Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [498]
Tracy was put on a breathing machine, fed, medicated, and sustained intravenously. By late the following day, September 15, 1965, he was comatose and not expected to survive the night.
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1 Tracy had withdrawn from How the West Was Won when the shooting of the Ford sequence conflicted with location work on Judgment at Nuremberg. His continued involvement with the film was due principally to Bing Crosby having earmarked his cut of the picture—reportedly 10 percent of the world gross—for the building of a new wing at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. (Crosby’s company had produced the record album on which the film was based.) Irene Dunne, who headed the hospital’s auxiliary committee, was instrumental in assembling the all-star cast.
2 This impression was likely created because Tracy was officially “on hold” whenever a stunt double was working as Captain Culpepper. Tracy had two doubles for Mad World—one for driving, the other for strenuous activities like running and climbing. “We had rubber masks molded on plaster casts of actors’ faces for the stunt men to wear,” said Carey Loftin, who was Kramer’s stunt coordinator on the show. “When John Hudkins, who doubled for Spencer Tracy, walked in wearing his mask, Tracy said, ‘My God! Who’s that?’ ”
3 This was probably the day of Monroe’s funeral, August 8, as production records show that Tracy didn’t work August 5, the day of Monroe’s death, which was, incidentally, a Sunday.
4 The films, as it turned out, did not overlap, but Tracy, who disliked the idea of playing the man who ordered Christ’s crucifixion, passed on Greatest Story anyway. (“Do you think George Stevens is really that good a friend of mine?” he mused to Kate.) At a party in early November, Stevens reportedly asked Bill Demarest, “Are you friendly with Spencer Tracy?” And when Demarest said, “Sure, I love the guy,” Stevens moved on without a word. Hedda Hopper caught wind of the story and, ever ready to stir up trouble, called Stevens’ office to ask if Tracy would perhaps be starring in Stevens’ next picture, only to be told rather curtly that Stevens didn’t expect to be finished with Greatest Story “for at least six months” and that he hadn’t even thought of another.
5 At the time Lean thought Guinness wrong for the part because he lacked the “size” they needed.
6 Earl Wilson printed a similar item a couple of days later.
7 Steve McQueen’s contract gave him the option of withdrawing from the film were Tracy unable—or unwilling—to do it.
CHAPTER 33
A Lion in a Cage
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We needed prayers,” Louise wrote, “and although I am sure a magnificent team of doctors helped, I believe it was the prayers of many people that brought him through. He was just all but gone Wednesday night when suddenly there was a little, just a little, turn upward.”
There had been a question as to whether they were going to do peritoneal dialysis—an early form of the procedure done through the abdominal cavity—but the improvement, which Dr. Covel characterized as “a kind of miracle,” prompted them to hold off. Tracy was responsive on the seventeenth—“out of danger,” as the papers reported—and continued to improve steadily until they stopped the intravenous fluids and took him off the respirator on the morning of the twentieth. Visiting times were carefully—and strictly—coordinated to allow for Louise’s comings and goings. “When Louise would come,” said Dr. Covel, “Kate would disappear. Kate was there most of the time, as I recall.” One day, as Louise was visiting, the phone rang and she reflexively picked it up. “Kate?” said Garson Kanin, calling from New York.
“He hated to be sick,” Louise said. “While he wanted us to come and see him, we’d get there and he’d say, ‘Well, you might as well go home