Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [511]
George Glass, Kramer’s associate producer, began allowing selected journalists to visit what was otherwise considered a closed set. UPI’s Vernon Scott observed a scene being made and spent a moment with Tracy and Hepburn between shots. “He is the best actor I’ve ever seen or worked with,” Kate said in a familiar refrain. “I’m still learning things from Spence.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Tracy grumbled, clearly pained at such hyperbole.
“Oh, yes I do. He can focus on a line or an expression thoroughly. His mind seems absorbed totally by what he’s doing. I’ve never seen anything like it. I try, but it’s not the same.”
Rehearsing a scene for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Left to right: Sidney Poitier, Tracy, Katharine Houghton, Katharine Hepburn, and Stanley Kramer. (PATRICIA MAHON COLLECTION)
Columnist Dorothy Manners came the following week and had her moments with Tracy completely apart from Hepburn. “This is absolutely my last picture,” he said flatly. “I’ve had it and I feel my fans have had it. From now on I hope to spend my time catching up on the places I’ve wanted to go, the books I’ve wanted to read, the people I want to know better.” Manners wondered if the state of his health had something to do with his determination to retire. “No, I feel well. I’m just too old to go on. I don’t talk about my birthdays. I had one right on this picture, but no one came around with a cake. I would have thrown it right in his kisser.”
The most lengthy interview Tracy gave on the set of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was to journalist Roy Newquist, who was compiling material for what was to become a book on the making of the film. Tracy talked of his early days in the theater, Kate seated at his side, urging him on. (“Well, tell him how you got the job with George M. Cohan—that’s a good story.”) He sounded tired, displaying none of the vigor he showed on camera. “I miss M-G-M,” he said at one point, “but all the people I really knew there are gone. Scattered or dead. There’s hardly anyone I know there, now. I’m the last of the tribe.”
One figure from his M-G-M days, now in his mid-thirties, was sneaked onto the set one day by a friend of his, a studio plumber, “literally through the back door.” He found Tracy sitting alone.
“Uncle Spencer?” he said, walking up to him.
Tracy’s eyes shot up, regarding him warily.
“I’m Bobs Watson. I played Pee Wee in Boys Town.”
“Oh my God! Bobby!” Suddenly he was full of life. “Bobby, how are you? What are you doing?” Watson had been working as an actor, taking occasional roles on television.
“I’m going into the ministry,” he said.
Tracy froze a moment, a bit shocked, and then he said with a smile, “That’s just fine … That’s marvelous! I’m happy for you. I’m really proud of you.”
“And I wanted to tell you that though I know it was a role, the way you were as Father Flanagan—the warmth and loving and caring I felt—was a major influence on my decision to enter the ministry.”
When Bobs Watson recalled the encounter in 1991, he had been a Methodist minister for twenty-two years. “I could tell that he was very moved, that it made a profound impact on him.” Had he gone through channels, Watson would never have gotten on the set, as Hepburn routinely discouraged guests. “I was going to go visit him,” Jean Simmons said, “and I was told that it was better not to because he was not well. I should have insisted, and I regret that I didn’t.” A. C. Lyles, who was based nearby at Paramount, called and Kramer asked that