Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [410]
Under the circumstances, it was hard for Tracy to get excited over another term at Metro. The studio was offering three pictures, nonexclusive, at $150,000 each, while Tracy’s freelance rate, first with Broken Lance, then with The Mountain, had been firmly established at $250,000. Moreover, Dore Schary was in trouble, losing ground with Schenck and unhappy with the way the industry in general was going. On December 28, 1954, Tracy met with Eddie Mannix at the studio and tentatively okayed the new three-year deal, Mannix agreeing to route all outside picture money through the studio so that it could count toward Tracy’s company pension. On January 7, 1955, Bert Allenberg followed up with a letter to Mannix outlining the contemplated deal, granting Metro preemptive rights but otherwise agreeing to loan Tracy’s services to other producers and studios when he requested it. Exempted were The Captain’s Table, The Mountain, and The Old Man and the Sea, all three of which were to be completed by the fall or winter of 1956. “I understand that you have not yet made it as a firm offer,” Allenberg wrote Mannix, “and that you will let me hear from you at such point.”
Although they were essentially the same age, Bert Allenberg was a stark contrast to the man he represented, tall and natty, a charming bankerlike figure where his impish partner Abe Lastfogel was more avuncular, a down-home type who grew up on New York’s East Side. Both had deep roots in the industry, Allenberg from his longtime partnership with the famously nurturing Phil Berg, Lastfogel from the early years of William Morris, which he joined as an office boy at the age of fourteen.
Bert Allenberg understood the care and feeding of a man as insecure as Spencer Tracy, while at the same time maintaining absolute credibility with men like Mannix, Thau, and Dore Schary. All had genuine affection for Tracy—Mannix and Schary in particular—and all had come to understand, each in his own way, the demons that sometimes possessed him. In the peculiar business they were in, men like Tracy, who could capture and retain for decades the fascination of a worldwide audience, were rare indeed, like the precious gems of which Mayer used to speak. There were, in fact, only a few leading men who shared the pantheon with Tracy—Gable, Bogart, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart. Cagney, maybe. Fred Astaire, if you counted musicals. And of them all, only Tracy was still part of the dwindling roster that had at one time boasted “more stars than there are in Heaven.”
Bad Day at Black Rock, its opening moments fixed by Herman Hoffman, had its first public showing at Loew’s 72nd Street Theatre in New York on December 8, 1954. Tracy, who was in town but did not attend, was told afterward the picture “held the audience spellbound,” a claim backed by the trade reviews, which were unanimous in their praise. He remained dubious until New Year’s Day, when calls came from Sam Goldwyn, Danny Kaye, Leland Hayward, and others. Incredulous, he wrote in his datebook: “Black Rock good???”
He conferred with Schary, Thau, and producer Sam Zimbalist on January 12 and tentatively okayed Jeremy Rodock with the understanding that the female lead was to be offered to Grace Kelly, who, with the December release of The Country Girl, was suddenly Hollywood’s hottest actress. Tacitly agreeing to do the picture, Kelly asked to see a script. Two days later, Thau called and said she was stalling. “BET TURN DOWN,” Tracy wrote in his book.
The situation became clearer over the following week: Kelly, an M-G-M contract player, had, with the exception of Mogambo, made her most notable films on loan-out—to Stanley Kramer for High Noon, to Alfred Hitchcock for Dial M for Murder and Rear Window, to Paramount for The Country Girl. Now George Stevens wanted her for Giant, and she was using Jeremy Rodock as a bargaining chip. Tracy was infuriated. “Wishes reserve decision,” he wrote in his datebook. “I wish replace fast. Studio inclined give her way. ‘I.E.’ loanout to Stevens’ Giant after