Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [466]
Others made their way to the supposedly closed set of Devil at 4 O’Clock—Jack Bradford of the Hollywood Reporter, Murray Schumach of the New York Times, Neil Rau of the Los Angeles Examiner, Lee Belser of the Mirror. To Schumach, Tracy denied the occasional rumor that he intended to direct: “I have thought about directing. I don’t know enough about directing. I could never stand some of the things I have seen directors put up with from actors. I would kill the actors. Not to mention some of those beautiful actresses.” To Rau he explained the volcanic lava on the set was really Hollywood snow—shredded plastic—sprayed gray to look like ash. To Belser he mourned the deaths of Whitey Hendry and Clark Gable.
Gable’s death at the age of fifty-nine came as a terrific shock, as King had just finished a picture with Marilyn Monroe and was expecting a child by his fifth wife, the former actress Kay Williams. To UPI’s Vernon Scott, Gable had acknowledged that he was transitioning to character parts but said he wasn’t so sure he could do it with the success that Tracy had enjoyed. “Tracy is that rare exception,” he said. “He completed the transition beautifully. Spencer can play anything he wants except young men. I hope I can do the same thing.”
On November 6, 1960, two days after finishing the Monroe picture, Gable suffered a heart attack. He was hospitalized and seemed to be recovering when he was killed by a second thrombosis on the evening of November 16. The funeral three days later was a simple affair, mirroring the rites for Carole Lombard eighteen years earlier. Tracy, who served as a pallbearer, arrived alone, sunglasses shielding his gaze from reporters and fans, his white hair glistening in the morning sun. “I’ve known a lot of wonderful people in this business,” he said. “They’re just about all gone now.”
With actor Robert Taylor at the funeral of Clark Gable, November 19, 1960. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)
With John F. Kennedy’s narrow victory on November 8, 1960, Sinatra lost what little interest he retained in The Devil at 4 O’Clock and the gulf between him and Tracy widened. “By the end of Devil at 4 O’Clock,” said Kerwin Matthews, “Tracy was barely tolerating Frank.”
“He’ll call Frank Sinatra ‘The Other Fellow,’ ” Bob Yager said at the time. “He’ll come on the stage and say, ‘Where’s the Other Fellow? Where’s the star of this picture?’ He’ll be needling Sinatra, and he’ll keep saying, ‘I know I’m not the star of this picture. Sinatra is the star. After all, my last picture wasn’t a success, and they’ve got Sinatra in this picture to insure its success.’ ” When not in front of the camera, Sinatra was on the phone arranging entertainment for Kennedy’s inaugural ball. Since he was always referred to as “Mr. S” around the set, Tracy began referring to himself in the third person as “Mr. T.”
Well over $1 million had been spent on sets—a record for a Columbia picture. The figure included $500,000 for Hawaii alone. (“We built,” said Mervyn LeRoy, “a lovely set there—an entire village, complete with a street, a church, and even a jail.”) It reportedly cost another $500,000 to create a miniature of the island on a farm outside of Fallbrook. They spent $150,000 to build a hospital on the back lot at Fox, $100,000 to replicate the lush Maui vegetation on Columbia’s Stage 8. Given the money riding on the picture—more than $5 million—Tracy plainly regarded Sinatra’s behavior as unprofessional.
Stanley Kramer, eager to start Judgment at Nuremberg, was monitoring the situation: “I called him one morning and said, ‘How’re things going?’ He says, ‘Well!’ Just like that, but I can’t use the language he used. ‘I’ve been in this business ONLY thirty years. Just thirty years, that’s all, and you know what I’m doing? I’m playing scenes with a double. How do you do that? Now tell me, am I a goddamn fool or am I a goddamn fool?’ He just told them [the double] reads Sinatra’s lines better than Sinatra does. Sinatra had said, ‘Hot or cold, I’m leaving on Thursday.’ And Spence said,