Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [565]
7 The Plough and the Stars: Director John Ford later blamed Irving Thalberg’s death for the cancellation of Tracy’s loan-out to RKO, but Thalberg was still alive when the reversal was made public in July 1936. There is some reason to believe that Ford held Tracy personally responsible for welshing on the commitment, which would have teamed him with actress Barbara Stanwyck and a predominantly Irish cast that included Una O’Connor, Erin O’Brien Moore, Bonita Granville, Mary Gordon, and five members of the Abbey Players (imported from Dublin). Once again, actor Preston Foster was substituted for Tracy, and the resulting film was not only less than Ford had hoped, but subsequently butchered by the studio. It would be more than twenty years before Ford and Tracy would again work together on a picture.
8 “What the movies need”: Los Angeles Evening Herald-Express, 2/18/36.
9 “a truthful man”: Charles Bickford, Bulls, Balls, Bicycles & Actors (New York: Paul S. Erikson, 1965), p. 227.
10 “peered frantically”: Hollywood Citizen News, 6/25/36.
11 “most difficult role”: Variety, 7/1/36.
12 “another brilliant portrayal”: New York Times, 6/27/36.
13 “A year ago”: Ed Sullivan, “The Best Bet of the Year,” Silver Screen, September 1936.
14 “HAD WONDERFUL TRIP”: ST to Sol Wurtzel, 6/26/36 (AMPAS).
15 “You’ll never know”: Ed Sullivan, “A Prediction that Came Doubly True,” Silver Screen, April 1940.
16 “Walking on the set”: Hollywood Citizen News, 7/2/36.
17 “He moped”: Loy, Being and Becoming, p. 141.
18 “cashier’s office”: Darnton, “Down With Romance!”
19 “do his best”: Sheilah Graham, Confessions of a Hollywood Columnist (New York: Morrow, 1969), p. 37.
20 “ ‘beginning to gain weight’ ”: Kitty Callahan, “Spencer Tracy,” Family Circle, 6/5/42.
21 “an unrevealed script”: New York Times, 7/3/36.
22 “Fought against it”: Gladys Hall, “You Can’t Put Spencer Tracy into Words,” Motion Picture, November 1937.
23 “his first part”: Ida Zeitlin, “Manuel the Lovable,” Modern Screen, October 1937.
24 “every picture in town”: Hall, “You Can’t Put Spencer Tracy into Words.”
25 “So what?”: Harold Keene, “How Spencer Tracy’s Love Survived Its Greatest Test,” Movie Mirror, October 1937.
26 “Susie … was only four”: Tracy, The Story of John, p. 176.
27 my hair curled: Newquist, A Special Kind of Magic, p. 149.
28 “fall on your ass”: Bosley Crowther, notes, Eddie Mannix interview, May 1953, Bosley Crowther Collection, Brigham Young University.
29 the funeral: Michael Sragow, in his biography of Victor Fleming, incorrectly reports that Tracy fell off the wagon as a result of Thalberg’s death. By evidence of his own datebooks, Tracy was completely dry before and during the filming of Captains Courageous.
Bill Davidson, in Tragic Idol, asserts more generally that Tracy went on a bender during the picture, in part to put across a lurid scene at the opening of his book. Davidson quotes M-G-M publicist (and later producer) Walter Seltzer, who worked briefly under publicity chief Howard Strickling. According to Seltzer’s quote (as reported by Davidson), Tracy turned his rage on the furnishings in his sixth-floor suite at the Beverly Wilshire, heaving chairs against the walls and bringing his fists down on the surface of a small writing desk with such force that it was smashed in two. Lamps were shattered, mirrors broken, bottles flung at doors and windows. Management allegedly called Carroll, who was admitted to the locked room, then called Strickling’s office at M-G-M when the commotion went unabated. When the door to the suite was unlocked with a passkey, studio security personnel accompanying Strickling and “half of the publicity department” supposedly witnessed the sight of Tracy wrestling his brother toward an open window with the obvious intent of adding him to the topography of Wilshire Boulevard.
When queried about the quote Davidson attributes to him, Seltzer responded: “That is inaccurate. I wasn’t there and never witnessed such a thing. It might possibly have happened,