Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [470]
When it came time for Louise to speak, her wavy hair dyed a silvery blond, she talked of the original twelve mothers at the clinic, how they made curtains and re-covered furniture while their husbands plastered the walls. “The first person I would like to mention,” she said, “is my husband. Without his interest, without his support, moral as well as financial, there would never have been a clinic.” Tracy, of course, was nowhere to be seen on the dais. “I assumed that he would be up on the front table,” said Dr. Lowell. “He had a table in the very back.” Louise gave an impassioned talk, her voice quivering at times, and was accorded a five-minute standing ovation at its conclusion. “I have never been so moved by anything in my life,” she said. Over the course of the evening she kept an eye out for Spence, who was pacing, ducking in and out of the ballroom. “Sometimes he would go to the back and you could see him in a little cubby hole there. He was embarrassed. He always said, ‘It’s your show.’ ”
As the clinic’s namesake, John Tracy was present that night, beaming out over the room even as he faced yet another challenge in a life overwhelmed by them. Having been fitted with thick glasses at the age of seven, he was diagnosed in 1940 with retinitis pigmentosa, a narrowing of the field of vision that can end in complete blindness. Apart from early problems with night vision, John functioned fairly well, driving his own car and attending classes, first at Pasadena, later at UCLA and Chouinard Art Institute. In 1952 he was hired briefly as an assistant art director when Bill Self began producing The Schlitz Playhouse of Stars. “I had an art director, Serge Krizman, and he needed some help. I said, ‘I’d like you to try John, because he’s a good artist.’ After a couple of weeks, Serge came to me and said, ‘Bill, he’s not a help, he’s a hindrance. He’s a good enough artist, but I can’t communicate with him. It’s very embarrassing.’ So I had to let John go. It was very hard to help John.”
In 1957 Walt Disney found John a job at the studio, where he was eventually put in charge of the cell library. “He did a lot of things,” said Ruthie Thompson. “He started out in the art props. He was such a nice guy. He said, ‘God put me on this earth for a purpose. I just hope I’ve fulfilled it.’ ” John left Disney when his eyesight got so bad that he could no longer drive. At the age of thirty-six he began to learn sign language. “He decided that after his eye trouble began to become pronounced,” said his mother. “He said, ‘I think maybe I would like to take some lessons.’ In the early days we were never exposed to it.”
The Devil at 4 O’Clock finished on December 29, 1960—two weeks over the guaranty period specified in Tracy’s contract. The William Morris office contended he was owed another $50,000 by Columbia Pictures, but the studio disputed the charge, pointing out that he had been sick five days on the picture. Production never stopped, however, and Tracy had worked to get rid of Sinatra, who finished two weeks ahead of schedule. After a call from Abe Lastfogel, Columbia coughed up $25,000, agreed to another $15,000, but disputed the final $10,000. “Par for the course!” said Tracy.
Stanley Kramer, meanwhile, was readying Judgment at Nuremberg for the cameras, affording Tracy a minimal six-week break between pictures. “There was so much distribution objection at United Artists to this downbeat, uncommercial subject,” Kramer said, “that the only way to get it made was with an all-star cast.” An old hand at candy-coating difficult material, Kramer loaded the first film he ever directed, Not as a Stranger, with six major names. For Judgment he loyally insisted on Tracy’s casting as Dan Haywood, even as United