Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [561]
51 “still married to Louise”: Ramsey, “Life Story of a Real Guy,” Part 2.
52 “Pete Are Silverton”: The full text of the extortion letter is contained in FBI file 7-749.
53 “I felt ashamed”: Tracy, “My Complicated Life,” Part 1.
54 $2,500 option: Details of the deal between Mrs. Carolyn Rothstein Behar and Fox Film Corporation are from the Fox Legal Department file on Now I’ll Tell (FOX).
55 “Tracy does the impossible”: Hollywood Reporter, 2/22/34. The Trouble Shooter (retitled Looking for Trouble) was released the same day as The Show-Off.
56 “capital performance”: New York Times, 3/17/34.
57 “His appeal”: Evening Standard, 6/4/34.
58 bargain price: Figures for The Show-Off are from Variety, 3/20 and 3/27/34; and the Edgar J. “Eddie” Mannix ledger at the Margaret Herrick Library (AMPAS).
59 “deposited in the room”: William Bakewell, Hollywood Be Thy Name (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1991), p. 60. Wayne later told a business associate that Tracy, drunk and belligerent, had sucker punched him, and that he had reflexively—and unapologetically—knocked him out.
60 “Spence was a darling”: Judy Lewis, Uncommon Knowledge (New York: Pocket Books, 1994), p. 17.
61 “Hollywood’s too easy”: New York American, 4/22/34.
62 filled the Roxy: Box office figures for Now I’ll Tell are from Variety, 5/29, 6/5, and 6/12/34. According to data in the research library of Karl Thiede, domestic rentals just about equaled the film’s negative cost of $308,200. Foreign rentals amounted to $167,900, roughly 30 percent of the worldwide total of $472,300. It was carried on the books at a loss of $45,290.
63 “I am sure the pressure”: Anderson, Forever Young, p, 75.
CHAPTER 10 AND DOES LOVE LAST?
1 “ ‘aren’t going to do that’ ”: Ardmore, “Tracy,” n.d.
2 “Never have I seen women”: Tracy, The Story of John, p. 151.
3 “No one asked any questions”: Mook, “The Truth About the Tracy Separation.”
4 “In most ways”: Louise Treadwell Tracy, The Broader Outlook, unpublished playscript, circa 1934 (SLT).
5 “Tracy at the time was in bed”: George Wasson to Jack J. Gain, 7/2/34 (FOX).
6 “Speaking of TRACY”: Los Angeles Examiner, 7/5/34.
7 “mention of Loretta’s name”: Jack Grant, “Why Loretta Young Broke Up Her Romance,” Movie Mirror, October 1934.
8 “not an experienced actor”: Ted Perry and David Shepard, Henry King, Director: from silents to ’scope (Los Angeles: Directors Guild of America, 1995), p. 89.
9 “Here is where”: Ted Perry, Henry King Oral History, unedited manuscript, Directors Guild of America.
10 “middle of the flight”: Robert Nott, “The Kinks of Comedy,” Filmfax, December– January 1994.
11 “I recommended”: Neil McCarthy to Alfred Wright, 4/5/39 (FOX).
12 “most severe penalty”: Variety, 9/11/34.
13 “mounted the horse”: Tracy, “My Complicated Life,” Part 1.
14 “Immersed as we were”: Cromwell, Dear Spence, p. 38.
15 “The studio gumshoed”: Lasky, I Blow My Own Horn, p. 247.
16 “Forget what’s happened”: Mook, “Tracy Fights Through.”
17 “While discussing the contract”: Jack J. Gain to Sidney R. Kent, 11/1/34 (FOX).
18 “Spence’s naiveté”: Mook, “Checking Up on Tracy.”
19 “The drama aims”: Outline, Inferno, by Philip Klein and Rose Franken, 6/22/34 (USC).
20 “He clouts the engineer”: Eric Knight to Paul Rotha, 10/27/34, Paul Rotha Papers, Department of Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
21 “prove to the unsuspecting public”: Louise Treadwell Tracy, “The Women Take to Polo,” Polo, June 1935.
22 “Our shots”: Abilene Morning News, 11/23/34.
23 “Spencer Tracy reconciliation”: Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 12/8/34.
24 “They gave him a lot of time”: Claire Trevor to Selden West.
25 “I ran amuck”: Gladys Hall, “Why My Wife and I Are Together Again,” Movie Mirror, May 1935. Bill Davidson, in his 1988 biography of Tracy, quotes a late publicity man, one Jim Denton, as saying the actor showed up drunk one morning on the set of Dante’s Inferno and chased director Harry Lachman around the stage. Winfield Sheehan, when summoned, supposedly