Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [553]
36 “enacting scenes”: Spencer Tracy, “Making Faces at Life” (Part I), Milwaukee Journal, 4/29/40.
37 “we have told people”: “Flo” to Carrie Tracy, 1931 (SLT).
38 “scarcely tall enough”: Carroll E. Tracy (with Fred Dudley), “The Kid Brother,” manuscript, 1943 (AMPAS).
39 Sterling Motor Truck: John Tracy joined the Sternberg Motor Truck Company sometime in 1914. The name was changed to Sterling when, due to the war in Europe, it became difficult to sell trucks bearing a German name.
40 failed spectacularly: Spencer Tracy’s grades for Wauwatosa High School were reported to Northwestern Military and Naval Academy on a form provided by the Academy in October 1919 (SW).
41 “enjoyed school”: Tom Wright, “When Spencer Tracy was Seventeen,” Movies, August 1941.
42 “badness”: “Spencer Tracy,” summary biography, 1937 (SLT).
43 “I remember Rockhurst”: Kansas City Star, 2/29/48.
44 “I started”: Richard T. English, “I’m a Mug[g] and Proud of It,” Hollywood, September 1934.
45 “clearest recollections”: Pat O’Brien (as told to S. R. Mook), “My Pal, Spencer Tracy,” Screen Book, March 1939.
46 “iron men”: A dollar was sometimes referred to as an “iron man.”
47 “All of us Catholics”: Pat O’Brien, The Wind at My Back (New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 39.
48 “Spence and I”: Milwaukee Journal, 6/11/67.
49 “I was itching”: Spencer Tracy, “There Was a Guy…,” Screen & Radio Weekly, December 1937.
50 “Jackie” band: The term “Jackie” was widely used in the media during the Great War in lieu of the word “sailor.” It was presumably derived from the British “jack-tar.”
51 “The bands played”: O’Brien, The Wind at My Back, p. 41.
52 “I was out of the house”: Tracy, “The Kid Brother.”
53 “Landsman for Electrician”: Tracy’s official military personnel record was destroyed in a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in July 1973. Details of his military service are drawn from health and enlistment records at the National Archives.
54 “The training”: Wright, “When Spencer Tracy was Seventeen.”
55 “polite specimens”: Proctor, “Ex-Bad Boy.”
56 “got into the Navy”: Spencer Tracy, “Film War Too Real to Suit Private Tracy,” New York Daily Mirror, 5/8/37.
57 “turned that city over”: Wright, “When Spencer Tracy was Seventeen.” Bill Davidson’s 1988 Tracy biography Tragic Idol contains many obvious fabrications, including the memories of one Stanley Fischer, whom the author identifies as one of the men in Tracy’s unit at Norfolk. Yet a search of the U.S. Navy muster rolls at the National Archives by Rebecca Livingston of the Naval/Maritime Team established there was no one with that name stationed at either Great Lakes or Norfolk; both “Fisher” and “Fischer” were searched. (Courtesy of Tracey Johnstone.)
58 “He was a handful”: Jane Feely Desmond to the author. According to an item in the Aberdeen Daily News of August 8, 1917, “Spencer Tracy of Kansas City, Mo., has arrived in the city for a three weeks’ visit with his uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Feely. He will also spend some time in Ipswich with his uncle, Frank Tracy.”
59 Davidson Hall: My knowledge of Northwestern Military and Naval Academy comes from Michael J. G. Gray-Fow, Boys and Men (Lake Geneva, Wis.: Northwestern Military and Naval Academy, 1988). Conversations with Robert B. Edgers and various years of the school catalog were also helpful.
60 “college question”: H. H. Rogers, Spencer Bernard Tracy High School Credits, undated notes, circa 1920 (SW).
61 “Assuming that Spencer”: John D. Tracy to Colonel Davidson, 2/2/20 (SW).
62 “During the summer”: Lois and Kenneth Edgers, “The Spencer Tracy We Knew,” unpublished manuscript, circa, 1968 (courtesy of Robert B. Edgers).
63 “something with my hands”: Milwaukee Journal, undated clipping, 1936.
CHAPTER 3 A SISSY SORT OF THING
1 “I remember”: H. P. Boody, “Spencer Tracy at Ripon,” The Forensic, January 1936.
2 “most popular man”: Lola Schultz Castner to Selden West, via telephone, 3/17/92 (SW).
3 “enjoyed the trips”: Edgers, “The Spencer Tracy We Knew.”
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