Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [556]
52 “One evening”: Tracy, The Story of John, p. 42.
53 “to avoid thunder”: Lima Sunday News, 5/15/27.
54 “How many bankers”: Lima News, 4/12/27.
55 “Miss Louise Treadwell”: Lima News, 4/25/27.
56 “threw me a line”: Ardmore, “Tracy,” n.d.
57 “Things are running along”: ST to Chamberlain Brown, 5/14/27 (NYPL).
58 “specially written part”: New York Times, 10/9/27.
59 “It is the lead”: Chamberlain Brown to ST, 6/7/27 (NYPL).
60 “the big chance”: ST to Chamberlain Brown, 6/10/27 (NYPL).
CHAPTER 5 DREAD
1 “I sent your wire”: Chamberlain Brown to ST, 6/7/27 (NYPL).
2 “this clipping”: ST to Chamberlain Brown, 7/1/27 (NYPL).
3 “terrible mess”: ST to Chamberlain Brown, 9/19/27 (NYPL).
4 “cocked my head”: ST to Pete Martin.
5 “Listening”: “Cohan Was Original Good Listener,” undated clipping (SLT).
6 “her latest letter”: Tracy, The Story of John, p. 51 (SLT).
7 “ ‘feel’ his lines”: Spencer Tracy, “That Grand Guy Cohan,” Modern Screen, December 1932.
8 “look like a bum”: William F. French, “The Greatest Friendship in Hollywood,” Modern Movies, February 1938.
9 Radio: Tracy also mentioned working in radio in a letter to a Miss Cochrane dated December 19, 1927. The only radio program sponsored by the Standard Oil Company of New York (SOCONY) during the run of The Baby Cyclone featured the close-harmony team of Gus Van and Joe Schenck, two seasoned vaudevillians who delivered “rapid-fire comedy and high-altitude records in the vocal scale” over WEAF and six stations of the National Broadcasting Company. Whether Tracy was indeed the show’s folksy announcer, known simply as “Sam the Touring Man,” is seemingly lost to memory, for the man behind the voice was never publicly identified.
10 “Florida!”: Ardmore, “Tracy,” n.d.
11 “a long time”: Jane Feely Desmond to Selden West.
12 “up at your apartment”: John E. Tracy to ST, 3/1/28 (SLT).
13 “He adored this son”: Lorraine Foat Holmes to Selden West.
14 “Spence, at that time”: Charles R. Sligh, Jr., to Selden West, Delray Beach, Florida,11/23/91 (SW).
15 “a very separate part”: Jane Feely Desmond to Selden West.
16 “I am desperate”: John E. Tracy to ST and Carroll Tracy, 4/21/28 (SLT).
17 “He got sick”: Garson Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn (New York: Viking Press, 1971), p. 146.
18 “Dry times or wet”: O’Brien, The Wind at My Back, p. 122.
19 “Mother dear”: ST to Carrie Tracy, n.d. (SLT).
20 “An unemployed actor”: O’Brien, The Wind at My Back, p. 76.
21 “I didn’t like my part”: Clark Gable (as told to James Reid), “My Pal, Spencer Tracy,” Screen Life, July 1940.
22 “The final impression”: New York Times, 3/7/29.
23 “So there we all were”: Jean Dalrymple Oral History, Columbia University, 1979.
24 “Next season”: ST to Chamberlain Brown, n.d. (NYPL).
25 “we had played together”: Royle, unpublished autobiography, p. 53.
26 “nothing stagy”: Providence Journal, 6/25/29.
27 “Upstairs and down”: Tracy, The Story of John, p. 59.
28 “The women”: Newquist, A Special Kind of Magic, p. 145.
29 “You’ll—never—have”: The unpublished text of Dread is in the Copyright Office’s Drama Deposits collection at the Library of Congress.
30 “spit fire”: Washington Post, 10/21/29.
31 “going to Brooklyn”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 41.
32 “parlance of the stage”: Brooklyn Standard Union, 10/30/29.
33 “most enthusiastic”: New York Herald Tribune, 5/26/40. Tracy told Broadway columnist Ed Sullivan the same thing.
34 “laugh about Dread”: Tracy, The Story of John, p. 42.
35 “I don’t remember”: Jane Ardmore, “Mrs. Spencer Tracy’s Own Story,” Ladies’ Home Journal, December 1972.
36 “Louise flamed”: Mook, “Checking Up on Tracy.”
37 “a pretty disconsolate guy”: O’Brien, The Wind at My Back, p. 120.
CHAPTER 6 THE LAST MILE
1 “how it will feel”: Robert Blake, “The Law Takes Its Toll,” American Mercury, July 1929.
2 “Blake’s sketch”: Wexley originally cut Blake’s mother in for 5 percent of the author’s royalties. Once the play hit big on Broadway, friends in Texas sent Mrs. Ella Blake to New York, where she demanded a bigger share. Eric Pinkler, Wexley’s agent, arranged to raise her