Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [564]
59 “big ego”: Boston Globe, 7/7/74.
60 “Lang … would have”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, New York, 1985 (TH).
61 “He gained a lot”: Joseph Newman to the author.
62 “We were pretty serious”: Gable, “My Pal, Spencer Tracy.”
63 “Aces” Hatfield: Herman J. Mankiewicz’s partial screenplay, dated January 9, 1935, is in the Turner/M-G-M Scripts Collection (AMPAS). Anita Loos’ earliest draft of the screenplay, also incomplete, is dated April 23, 1935 (MGM).
64 “When Sylvia Sidney”: Tracy, “Making Faces at Life,” Part 4.
65 “Now figure Spence”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Selden West.
66 “I can’t stand this”: Joseph Ruttenberg, American Film Institute Oral History with Bill Gleason, 1972 (AFI).
67 “In shooting”: Joseph Ruttenberg, Southern Methodist University Oral History with Ronald L. Davis.
68 “The earthquake was flat”: Los Angeles Times, 6/3/77.
69 “hell on everybody”: Scott Eyman, “Joseph Ruttenberg,” Focus on Film, spring 1976.
70 “we worked like slaves”: New York Herald Tribune, 12/20/36.
71 “bad to much worse”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Heeley and Kramer (TH).
72 “solitary salted peanut”: The Fury screenplay, by Bartlett Cormack and Fritz Lang, including deleted scenes and the original ending, can be found in John Gassner and Dudley Nichols, eds., 20 Best Film Plays (New York: Crown, 1943), pp. 521–82.
73 “A man gives a speech”: Peter Bogdanovich, Fritz Lang in America (New York: Praeger, 1969), pp. 27–28.
74 “I agree”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Fritz Lang, 4/25/36 (AFI). It should be noted that almost everything Lang had to say with regard to the genesis and editing of Fury conflicts with the archival record. “I had found a four-page story by Norman Krasna—I wanted to do that” (The Real Tinsel, p. 342). The Production Code file notes that Mankiewicz verbally outlined the story to Iselin Auster and Geoffrey Sherlock on August 21, 1935, and furnished a written treatment the next day. In separate interviews both Krasna and Mankiewicz agreed that it was Mankiewicz, and not Lang, who remembered the story and committed it to paper when Krasna himself had forgotten it.
“Mr. Mankiewicz came late to the project. It was I who chose the subject and worked on the script … During the course of shooting he became the producer” (Focus on Film, spring 1975). Notes from the first story conference between Lang and Leonard Praskins are dated August 31, 1935. Notes first showing Mankiewicz’s participation are dated September 3, 1935. When a full script (titled The Mob) was sent to the PCA for review on January 24, 1936, the cover letter clearly identified Mankiewicz as the producer. Filming began on February 20, 1936.
75 “test under fire”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Heeley and Kramer.
76 “a first preview”: Geist, Pictures Will Talk, p. 80.
77 “all very well”: “Loew’s Inc.,” Fortune, August 1939.
78 “often been asked”: Bogdanovich, Fritz Lang in America, pp. 29–30.
79 “Peter Lorre”: Geist, Pictures Will Talk, p. 78. Lang also asserted that “because he drank like a fish” Tracy’s contract with Metro provided “that if he had so much as a glass of beer they could throw him out.” There was, of course, no such clause in Tracy’s M-G-M contract, dated April 8, 1936, other than standard language regarding public behavior (the so-called morals clause) and the artist’s inability to render services by reason of mental or physical incapacitation.
80 “I don’t think Spence”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Selden West.
81 “great document”: Spencer Tracy, 1936 datebook (SLT).
82 “Fritz Lang”: New York Herald Tribune, 12/20/36. Lang was born in Vienna, but made his early films in Germany.
CHAPTER 12 THE BEST YEAR
1 “The house”: S. R. Mook, “Spencer Tracy’s Home Life,” Screenland, March 1940.
2 “consummate exhibition”: Daily Variety, 5/19/36.
3 “It looked hopeless”: Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 5/28/36.
4 “most courageous”: New York World-Telegram, 6/6/36.
5 a “builder”: New York Enquirer, 6/14/36.
6 The picture ran up: Figures for Fury are