Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [428]
Back from a trip, Jack Warner viewed the wardrobe test on May 1 and added his own vote of confidence:
I THINK TRACY LOOKED EXCELLENT AND I VISUALIZE HIM AS BEING OUR OLD MAN OF THE SEA. HE JUST STEPS RIGHT OUT OF THE BOOK AND THE BOY IS A TEN STRIKE.
Filming officially began on May 4, when Tracy’s call was for 4:45 a.m. in order to make “dawn shots” of the Old Man returning home. Progress was slow, as most of Zinnemann’s shots were dependent upon the time of day, limiting Tracy’s working hours almost exclusively to mornings. Don Page, himself an actor (known professionally as Don Alverado), loathed Tracy, and since it was Page’s job to give Tracy his calls, every official interaction took on an air of belligerence.
Tracy again had a dawn shot—rowing at sunrise—on the morning of May 10 and was dismissed for the day at 11:30. Page gave him an afternoon call for the following day, with work to continue after dinner with night exteriors featuring the boy. Tracy, he said, informed him that he would show for the afternoon but would not work that night and that Page could inform both Hayward and Zinnemann. Tracy’s pocket diary for the day carries the words: “Opinion wrong shooting. Blow-up with Leland.”
Filming in Cuba with novelist Ernest Hemingway. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)
What Tracy had noticed was that Felipe Pazos had been given a 4:45 call for that next morning, and that Zinnemann and Page expected him to work an eighteen-hour stretch—something that would never have been required of a youngster on an American set. Tracy refused to make the night shots simply so the boy would not have to work. He noted in his book that he was ready to leave for location the following afternoon when a call came from Hayward: “Day lost because alleged refusal work to-nite, etc. False.”
The company was shut down, and the next morning a letter from Hayward was hand-delivered to Tracy’s house at Tarara: “We notify you that your default in your contract has forced us to stop production and shut down, and we will hold you responsible.”
Bert Allenberg had attorney Lawrence Beilinson call Hayward, and an appointment was set for the following day, a Sunday. Hayward came to talk, saying that he was in a bad spot, liable for the production to Jack Warner—who thought Zinnemann was moving too slowly—and that Don Page had been forced on him by the studio. (Page was the ex-husband of Ann Warner and the father of Jack Warner’s step-daughter, actress Joy Page.) Having cleared the air, Tracy agreed to continue with the picture but said he thought it doubtful that Zinnemann would stick with it.
A wire went out to Steve Trilling, Warner’s executive assistant, in Burbank:
BYGONES ARE BYGONES COOPERATION COMPLETE PRODUCTION RESUMED INFORM ALL CONCERNED HAYWARD TRACY ZINNEMAN
Beginning May 17 they planned to shoot all the land scenes, which would take a month, followed by four weeks at sea with Tracy. The crew would be cut for two weeks of second-unit work, then Zinnemann would go to New York to shoot a sequence at Yankee Stadium. The project would wrap with two weeks of process work in Burbank. Zinnemann, who saw the story as “the triumph of man’s spirit over enormous physical power,” was discouraged when Hemingway failed to land a thousand-pound black marlin off Peru. The company was forced to substitute a mechanical version so big and cumbersome it took two flat cars to get it by rail to Florida. “Hemingway hated it at first sight,” said Zinnemann, “and christened it ‘the condomatic fish.’ When it was put in the Gulf Stream near Havana it sank without a trace and was never seen again.”
Zinnemann grew disenchanted with the choice of Felipe Pazos, and there was talk of replacing him. On the seventeenth Tracy worked with a second boy, shooting duplicate scenes, before it was decided to stick with Pazos. Hemingway, when