Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [571]
33 Men of Boys Town: A mechanical affair, the Boys Town sequel lacked the sincerity and emotional heart of the original. (Bobs Watson to director Norman Taurog: “Do you want halfway down tears or all the way down tears?”) Father Flanagan went through the same promotional motions as for Boys Town, coming to California for another “tribute” luncheon, this one broadcast live over NBC, but privately he thought the film fell “far below” the standard of the original. When the picture opened sluggishly, Louise wrote Spence from New York: “Got quite a few of the papers with the Boys Town notices. Considine should go out and stay drunk after those.”
34 “Which one”: This famous anecdote has been repeated dozens of times, usually portraying Maugham as having watched a scene of Tracy as Mr. Hyde. Its earliest telling, however, is in “Hollywood’s New Bogey Man” (Hollywood, July 1941), in which writer Tom De Vane places himself on the set of the dinner scene after four days of shooting. Tracy tells the story on himself, pinpointing it as having occurred the previous day. Garson Kanin later quotes him as telling it, considerably embellished, in Remembering Mr. Maugham, pp. 121–23.
35 “The Hyde part”: Chicago Tribune, 2/22/41.
36 “Ingrid … came to my office”: Mosley, Evergreen: Victor Saville in His Own Words, p. 146.
37 first dined together: Tracy’s relationship with Ingrid Bergman is documented in his 1941 datebook (SLT).
38 “I watched her relationship”: Laurence Leamer, As Time Goes By (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), p. 72.
39 “six sets of teeth”: Mosley, Evergreen: Victor Saville in His Own Words, p. 146.
40 “emotionally upset”: Silver Screen, August 1941.
41 “that of star”: Contract between Loew’s Incorporated and ST, 4/15/41, Turner Entertainment/SW.
42 “tests of clothes”: Sidney Franklin to Chester Franklin, 3/28/41, as quoted in Sidney Franklin’s unpublished memoir, We Laughed and We Cried, p. 365 (courtesy of Kevin Brownlow).
43 “I remember Victor Fleming”: Eugene Eckman to the author, via telephone, 7/28/04.
44 “what a pleasure”: Eddie Lawrence to Selden West.
45 “violently pro-Nazi”: Anne Revere to Selden West, circa 1978 (SW).
46 “hardest-working man”: New York World-Telegram, 5/17/41.
47 “on the set”: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings to Beatrice H. McNeill, 6/24/41, as quoted in Gordon E. Bigelow and Laura V. Monti, eds., The Selected Letters of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1983), pp. 204–05.
48 “How can I”: Louis D. Lighton to Elia Kazan, as quoted in Elia Kazan, Kazan: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1988), p. 311.
49 “we dissolved”: Joseph Ruttenberg, American Film Institute Oral History.
50 “master screen work”: Hollywood Reporter, 7/22/41.
51 “They laugh”: P.M., 8/13/41.
52 Abbott and Costello: New York Mirror, 8/13/41. “I remember Spencer talking about those bad reviews,” actress-playwright Katharine Houghton wrote in an e-mail. “They still rankled so many years later primarily because he hadn’t wanted to wear the makeup and did so against his better judgment. He was mad mostly at himself for caving in.”
53 “BIGGEST BUSINESS”: Nicholas Schenck to ST, 8/13/41 (SLT).
54 “It wasn’t the awards”: Mook, “Checking Up on Tracy.”
CHAPTER 17 WOMAN OF THE YEAR
1 “have trouble finding”: Mook, “Spencer Tracy’s Home Life.”
2 “I could see a change”: Charles R. Sligh, Jr., to Selden West.
3 “the name Feely”: Jane Feely Desmond to Selden West.
4 “two or three months”: Frank Tracy to Selden West.
5 Peggy Gough: The studio’s fan mail department took care of mail for stars and contract players who didn’t have secretaries of their own (or whose secretaries didn’t handle fan mail). Generally speaking, fan letters weren’t answered. Those requesting photos got a postcard listing the price of a picture (which, according to Peggy Gough, annoyed a good many people). Besides Tracy, the stars at M-G-M who had secretaries of their own to deal with fan mail were Robert Taylor, Robert Montgomery, Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald, Joan