Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [404]
According to Schary, Tracy appeared in his office one day toward the start of production. “Kid, you can get yourself a new boy,” he said. “I’m not going to do the movie.” This came as no surprise to Schary, who had grown used to Tracy’s vacillations. Mannix was in talks with Bert Allenberg and the William Morris office over a new three-year term for Tracy, and Schary may have interpreted this particular maneuver as a negotiating tactic. Tracy had, however, been up all night convincing himself he wasn’t up to the job—that he hadn’t prepared enough, that he wasn’t going to be good enough—for, as his datebook shows, he was awake until 5 a.m. and only able to sleep with the aid of four and three-quarters Seconal capsules.
“Okay,” said Schary.
Tracy, he recalled, seemed surprised. “You mean it’s okay? Really?”
“Sure. I was supposed to make only twenty or twenty-two pictures this year. It won’t make a fuss if I lose one.” Schary then advised his recalcitrant star that Nick Schenck might well insist on suing him to recover the costs incurred in the run-up to the picture—sets and cast in particular—and estimated the total at $480,000.
Tracy backed off, but not before eliciting a promise from Schary that he would make the dusty trip north to visit the set. The following week, John Sturges had his first and only conference with Tracy regarding the picture: “I anticipated various approaches to ‘Why can’t we do this in the studio?’ and, sure enough, they occurred. I talked him out of them. He said, ‘Well, you don’t want [the heat] to affect the acting, do you?’ I said, ‘Spence, you’re not going to tell me you can’t act in hot weather.’ And he laughed and he said, ‘I guess I’ll forget the rest of my speech.’ He wanted to build the set on the back lot.”
Tracy went shopping for clothes at Rothschild’s, where he purchased a plain gray suit to wear in the picture. “He hardly had it altered,” said Millard Kaufman, “because he wanted it to look like [it belonged on] a guy that just got out of the Army. And it did. It didn’t really fit him the way that Gregory Peck, for example, would have had a suit fit.” Sturges recalled him discussing the clothes: “He said, ‘I figure [Macreedy’s] from the east, he’ll wear a hat, okay?’ And I said, ‘Sure, you can use [it] in the sun, the shadows, you know—for looks.’ He said, ‘Don’t think I won’t.’ And [he] showed up in that and it looked great.”
On the morning of Sunday, July 18, 1954, Tracy set out for the western edge of Death Valley, where the temperature was one hundred degrees and a room awaited him at the Frontier Motel. John Sturges had assembled a stellar cast in the brief time allotted him. The role of Reno Smith, Macreedy’s nemesis in the picture, was filled by Robert Ryan, a human counterpart to the weathered surroundings of Black Rock. M-G-M contract player Anne Francis would be Liz Wirth, the solitary girl in the cast, John Ericson her timid, ineffectual brother Pete. Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine, and Lee Marvin filled out the roles of the principal townspeople, the sixty-year-old Brennan making his fourth appearance in a picture with Tracy.
“My first scene was after I had supposedly knocked [Tracy] off the road,” Borgnine remembered.
The first scene we did together was when he comes back to town after that. My line was, “Well, if it’s not Macreedy, the world’s champion road hog.” I had been asked by Walter Brennan, “I understand you’re a fairly good country actor. I’d like to see your scene.” Everybody was watching. As Tracy came out of the car and started to cross, I forgot every line I had. All I could see were these two Academy Awards coming at me. And then my first line popped into my head. We did our scene, and then he walked through the door. The director said, “Cut! Print!” Walter Brennan went by and said, “Good