Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [467]
With Sinatra’s departure, Tracy was left to finish the picture by himself. When Pete Martin of the Saturday Evening Post came calling, he was shooting actor Bernie Hamilton’s death scene and unhappy the interview had been scheduled for such a crucial day. “This is the boy’s big chance,” Tracy said of Hamilton. “I remember these scenes. I used to play them. Now he plays it in my arms, you know, he dies, and if he’s good as he is … this kid’s going to steal this picture. So we want to do it well, you know, as well as we can.”
They quickly got onto the subject of Martin’s recent appearance on David Suskind’s show, a panel discussion that included the aforementioned Bill Davidson. Martin said of Davidson, “He kind of came through in his true colors the other night—a sneering son of a bitch … You’re in for a surprise, Spencer, I think.”
“Going to be a blast, eh?”
“Well, he may be nice to you, but …”
“I don’t think so … He can say I used to get drunk. He could bring up some of these old things—I couldn’t care less. I don’t think he’ll let himself in for libel … He seemed such a nice guy and I think, you know, he liked me. Yet remember he said he doesn’t like any actor.”
Tracy was in and out of the dressing room all morning, Martin getting his questions in between setups. A range of subjects got touched upon, though none very deeply. The talk was liveliest when Tracy spoke of Judgment at Nuremberg. “I’ll tell you Nuremberg is the best script I’ve ever read,” he said.
Inherit the Wind I thought was a great script. I’ve made two or three pictures in my time that I thought were good: Captains Courageous, Inherit the Wind. Why, [if it was] just a job, I couldn’t function that way—without thinking, without thought. That I’d come here in the morning like a mechanical toy. Jesus Christ, I don’t do that! I don’t look at every script. I know sometimes scripts are bad. I don’t think this [one] is any great shakes … I’m getting more choosy. The Old Man and the Sea, even though it was not a great financial success, when you do things like that and Inherit the Wind, Nuremberg—you know, it’s hard to turn around and put on the sheriff’s suit again. But they don’t come. Fortunately, I don’t have to work. I don’t have all the money in the world. If I live too long I’d have to worry. My family would have to worry if I lived too long, but I don’t like to figure that way.
He told Martin that Olivier had dropped out of Judgment at Nuremberg, tied up as he was in New York with Becket.2 In replacing him, Kramer had gone to Burt Lancaster, whom Abby Mann thought all wrong for the part, but who was just about the screen’s hottest star. “I admire Kramer,” Tracy said. “I don’t know how the hell he gets the money to put on these shows.”
“He says, ‘The way I get these people is I don’t take the money myself.’ ”
“That’s right,” Tracy said. “He’s telling the truth, because I had the percentage and I get the figures and you’d be amazed to know what Stanley Kramer takes out of a picture.”
With Lancaster’s addition to the cast, Tracy’s percentage was adjusted to make room for Lancaster’s. “Joe Hyams came in here,” Tracy told Martin,
and said he talked to Lancaster. Then Stanley called me up to tell me that Dick Widmark was going to do the picture, which pleased me mightily. You know he’s paying Lancaster a tremendous amount of money—much more than he’s paying me or anybody else. And a big percentage. I said, “I think I should tell you, Stanley, that Lancaster told Joe Hyams he would have done the picture for nothing. I think it’s always nice to know these things. He also said that there would have to be a little rewriting done.” And I said, “I would like to know if Lancaster is going to rewrite the script or if Abby Mann is going to rewrite it. Because if Lancaster’s going to rewrite it, I might have to read it over a little more carefully.” That’s when he said, “Geez, you’ve got a needle that long and you’re sticking it in. Go ahead, turn