Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [493]
Tracy found himself top-billed in the biggest, most talked-about picture in the world, Kramer’s elaborate $400,000 press junket having paid off in a tsunami of ink. He was now, however, just 160 pounds, completely unphotographable, and in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, the Morris office notified Warner Bros.—Ford already being on location in Utah—that he couldn’t possibly do Cheyenne Autumn, that his doctor didn’t feel he was up to it. When the withdrawal was made public at the end of the year, it was with the news that Edward G. Robinson, who had himself suffered a serious heart attack the previous year, would step in as his replacement.
Into the new year, Tracy was plagued with bouts of dizziness and depression. At times his blood pressure surged into stage-two hypertension, and Hepburn feared that he would suffer a stroke. His potassium and blood sugar levels were too high; Kate continued to manage his diet, feeding him peas, carrots, fruits, eggs, melba toast, and iron supplements and lecturing him on the merits of a positive attitude. To bolster his spirits, she bought him a puppy—part police dog, part coyote—he named Lobo.
Stanley Kramer and Abby Mann came to dinner on February 4 to discuss Ship of Fools, for which Mann had drafted a screenplay. Kramer pitched Hepburn for the part of Mary Treadwell, but Kate said that she wouldn’t do the film—any film—without Spence. (“I think,” said Mann, “one of the reasons Stanley wanted Hepburn was to get Tracy.”) The day Hepburn called Mann to tell him what she thought of Ship of Fools, Abe Lastfogel and Phil Kellogg (the head of William Morris’ Motion Picture Department) stopped by to talk with Tracy about making another picture, this one with Steve McQueen.
The Cincinnati Kid was based on the breakout novel of the same title by Richard Jessup, a writer more familiar to the readers of genre paperbacks than hardcover fiction. Jessup had modeled his book on Walter Tevis’ The Hustler, substituting cards for pool. Producer Martin Ransohoff wanted Tracy for the role of the old master, Lancey Hodges, who, in the game of stud poker, was known simply as The Man. After reading the book, Tracy expressed an interest if Ransohoff, best known for his TV work, could land McQueen, who was inclined to commit only if Tracy was. The tentative casting was announced in March 1964 with an October start date, giving Tracy time to regain some of the weight he had lost. The screenplay was assigned to Paddy Chayefsky, the man responsible for scripting Ransohoff’s most recent production, The Americanization of Emily.
Hepburn resumed her morning tennis workouts at the Beverly Hills Hotel, even as Tracy continued to lose weight. After a bout of stomach trouble in May he was down to 158 pounds, fully clothed, and she began wondering if he could even be insured for a picture. Yet he seemed in good spirits and felt well enough to drive over to Columbia, where Kramer was shooting Ship of Fools with Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, and José Ferrer. He had a good time, stayed until 3:30, but was photographed on the set looking painfully thin and pale, coffee cup in hand, seated alongside actress Elizabeth Ashley. The next day, papers carried the picture nationwide, labeling the shot as his “first public appearance in a year.”
Kramer said to him: “I have your name on a director’s chair next to mine. Why don’t you go through the picture with us?” He went back a couple of more times that week, then fell into a routine of going in just once a week, specifically to have lunch with the director. “He’d come in a half hour or an hour early,” remembered Marshall Schlom, “just to hang out, and since he knew me from Judgment and Mad World, he’d come over and sit next to me. He’d want to know everything that had been going on, any gossip. He’d watch them shoot, then Stanley would call lunch and they’d go off together.”
Production on Ship of Fools was slowed by Lee Marvin’s alcoholism and