Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [420]
The advantage of locating the shoot on the Aiguille du Midi in the Mont Blanc massif of the French Alps was the Téléphérique de l’Aiguille du Midi, the historic aerial tramway that climbs the north face of the mountain, depositing its passengers near the top of the 12,800-foot summit. In terms of facilitating the transport of both equipment and personnel, it was unmatched anywhere in Europe and effectively made location work for The Mountain feasible. Tracy’s distrust of the thing was obvious, and he had plenty of time to formulate disaster scenarios as he haggled with Caplan and struggled for rest.
“Maybe,” suggested Robert Wagner, “he was just giving them trouble … I was below him in the hotel, and I could hear him pacing around because he had a very difficult time sleeping.” Hepburn, particularly, knew how rough the location was going to be on him and arranged for Margaret Shipway, David Lean’s script supervisor on Time of the Cuckoo, to serve as Tracy’s secretary, a soothing presence over the course of the shoot. In her tweed skirts and cashmere sweater sets, Shipway had a civilizing effect on the crew, always “smiling and friendly and interested” in whatever was going on, serving the same approximate role as the young woman from Boise who was hired to sit calmly and demurely alongside Tracy on the set of Northwest Passage.
“Just a short line to let you know we started shooting today,” Maggie wrote Hepburn on the morning of August 29. “Weather is doubtful but the crew are all happy and keen. Have settled in this hotel now—they’ve painted Mr. Tracy’s bedroom—and apart from the dreadful smell of new paint he’s more comfortable … Mr. Tracy’s sense of humor is wonderful—we laugh and laugh. I think he’s a marvelous person. He talks about you all the time.”
Shooting began with the making of stereo plates, POV shots, and long shots of the doubles in action. There was bad light all morning and hail by noon, causing the company to quit after lunch. Dmytryk found himself moving scenes around to take advantage of whatever light he could get, frustrating Harry Caplan’s attempts at creating a rudimentary schedule. Maggie Shipway worried that Tracy wasn’t eating very much and that the noise from a nightclub opposite the hotel was keeping him awake nights.
R. J. Wagner was as unnerved by the extreme elevations as Tracy and just as wary of the new single-cable Téléphérique. “I didn’t want to get on that thing too many times, and we had to shoot up there. As a matter of fact, I had to shoot there. It wasn’t Spence, but Spence said he’d go with me. I was very hesitant about it always. Eddie Dmytryk was up there with the crew, and I had to come around and get up into this thing, and [Spence] said, ‘Come on. I’ll go with you.’ And it got halfway up, and it went off the cable!” The car had, in fact, lurched to a stop with such force that it swung up and hit the cable, shattering the glass. As it rocked back and forth, R.J. felt Tracy’s arm around him. “I thought we were falling … and boom! It stopped, and we looked out the window and we were hanging [by the protective iron covering that served as the wheel housing] in the middle of this cable.”
At a sheer drop of eleven thousand feet, it was as heart-stopping a sight as either man had ever beheld. “Those damn things are scary enough when all is going well,” Dmytryk said,