Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [563]
23 “had me scared”: Charles Darnton, “Down With Romance!” Screenland, February 1937.
24 “contrasting me to Jean”: Myrna Loy (with James Kotsilibas-Davis), Being and Becoming (New York: Knopf, 1987), p. 122.
25 “very much surprised”: Tracy, “My Complicated Life,” Part 1.
26 “I think every woman”: Lyn Tornabene, Long Live the King (New York: Putnam, 1976), p. 193.
27 “I called him for it”: Patrick McGilligan, Film Crazy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), p. 247.
28 “Judy Garland”: It is perhaps the existence of these innocent photographs that prompted Bill Davidson to include an assertion in his 1988 book Tragic Idol that Tracy dated Garland “who then was only fifteen.” The information supposedly came from James Cagney and, significantly, was published only after Cagney’s death. Joe Mankiewicz, who was seriously involved with Garland in the forties, characterized the story as “absolute bullshit,” as did Garland’s third husband, Sid Luft. Dependably, Christopher Andersen repeated the story, adding details. According to Andersen, the relationship began in January 1937, when Garland was only fourteen: “Jimmy Cagney warned his friend the inevitable gossip could ruin his career. [But] Tracy continued to see Garland privately, and after their romance ended, they remained close …” In Andersen’s account, Cagney’s warning is of the career-ruining potential of the “inevitable gossip” rather than the effect an arrest for statutory rape could have had on Tracy’s future. There is, of course, no evidence whatsoever that Tracy and Garland were involved at any time in their lives.
29 “Who said that?”: Undated clipping (NYPL).
30 “He shouldn’t have said that”: Dottie Wellman to Selden West, via telephone, 7/12/95 (SW).
31 “a lot of fistfights”: McGilligan, Film Crazy, p. 247.
32 “a little misunderstanding”: Los Angeles Examiner, 12/4/35.
33 “We’ve been friends”: Los Angeles Times, 12/4/35.
34 “The beaut”: Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 12/5/35.
35 “I told my idea”: Patrick McGilligan, ed., Backstory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 219.
36 “let you make this film”: Kenneth L. Geist, Pictures Will Talk (New York: Scribners, 1978), pp. 76–77.
37 “dictate it”: Gordon Gow, “Cocking a Snook,” Films and Filming, November 1970.
38 “they killed my dog”: Norman Krasna’s original story, as dictated from memory by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, is in the M-G-M collection at USC, along with story conference notes and draft screenplays by Leonard Praskins and Bartlett Cormack.
39 “talked to Fritz”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Selden West, Bedford, New York, 1/17/92 (SW).
40 “Sacco and Vanzetti”: Newquist, A Special Kind of Magic, p. 145.
41 “Tracy … is a lawyer”: Fritz Lang and Leonard Praskins, “Notes of Story Conference,” 8/31/35 (MGM).
42 “walking along the street”: Jeanette MacDonald, Oral History with Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Franklin, Columbia University, June 1959.
43 six words: Gottfried Reinhardt, Oral History with Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Franklin, Columbia University, 1959.
44 “soap opera”: Anita Loos, Kiss Hollywood Good-by (New York: Viking, 1974), p. 129.
45 “a little dubious”: Ardmore, “Tracy,” n.d.
46 “an unhappy man”: John McCabe to Katharine Hepburn, 3/14/86 (KHLA).
47 “I was seventeen”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 24.
48 “awful scared”: New York Sun, undated clipping (NYPL).
49 “I’m a Roman Catholic”: Sharpe, “The Adventurous Life of Spencer Tracy,” Part 3.
50 “didn’t think I ought”: “Spencer Tracy Learned a Lesson,” Picturegoer (UK), 12/11/37.
51 “Here we were”: Gable, “My Pal, Spencer Tracy.”
52 “less self-conscious”: Patrick McGilligan, Tender Comrades (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 702.
53 “Lambs Club”: Gable, “My Pal, Spencer Tracy.”
54 “Gable is a mess!”: Edward Baron Turk, Hollywood Diva (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 181.
55 “all the stories”: Joseph Newman to the author, via telephone, 11/25/03.
56 “I like Tracy”: Turk, Hollywood Diva, p. 181.
57 “first day’s work”: Sam Katz to Fritz Lang, 4/22/36 (AFI).
58 “peanut addict”: Gail Gardner