Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [472]
The first reading for the cast was held on February 15, 1961, four long tables forming a square on Revue’s Stage 28, where the film’s dark-paneled courtroom interior had been erected. Originally, Kramer had wanted to shoot the film in the actual courtroom in which the trials had taken place. “We couldn’t,” he said, “because it’s still in use today. So we took measurements and carefully re-created it on the soundstage in Hollywood, although we finally had to scale down some of the dimensions for the involved camera movements. A courtroom … is a very static set. The attorneys had to be separate and distinct from the defendants and witnesses, by law. So the film becomes a ping-pong game unless you try to move the camera, which I tried—not always successfully—to do.”
The read-through was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. but was late in starting because Maximilian Schell had yet to arrive. One of several holdovers from the original Playhouse 90 production, Schell had prepared for the movie version by reading the entire forty-volume record of the Nuremberg trials.
“Eventually,” said Marshall Schlom, Kramer’s new script supervisor,
Max Schell arrived—he had gone to Western Costume for a fitting or something. When he came in, he didn’t have a script. He said, “I left it in my car.” I had a bunch of scripts, so I helped everybody out. Lancaster came in and sat down and put his glasses on and set his script in front of him. Widmark put his glasses on and had his script in front of him. Judy wasn’t there, Monty Clift wasn’t there, but Bill Shatner was there, all of the defendants, Werner Klemperer and the others, they were all there. There were probably fifteen or twenty in all. Spencer came in with his script; he put his glasses on and he opened his script. The rest of them just left it there, but he opened his script as if he wanted to check something. At that point, Stanley introduced everybody; some of the people knew each other, of course. Everybody was very respectful of Tracy, and it was all very formal. Stanley kept it that way. There was some kind of aura, a feeling we were a step above normal films, that we were doing a film that Stanley felt just had to be made.
Tracy’s part in the film, at least the portions in the courtroom, was fragmented. His part went all the way through, but for a period of time it was just “Would you speak up?” and then six pages later he would have an interjection, and that’s the way it was in the script. So he did the same thing with this reading—he would follow for a while and then he’d remember, “Oh, I think I have a cue coming up,” and he’d look at his script again. Widmark had memorized his whole part—he never opened his script. Lancaster was a gentleman, very eloquent. He sat with the script open in front of him and did it very carefully. Everybody had their own way of doing this reading, but I remember Spencer vividly because he just didn’t have much to do. His major scenes were with Marlene Dietrich; in the courtroom he only had this one speech where he read the verdict.
So Tracy was sort of like a fox that was hiding in the bushes. He played everything very low key. My first impression of him was: Gee, you’re sitting here with Spencer Tracy—you have to be impressed. But he didn’t seem to be this typical big-time actor who needed to be “on” all the time. He didn’t need to impress anybody. And that spilled over into the production, because we eventually had to get everybody into the witness box. They all had to tell their stories, they all had to have their day in court. They all had their turn being in the spotlight, and Tracy was always sitting in the background. By the time we got to Tracy’s work, which was basically the decision, all of the big stars had already had their turns. And he was lying there waiting…
In Abby Mann’s mind, the power of the screenplay depended on an actor of Tracy’s authority in the part of Judge Haywood. “Tracy was the embodiment of America in a way. You think, ‘Well, this is an ordinary guy.