Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [520]
The next thing Susie knew, they were driving to the mortuary with Ross Evans at the wheel. Louise and she waited in the car while Carroll and Evans picked out a mahogany casket, the cost of which, along with the undertaking, would run nearly $3,000. “Well,” said Louise, who was dreading an out-of-state speaking tour, “I guess I don’t have to go on that trip now.”
At Forest Lawn, the iconic cemetery where Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Jean Harlow, and Irving Thalberg were interred, Louise was drawn to a private garden outside the Freedom Mausoleum, near where the ashes of Walt Disney had been placed the previous year. Gently, Ross Evans steered her away, knowing the neighborhood to be a little too pricey for the means of the Tracy estate. Around the corner they found another spot, walled in brick and gated, shown on the plot map as the Little Garden of Divine Guidance, roughly half the cost of the other location—$19,262 with bench and endowment.
The news media had the story by six that morning, and reporters began working the phones. “Some idiot called me at seven o’clock in the morning,” Jean Simmons remembered, “and said, ‘What is your reaction on Spencer Tracy’s death?’ And I just hung up. I thought: ‘How awful can people be?’ ” Lauren Bacall was on a flight to Boston when her husband, actor Jason Robards, overheard the news from a passenger in a nearby seat. She had been one of the people he and Kate had called the week they finished the picture. Karen and Stanley Kramer were in Las Vegas when Stanley heard the news from his son, Larry. Eddie Dmytryk had spoken to Tracy just the previous week. “I’m not feeling up to par,” Tracy had confided.
The news was all over the radio by midmorning, and calls began to come into the house on Tower Road, where the housekeeper fended off strangers and deflected nosy inquiries from the press. Strickling had fed his contacts the story that Tracy had been alone at the time of his death, that he had, in fact, died in his sleep. His body was discovered at six in the morning by Ida Gheczy, who first summoned Dr. Covel, then Carroll Tracy, the actor’s brother. Arriving shortly thereafter was Mrs. Tracy, who lived nearby, accompanied by their son and daughter. Katharine Hepburn, Mr. Tracy’s longtime friend and costar, appeared with director George Cukor, who for years had rented the hillside house to the two-time Academy Award winner.
Stanley Kramer told the Los Angeles Times that he “worshiped” Mr. Tracy. “I’m glad for his sake that he could make the picture. It was better than sitting at home. That wasn’t his way.” The New York Times described him as “one of the last screen titans of a generation, a star whose name alone spelled money at the box office.” Bob Thomas, in his AP dispatch, wrote: “The death of Tracy erases from the Hollywood scene a performer whom most other actors considered the best in American film history.” James Powers, in the Hollywood Reporter, characterized him as “a man of pure metal in a tinsel community.” The Freeport Journal Standard remembered that, as a boy, Tracy had spent his summers in Freeport and that both his parents were buried there.
In Evergreen Park, outside of Chicago, where he was appearing with his wife in Holiday for Lovers, Pat O’Brien told the Milwaukee Journal he was “in a state of shock all day” after getting the news. “We were friends for 50 years,” he reminisced. “We were at Marquette High together, we enlisted in the Navy together in World War I, and we were roommates in New York when we were attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. The only time we weren’t together was college. Spence went to Ripon and got interested in dramatics there. He played a little baseball. I went to Marquette and was Red Dunn’s substitute on the football team.”
Obituaries appeared worldwide.