Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [459]
“I could understand and see what Fred was doing,” he later said.
He was like Olivier. A wonderful technician. You could see the characterization taking shape—the cogs and wheels beginning to turn. If you studied his methods closely, it was all there, like an open book. But with Spence it was just the reverse. He’d play a scene with you, and you’d think nothing much was happening. Then, when you saw the rushes, there it all was—pouring out of his face. He was quite amazing. The embodiment of the art that conceals art. It was impossible to learn anything from Spence, because everything he did came deep down from some inner part of himself which, to an outsider anxious to learn, was totally inaccessible. All you could do was watch the magic and be amazed.
The script afforded Tracy many passages of eloquence, but the film’s most memorable moments come when Drummond calls Brady to the stand as an authority on the Bible. Their scalding exchange is rooted in fact, as Darrow had done the same thing with Bryan in 1925. Kramer shot these exchanges in four- and five-minute takes, completing the entire sequence in the space of a few days.
“We had quite a system worked out whereby we started at nine, worked until twelve, had a two-hour lunch, and we quit at five. Both of these fellows would eat lunch and lie down for a while, and if we were due back at two, at a quarter of two they were both saying, ‘Well, are you ready? We’re here. We’re here.’ And, boy, they’d be ready to go, and we’d quit at five, and, you know, that in six hours as against an eight-hour day we really did a tremendous amount. It was a 180-page script which we did in 41 days, and that’s pretty fast shooting.”
Donna Anderson could recall how amazed people were that Kramer was shooting the picture “like it was on stage. I didn’t go in that often [when I wasn’t needed], but I went to that one long shot. It was an incredible thing to see those two guys work.”
BRADY
Your Honor, I am willing to sit here and endure Mr. Drummond’s sneering and his disrespect. For he is pleading the case of the prosecution by his contempt for all that
is holy.
DRUMMOND
I object, I object, I object.
BRADY
On what grounds? Is it possible that something is holy to the celebrated agnostic?
DRUMMOND
Yes! The individual human mind. In a child’s power to master the multiplication table there is more sanctity than in all your shouted “Amens!” “Holy, Holies!” and “Hosannas!” An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man’s knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of waters! But now are we to forgo all this progress because Mr. Brady now frightens us with a fable?
“They’d go through these long, long scenes together,” said Jimmy Boyd. “Sometimes the camera rolled for five minutes, and Spencer wouldn’t forget a word.” Elliott Reid, who had a box seat for the Brady-Drummond confrontation, marveled at the experience: “Tracy was so good. And to sit there, that close to the performance … I thought he was wonderful, just wonderful. And I watched it live all those weeks. I had chills once in a while watching him because, well, first of all, the material had so much to do with what we believed, and what seemed to be the intelligent view of this world. And because he had such power, Tracy. Just in the way he moved toward the witness. There was power without being overstated, without being hammed up. He was so real, he was so true … He was as perfectly cast in that part as anybody I can imagine.”
The speed at which they worked became a matter of some pride to Tracy, who wasn’t shy about pointing it out. “Tracy was very funny,” Kramer said.
We were doing these seven- and eight-page scenes at a clip. When the production manager would come on the set, Tracy, for some reason, would quiet everybody down. He’d ask