Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [516]
“I remember we shot the scene several times,” said Marshall Schlom, “and as many times as he wanted to, he purposely mispronounced the name—for fun, of course. I think the flavor’s name had a ring to it that he loved, and he had a ball rolling the syllables around in his mouth … I remember sitting at dailies watching the scene several times, and I detected an ever-so-slight mispronunciation each time.” The version Kramer chose to use had Matt angrily pounding the steering wheel and substituting “Boozenberry” for “Boysenberry.” The next day, the two scenes with Hay were completed without incident.
On Wednesday, May 24, D’Urville Martin, as Frankie, the kid with the roadster, played his scene with Tracy, again on the process stage. “I rehearsed quite a bit with Stanley Kramer,” Martin recalled.
In his trailer, in his office…[Then] I rehearsed with Spencer Tracy. We rehearsed over and over and over. This little scene! And finally Kramer said to me, “You’re not going to do it like that, are you?” I said, “No, I’m waiting to do it for the cameras.” He said, “Okay, let’s roll the cameras.” Then he told me, “Look, for the first take, I want you to be really vicious, mean, cold, selfish.” And I was!
Tracy reacted to the way that I did it. His face turned red, and he came back so real, so angry and violent, that it scared me. I thought maybe he was going to have a heart attack … In between takes, Katharine would go over to him, straighten his tie, tuck in his shirt. She was always doing that kind of thing to him between takes—brushing his hair—and he was always saying, “Awwww, shucks!” You know, like a big kid in a Jackie Cooper movie. He’d say, “Leave me alone!” But he wouldn’t mean it.
One thing they did for me that I noticed they did for everybody on that set. [Martin had requested—and received—permission to observe on the set and was there every day.] No matter how big or how small, they treated everybody on that set as if they were the star. They made me feel that I was the greatest actor in the world. I mean, between takes they would compliment me and tell me how fantastic I was. The two of them … I noticed the patience that they had with all the other actors, like Cecil Kellaway. He only had a few lines in one scene, and they must have made about thirty takes just to get those few lines out right. They always encouraged him, and they were always patient, and they were always sort of festive, and they made him feel good. They made everybody feel as if they were the greatest thing since the wheel.
(SUSIE TRACY)
On Tracy’s final day on the picture, he was in at ten and finished at ten minutes to twelve.
“How much will it cost to have it repaired?” he asked the kid with the roadster.
“Well look at it!” Martin shouted. “Thirty or forty bucks it’ll cost! Did you see it? Stupid old man! You oughtn’t be allowed out! You ought to be put away someplace—in a home or something!”
“Here!” Tracy returned savagely, stuffing a crumpled bill into Martin’s hand. “There’s fifty bucks! Don’t bother to have the thing fixed—buy a new one!!”
When Stanley Kramer called, “Cut!” and then “Print!,” Ivan Volkman, Kramer’s production manager, stepped onto the set and addressed the crew. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “that was Mr. Tracy’s last shot.” The applause was instantaneous, vigorous. Tracy and Kramer met at the camera and embraced, the crew’s applause sweeping over them in waves. No one could have mistaken the weight of the moment. A career that had stretched nearly half a century—from the dusty wings of the long-demolished Palace Theatre in White Plains to the golden heyday of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, from Boys Town and San Francisco to Black Rock and Nuremberg—had drawn to a close. Tracy shook hands with Sam Leavitt, waved to Marshall Schlom, and slowly made his way to the stage door. At the doorway, he stopped, the applause still rumbling, waved, and then turned and exited.
When the door closed behind him and the clapping died down, Kramer said, “That’s the last time you’ll ever see Spencer Tracy on film.” And Kate,