Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [533]
Elliot Morgan, a member of George Cukor’s circle of cronies and acolytes known as the “chief unit,” is quoted as saying, “We knew Spencer wrestled with homosexuality.” Morgan goes on to suggest that Tracy and Tim Durant were lovers. “We definitely thought there was something between them.” Durant was a lot of things, but to the people who knew him well he was anything but homosexual. “Jesus Christ!” erupted actor Norman Lloyd, who met Durant in 1942 and considered him a dear friend. “Tim was the envy of every man in Hollywood for all the women he had.” Durant’s second wife, the author Mary Durant, patterned the serial womanizer Hoyt Bentley after him in her novel Quartet in Farewell Time. Later, his stepdaughter, Eleanor Cooney, wrote of him in her moving account of her mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s, Death in Slow Motion. Describing him as a “charming prick,” Cooney doesn’t portray Durant as gay at all. Her mother, she says, “laid him bare like a frog on the dissection tray” when she painted him as “part rogue, part hungry poet, and part matinee idol” in her 1963 book.
There is no hint of homosexual activity in the Tracy papers nor in anything I have seen or learned elsewhere during the course of researching this book. There is evidence to the contrary, particularly in the Ruth Gordon–Garson Kanin papers at the Library of Congress, where Tracy repeatedly plumbs for word of Gene Tierney and June Dally-Watkins; and, of course, in his 1941 and 1942 datebooks, where he notes his times with Ingrid Bergman.
A thorough criticism of Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn will have to wait until an authorized biographer is granted access to Hepburn’s journals and the correspondence still retained by her estate. Nevertheless, the book inspired a backlash from Hepburn fans, relatives, and friends who often knew the players and the situations far better than the people assigned to review it. Postings on such sites as Amazon inspired a spirited debate, into which the book’s editor frequently—and defensively—waded. From New Jersey, political consultant Sherry Sauerwine circulated a compelling point-by-point rebuttal to the book that runs fifty-eight single-spaced pages.
“I’ve read a lot of bios through the years,” Sauerwine wrote by way of introduction, “and never encountered one wherein the writer was so determined to bend the reader (let alone the subject) to his will.”
APPENDIX I
Stage Chronology
R.U.R.
By Karel Čapek. English version by Paul Selver and Nigel Playfair. (Frazee Theatre, January 1, 1923.) Management: Theatre Guild. Cast: Henry Travers, Mary Bonestell, William Devereux, Percy Waram, Kathlene MacDonell, Myrtland LaVarre, Marlyn Brown, Charles Esdale, Whitford Kane, Beatrice Moreland, John Rutherford, Spencer Tracy (First Robot), Richard Coolidge, Bernard Savage, Mary Hone, Charles Ellis. Staged by Philip Moeller. Also toured.
THE WOOD PLAYERS
(Palace Theatre, White Plains, N.Y., April 16, 1923.) Manager: Leonard Wood, Jr. Company: Louise Treadwell, Ernest Woodward, Delores Graves, Frederick Hargrave, Helene Niles, Alma Powell, Charles S. Greene, Fairfax Burgher, Thomas Hudson, Helen Edwards, Spencer Tracy, Valentine Winter, Edward Crandall. Director: Kendal Weston.
THE WOOD PLAYERS
(Empire Theatre, Fall River, Mass., June 13, 1923.) Manager: Leonard Wood, Jr. Company: Louise Treadwell, Thomas Williams, Delores Graves, George Simpson, Millie Beland, Jack W. Cowell, William Williams, Helen Edwards, Spencer Tracy. Director: Raymond Capp.
THE WOOD PLAYERS
(Fulton