it. Within days, an item in the Hollywood Reporter indicated that the film was being put off “indefinitely.”
“The quarrel,” said Schary, “was healed finally by Mr. Schenck saying he’d let me make the picture. He wouldn’t oppose it. The whole argument took place during the time when I was having this whole series of problems about my attitudes toward the job, and I certainly said—and I felt it very strongly—that if I had to fight to make this picture, there was no point in staying around.”
In January 1954 Tracy agreed to do the film after Highland Fling but was never completely on board. “I think his opinion may have been colored by some people at the studio who felt it would be a very unsuccessful picture,” Schary suggested.4 “We then spoke again [in April] and he said, ‘What do you really think will happen with this picture?’ I said, ‘Spence, this is not a twelve-million-dollar picture. But if it’s successful, if we do it well and it comes off, it’s the kind of picture that will receive perhaps the penetration of Crossfire5 and, if you’re good in it, I think your chances for recognition are wonderful in it.’ Well, he didn’t know. So he left very undecided that day. There were some things about the script that bothered and disturbed him … In the beginning he was not enthusiastic.”
Tracy was in London when Kaufman’s final draft, eliminating the opening narration, was okayed for production. It would be a couple of weeks before he learned that Highland Fling had been canceled and that Bad Day had been moved up to a July 15 start date with Vincente Minnelli directing. To Schary’s mind, Minnelli had the advantage of having made two pictures with Tracy. He was, however, just coming off the demanding musical fantasy Brigadoon and was reluctant to take it. John Sturges signed on with scarcely a month’s notice and quickly saw the opportunities in marrying the sweep of widescreen with the desolate stretch of wreckage known as Black Rock.
“The people at Metro didn’t really have any faith in CinemaScope or the concept of widescreen,” Sturges said.
They were enamored of 3-D, which to me was the passing fancy—not widescreen, which was obviously the picture of the future. So then word came back from New York: “Make one in widescreen. They’re doing business.” So I rushed up and said, “Now with the orders from New York, let me make one.” They said, “You don’t want to make this one—there’s nobody in it.” I said, “What’s that got to do with it?” Well, to them, if you had widescreen, that meant thousands of extras, thousands of togas, amphitheaters with Christians being mauled by lions, and so on. They said, “What are you going to do with all that space?” I said, “Well, the idea of a man, Tracy, in a black suit standing against this empty space. Doesn’t that tell you something? Isn’t that better the bigger the screen?”
Sturges envisioned a panorama of complete isolation, a place where a handful of people could hold a grim secret between them. He had, said J. J. Cohn, “an idea that it ought to be done on location. Dore turned to me and said, ‘What do you think, Joe?’ I said, ‘Well, I think we can do it on lot number three, but I don’t think it would be too much of a difference to shoot on location. Why not let John Sturges go and pick a location, then we’ll figure the cost.’ So John Sturges went out and, I think, [selected] Lone Pine, if I remember rightly.”
It was indeed Lone Pine, some two hundred miles due north of Los Angeles, where Greed, Gunga Din, High Sierra, and countless B-westerns had been filmed and where every angle offered a fresh expanse of the rugged Owens