Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [422]
At the end of a full workday, Tracy was too tired to create much trouble. “Conditions are a little better,” Caplan, obviously relieved, reported to the studio. “Tracy has settled down a little. He is a natural born crabber. I had it out with him and we seem to be friends. He is going to work Sunday (tomorrow) as a favor to Bill [McGarry] and myself. The last two days of shooting we have done a lot of work but [neither] I nor Bill can quite understand the way Eddie is shooting … He is very evasive. He is transferring a lot of work to the studio on account of Tracy. This means we will have a lot of plates and need many rock sets.”
Lloyd Shearer, the West Coast correspondent for Parade, observed Tracy in the hotel bar, impassively sipping milk and absorbing a lecture from Harry Mines, the unit publicist. “We have a still photographer,” Mines was heard to complain, “and his job is to take pictures. You won’t let him, and I think that’s pretty uncooperative.”
Tracy had a long and well-deserved reputation for coming off at photographers who got in his line of sight, clicked while a scene was in progress, or otherwise got on his nerves. Pat Elsey could remember kneading the tension from his shoulders after an ill-timed candid was snapped on the set of Northwest Passage. Bill Self once saw a studio photographer come up and take his picture while the two men were deep in conversation. “Spence turned to him and said, ‘You’re going to click yourself right out of the business.’ Well, at that point, the guy faded away.”
On location for The Mountain, 1956. (ROBERT WAGNER)
Tracy ran a hand across the weathered face he once likened to an outhouse door and fixed Mines with a withering stare. “Did you mention the word ‘job’?” he demanded, allowing the word to hang in the air.
Well, I’ve got a “job” too. I’ve got a job to act in this picture, and I mean to do it as well as I can. I’m not going to let anyone interfere with that. I get up at 5:30 every morning, and we’ve got to hike up the mountain. It’s 10, 12, 13 thousand feet up. How many times have you been up, Harry? Once? Well, the air’s pretty thin up there, and after you trudge for two hours, it’s a little hard to breathe. I stand in the snow with a pack on my back and I try to give the scene everything I’ve got. I’m concentrating on the lines and the mood and the take, and then in the middle I suddenly hear camera shutters clicking. I’m sorry, but it breaks my concentration. I know that stills have to be taken, but let’s shoot ’em a little distance away.”
Then Tracy, according to Shearer, got to his feet, smiled good-naturedly, and said, “Don’t make me a heavy. Let’s go in and eat.” The next day, he spent two hours posing in the snow, giving the photographer his complete cooperation.
As unpopular as he was with Mines and Harry Caplan, Tracy was well regarded among the rank and file, having seen that the crew was made more comfortable after they were stuck at the Hotel Les Alpes. “You know Spence,” Wagner said. “Everybody loved him. He was wonderful and very funny and had a terrific edge on his humor.” When R.J. complained one day that Dmytryk was working him too hard—a measure of the location’s difficulty and the relative thinness of its air—Tracy handed him a stern look. “Young man,” he said as if back playing Father Flanagan, “you ought to get down on your knees every night and thank God you work in the most overpaid business in the world.”
There were constant delays getting equipment and personnel to location by foot and by jeep. Days were often overcast and no film could be exposed, while at other times it rained and snowed. Takes were ruined by mike shadow. Mercifully, one take was all that was usually necessary when all the elements cooperated. There was no coverage, and certain shots intended to be made on location—particularly close-ups—were deferred to the studio.
Much of the tension dissolved with the completion of the mountain sequences, and the company began working close to the hotel on the introductory scenes for Wagner’s character of Chris. (“You