Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [580]
28 “Can you see it”: Garson Kanin, “Adam’s Rib: The Genesis,” Memories, October– November 1989.
29 “first time in thirty years”: Higham, Kate, p. 135. Technically, this could be correct, in that Woman of the Year was still unfinished when the studio bought it in July 1941.
30 “The Kanins would do”: George Stevens, Jr., Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age (New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 284.
31 “Some of the things Kate”: Crowther, notes, Tracy interview.
32 “whole tradition”: Kenneth Tynan, “Katharine Hepburn,” Everybody’s Magazine, 6/28/52.
33 “It was human”: Lambert, On Cukor, p. 201.
34 “the film represents”: Katharine Houghton in an e-mail to the author, 10/14/08.
35 “Spence and I”: Tynan, “Katharine Hepburn.”
36 “In the course of the shooting”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, pp. 157–58.
37 “She was wonderful”: Charles Higham, Celebrity Circus (New York: Delacorte, 1979), p. 47.
38 “Damn it, George”: David Wayne to Selden West, 9/21/93 (SW).
39 “in a kind of wonderment”: Fisher, Spencer Tracy: A Bio-Bibliography, p. 47.
40 “ ‘Yes, George’ ”: Marvin Kaplan to the author, via telephone, 11/19/06.
41 “a lot of stuff”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
42 “drained of its most”: New York Times, 6/3/49.
43 “hopeless miscasting”: New Yorker, 6/11/49.
44 “I did it myself”: Robert Morley and Sewell Stokes, A Reluctant Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), p. 207.
45 “nearly 40 films”: Daily Express, 5/28/48.
CHAPTER 24 FATHER OF THE BRIDE
1 “acting in Hollywood”: William Self to the author.
2 “so dense”: Katharine Hepburn to Selden West.
3 “round the three up”: Charles R. Sligh, Jr., to Selden West.
4 “couldn’t have left me”: Myrna Blyth, “Kate Talks Straight,” Ladies’ Home Journal, October 1991.
5 “the works”: Tracy’s stay at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital is documented in his 1949 pocket datebook (SLT).
6 “I remember him standing”: Katharine Houghton to the author.
7 “tortured soul”: Seymour Gray to Selden West, 2/14/92.
8 “mediocre successes”: Lawrence Weingarten, AFI seminar.
9 “Mrs. Feely”: Jane Feely Desmond to Selden West.
10 “such a big deal”: Jane Feely Desmond to the author, via telephone, 3/29/04.
11 “Spence came in”: Frank Tracy to Selden West (SW).
12 “blood-red bleeding heart”: Dr. Alathena Smith to Jane Ardmore.
13 “we sat near her”: Lenore Coffee, Storyline (London: Cassell, 1973), p. 118.
14 “live in small places”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 13.
15 comedian Jack Benny: Pandro S. Berman, undated interview, Vincente Minnelli autobiography files (AMPAS).
16 “there would be reservations”: Schary, Heyday, pp. 217–18.
17 “my brainchild”: Edward Streeter to Frances Goodrich Hackett, 1/24/49 (ES).
18 “the one I wanted”: Edward Streeter to Frances Goodrich Hackett, 7/18/49 (ES).
19 “little classic of comedy”: Vincente Minnelli (with Hector Arce), I Remember It Well (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974), p. 218.
20 “We talked”: Don Taylor to Selden West, via telephone, 2/7/96 (SW).
21 “not quite as jovial”: Joan Bennett to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, New York, 11/20/85 (TH).
22 “Even at eighteen”: Elizabeth Taylor to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, Los Angeles, 12/17/85 (TH).
23 “going to drive”: William Self to the author.
24 “limousine”: According to Edward Dmytryk, Tracy once asked Hepburn why she continued to work for M-G-M, a studio that was “far too patronizing” for her tastes. “It’s worth it when you go through Chicago,” she said.
25 assembled and previewed: Details of the initial preview for Father of the Bride are from the film’s script file at USC.
26 “I know you will realize”: Frances Goodrich Hackett to Edward Streeter, n.d. (ES).
27 “greatest set of legs”: Norman Lloyd to the author.
28 “I was O.K.”: Hepburn, Me, p. 267.
29 the film surpassed: Figures for Father of the Bride are from the Mannix ledger.
30 “No one”: Edward Streeter to ST, 5/4/50 (SLT).
31 “utterly impossible”: ST to Edward Streeter, 5/16/50 (ES).
32 “equally wonderful”: New York Times, 5/19/50.
33 “Tracy didn’t want”: Berman, undated interview, Minnelli