Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [495]
To write the new screenplay, Ransohoff hired Ring Lardner, who had spent the previous fifteen years blacklisted as one of the Hollywood Ten. It was Ransohoff’s idea that Lardner accompany him to a meeting with Tracy and Hepburn, thinking, apparently, that the cowriter of Woman of the Year would somehow forge a stronger bond with The Cincinnati Kid. At St. Ives, Kate answered the door and received Lardner warmly.
“Spence was in his dressing gown,” Lardner remembered. “He looked pretty bad.” At some point, struggling to make conversation, Ransohoff told Tracy that Joe Levine was making a picture about Jean Harlow. Tracy didn’t have much to say about Harlow, so Ransohoff added that Carroll Baker—“the titless wonder”—was going to play her. “At the phrase ‘the titless wonder’ I noticed Tracy, who was sitting very still, his eyes went to Kate to see her reaction to this phrase. And she didn’t show any at all, but there was the faintest smile on Tracy’s face, because [of] how she would react, with her particular figure, to this crude bastard talking about ‘the titless wonder.’ ”
The meeting likely had the opposite effect of what Ransohoff had intended, for when the new script came in, Tracy read it and then, in Kate’s words, “complained of bellyache.” The next day Phyllis read the script and had the same reaction—she also complained of a bellyache. In a subsequent meeting with Lastfogel and Kellogg, it was agreed to view anything else from Ransohoff “only at arm’s length.”
There was, besides, a much more promising project in the offing, as producer Walter Wanger had optioned Louis Auchincloss’ new novel, The Rector of Justin, and proposed to turn it into a film for Tracy and Hepburn with George Cukor directing. On September 25, Wanger and Cukor came to lunch, and they all parted company thinking they had a firm commitment. Then Cukor found the tone of Wanger’s follow-up “disquieting” in that Metro seemed very excited about it and that Wanger hoped to sign contracts. “To me,” Cukor said, “it sounds alarmingly like so many of the messages I’m getting these days, ‘Don’t call us we’ll call you.’ ”
By late October, Peckinpah had replaced Ransohoff as Tracy’s day-to-day connection with The Cincinnati Kid, dropping off a revised script on the twenty-ninth and confiding that he didn’t much like Ransohoff either. Hepburn thought the script more like the book, but the troublesome part of Lancey “still about [the] same.” Phil Kellogg, hyping the indisputable fact that the script was indeed better, urged Tracy to do the picture, as did Ransohoff and Peckinpah, and, at least momentarily, Tracy said that he would. He was, however, undecided again after they left and “appalled” at their pushing him.
“It is very hard to know,” Kate wrote. “Spence said that he got very tired going to Kramer studio. He puzzles me—he wants the associations but the WORK? Phyllis finished & Carroll & thought script better but part not—I told Spence I personally would not do it—too mediocre a part—could say as they have just said that McQueen would play7 it then he ST can withdraw—the other parts are really better than his & it’s just not good enough.”
In consultation with Lastfogel and Kellogg, it was decided to warn Ransohoff that Tracy would “probably not do” the picture but that he would still read further revisions of the script. Ransohoff responded by saying that he couldn’t wait any longer and would be forced to look for somebody else. Tracy said okay—the answer was no. Hepburn’s notation the next day was that Metro would not wait twelve hours for Tracy to read a new ending to the script, so the picture was off. “Spence very thrown by apparent slam to his position—the part was very poor & I feel it was correct to turn it down. It may affect Rector of Justyn [sic]. Peckinpah called to say how sorry he was & how nice two people we were. I hope we were right—I think he would have been miserable doing a bad part.”
At Kate’s suggestion, Walter Wanger signed playwright Sam