Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [572]
6 “very charitable”: Peggy Gough to Mrs. Frances Rasinen, 11/11/40 (courtesy of Patricia Mahon).
7 “ ‘doing anything else’ ”: Frank Tracy to Selden West. In the book Tragic Idol, author Bill Davidson quotes Carroll Tracy as supposedly saying that one of John Tracy’s “greatest hopes” was that one of his sons would become a priest. Both Jane Feely Desmond and Frank Tracy doubted the quote was genuine. “I can’t imagine Carroll emoting that much about anything. Really,” Frank told Selden West in 1991.
8 “impression of Spence”: David Caldwell to the author.
9 “clash in print”: Garson Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn (New York: Viking, 1972), p. 80.
10 “Gar … had decided”: Ring Lardner, Jr., I’d Hate Myself in the Morning (Emeryville, Calif.: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2000), p. 91.
11 “Garson … probably sent it”: Patrick McGilligan, ed., Backstory 3 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 203.
12 “They made a mistake”: Dallas Morning News, 10/6/41.
13 “a very good time”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to George Stevens, Jr., 11/3/82, George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey Collection, AMPAS.
14 “I was terrified”: Lupton A. Wilkinson and J. Bryan III, “The Hepburn Story” (Part 1), Saturday Evening Post, 11/29/41.
15 “We would have been lucky”: Jim Murray, “Kate, the Untamed Shrew,” draft Time cover story and interview transcripts, 1952, Time Magazine Morgue/SW. Although both Ring Lardner and Michael Kanin confirmed the $100,000 sale to Metro, the August 1, 1941 agreement transferring ownership of the property to Loew’s Incorporated specified a payment of $40,000 for the rights to the story. The $100,000 figure was to include all work on the screenplay as well as the story rights. Garson Kanin later described working on the script with his brother, Lardner, and Hepburn in a suite at the Garden of Allah. Kanin was in uniform, on a short leave. Food and drink, he recalled, were sent over from Chasen’s.
16 “George Cukor”: Katharine Hepburn to George Stevens, Jr., 11/3/82, George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey Collection (AMPAS).
17 “Kate called on me”: George Stevens to Charles Higham, circa 1974, Charles Higham Collection, USC.
18 “Gable was more likely”: Doug McGrath, “Ring Lardner, Jr./Maurice Rapf,” On Writing, August 1997.
19 “brilliant actor”: Katharine Hepburn to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, New York, 9/5/85 (TH).
20 “I don’t think Spencer”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
21 lesbian: Hepburn, Me, p. 400.
22 “masculine drive”: Murray, “Kate, the Untamed Shrew.”
23 “She stopped”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Heeley and Kramer, New York, 1985 (TH).
24 “Spencer was five-eleven”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer. Although Hepburn claimed to be taller, her 1927 passport, issued when she was twenty years of age, gave her height as five feet six inches, and her niece, Katharine Houghton, believes this to be correct.
25 “dumb enough”: Ibid.
26 “think of anything to say”: Katharine Hepburn in The Spencer Tracy Legacy, WNET/MGM/UA Entertainment, 1986.
27 “eyeing her”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Heeley and Kramer.
28 “I was awful”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
29 “There they were”: “The Hepburn Story,” Time, 9/1/52.
30 “too sweet”: New York Times, 2/21/43.
31 “crossing your legs”: Harry Evans, “Hollywood Diary,” Family Circle, 6/26/42.
32 “Acting to me”: Gregory J. M. Catsgs, “Sylvia Sidney,” Filmfax, November 1990.
33 “We never rehearsed”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
34 “Very interesting”: Hepburn, Me, p. 274.
35 “ears stuck out”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
36 “very unlikely thing”: McGrath, “Ring Lardner, Jr./Maurice Rapf.”
37 “wastes no time”: Los Angeles Times, 9/13/41.
38 “he was so steady”: A. Scott Berg, Kate Remembered, p. 194.
39 “new friendly feud”: New York Daily News, 9/13/41.
40 “I knew Spence”: George Stevens to Charles Higham.
41 “Mike Kanin”: Lardner, I’d Hate Myself in the Morning, p. 95.
42 “a complete account”: Tracy, The Story of John, p. 117.
43 discuss