Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [421]
There was nothing the crew could do other than keep their eyes on the tiny figures gripping the safety bars inside the car. “So we wait,” said Wagner, “and they sent an open work car down. I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, we’re going to have to get out of this thing and get in there?’ And then go up because it came from up above?’ I mean, it was very, very frightening. So they come down and they leave and then they back the thing down again. I think, ‘Jesus, it’s going back down.’ And, indeed, no, they put it back [on the cable], and it would go back up.” The car took what seemed like an eternity to make its way up to the platform.
“When it ground its way into the station,” Westmore said, “Tracy staggered out looking twenty years older than he had that morning.” The irony of the incident was that once everyone had safely reached the summit, there was nothing to do but sit around and wait for a break in the light. Finally, they made a couple of shots for the trailer showing the crew sitting it out on the rocks. Then Tracy had to ride back down the mountain in the very same car that had balked carrying him up. “He went up there for me,” Wagner said of Tracy, “that is all I know. He was with me. He went up there because he knew that I was really frightened. I think it was after that experience, that next couple of days, that he got into drinking a little bit.”
There was no grand tumble, at least not on location, but rather a controlled leavening that put everyone on edge. The night of the Téléphérique incident, Wagner found Tracy in the hotel bar, where he was “completely drunk—gone! It was startling, because he had become an entirely different person.”
Tracy was given to quicksilver twists of temperament that alcohol only served to exacerbate. “Strangely, he was very talkative and friendly, actually charming,” said Frank Westmore, “telling all sorts of fascinating Hollywood stories, even as his head sagged lower and lower on his chest. He ordered another round of drinks.” It looked as if he would be in for an early night when he abruptly snapped to and hurled a brandy snifter at the face of the bartender.
“As I remember,” said Wagner, “the bartender made some kind of remark. And out of that remark Spence took exception and picked up his glass. It came out of nowhere, just out of nowhere. Flash anger.” Wagner stuck his right hand out to deflect the glass and reflexively closed his hand in on it, shattering it in his palm and driving the shards deep into his middle fingers.
“Tracy was oblivious to everything by then,” Westmore said, “and didn’t even know that he was being wrestled from his chair by members of his crew and hustled up to his room. I helped our company doctor as he stitched and bandaged Bob’s hand, meanwhile pondering the practical consideration of how I would mask the gashes for the remainder of the film.” Westmore was able to cover the injury with a combination of collodion and makeup, neatly concealing the stitches. “A contrite Tracy watched the procedure, barely remembering what had happened the night before.”
Fortunately, the light improved and Tracy and Wagner were able to begin working together. They and the crew were usually roped together in groups of four, lest someone disappear into a hidden ravine, and they wore crampon spikes to keep from slipping. The members of the company came to dread the rending sounds of the avalanches, which they could hear more often than see. “I was very, very frightened of the mountains and the crevices,” Wagner admitted. “We were on a piece up there and saw an avalanche, and it was at least a mile away, and we backed up when we saw that thing break. And I remember in the book they referred to the sound as ‘the tearing of silk.’ And it was