Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [432]
Tracy had known Sinatra since the day in 1945 when the singer walked up and introduced himself on the M-G-M lot. “I was in a sailor suit doing a dance picture with [Gene] Kelly, and he thought I was in the Navy … He said, ‘Where are you stationed?’ And I said, ‘Right here.’ And, of course, I teased him for about five minutes. And then he said, ‘Oh, you’re the guy with the swooning and all that stuff.’ And I said, ‘I guess so.’ And we became fast friends after that. Immediately.”
The break with Louise had never been clean, never final, never the sort of thing where the parties could heal and move on. It was an open wound for them both, something neither of them could face or acknowledge. “In a way,” said Seymour Gray, “he did love her. He felt responsible to her. There was the time he had this fight with Hepburn in front of me about this coat that he bought [Louise]. Hepburn was furious. ‘Why didn’t you buy me one?’ He said, ‘Because you don’t need one. And you’ve got enough money to buy your own.’ I think he admired her and had enormous respect for her … And I don’t think Spencer wanted a divorce.”
And yet he ran from Louise on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday, and he hated himself for it. Two weeks later he emerged from another self-induced stupor at the Pierre and placed himself under the care of Dr. Richard Stock, a prominent cardiologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. On August 18, 1956, Carroll Tracy quietly settled the hotel bill for $2,700, and he and Kate, who had just finished work on The Rainmaker, took him home to California.
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1 Heston was thirty-one at the time. In the book, Isaiah Vaudagne, the elder brother, is fifty-two, while Marcellin is “barely thirty.” In MacDougall’s screenplay the brothers were renamed Zachary and Chris Teller, their ages unspecified.
2 When Susie was in high school, her best friend tried telling her that her father had a drinking problem. “Oh, he doesn’t drink,” Susie insisted. “He orders ginger ale or 7-Up whenever we have dinner with him.”
3 Tracy liked to tease Kath about her age, pointing out that he had given her joy in her “latter days.” The name “Ratty” was a term of affection they tossed between themselves, though never in public. “Old One” and “Old Rat” were generally applied in the third person.
CHAPTER 29
The Last Hurrah
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Doubtless the conversation between Tracy and Frank Sinatra touched on the condition of their mutual friend, Humphrey Bogart. In February 1956 Bogart had undergone surgery for esophageal cancer, and both men were tracking his progress. Early in July, having just returned from Cuba, Tracy and Hepburn visited the Bogarts’ Holmby Hills estate. “Bogie post-operative seems very ill,” Tracy wrote in his datebook. “Weighs 120 lbs.” There was no improvement in August and, after a Labor Day visit, Tracy mused, “Poor Bogie—6 mos??” The arrival of his namesake, Tracy Stewart Granger, on September 10 cheered him considerably, and he postponed a drive to Las Vegas to visit Jean and the baby.
As The Mountain neared its September release date, Tracy’s attitude toward the film hardened and, as with Bad Day at Black Rock, he became convinced it would be a flop, a “disaster.” His bleak outlook may have been influenced somewhat by an ill-advised attempt on the part of Paramount to recover the money the studio figured his eleven days of “illness” had cost the company. Bert Allenberg initially agreed they were entitled to perhaps $50,000, yet Tracy had finished his role in the picture in the twelve weeks allotted under the terms of his contract, and cast insurance had already paid $11,000 toward the alleged loss.
In the end, studio head Y. Frank Freeman felt they were unlikely to recover anything more without incurring the expense (and unwanted publicity) of a lawsuit, and the money was ultimately rolled into the negative cost, which came to $2,119,000. Variety handed the film a pan, judging Tracy’s performance as “no more than adequate” and rightly placing much of the blame for the picture’s failure on Ranald