Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [584]
79 “long and happy”: Los Angeles Examiner, 8/10/53.
80 “co-starring days”: Los Angeles Times, 8/13/53.
81 “one word of French”: Garson Kanin, “I Remember Spence and Kate,” Center for Cassette Studies, West Hollywood.
82 “Old Florentine”: ST to Louise Tracy, n.d. (SLT).
83 “shocking routine”: Garson Kanin to George Cukor, 9/17/53 (AMPAS). Where Kanin’s account of Tracy’s visit to Cap Ferrat differs in his book Tracy and Hepburn, I have chosen to regard this letter, written within days of the actual events, as likely the more accurate of the two.
CHAPTER 27 A GRANITE-LIKE WEDGE OF A MAN
1 “That film”: Lawrence Weingarten, AFI seminar.
2 “I have a hunch”: Los Angeles Times, 5/9/52.
3 “For the vitality”: New York Times, 10/25/53.
4 a loss: The Mannix ledger shows a cost of $1,424,000 for The Actress, and domestic billings of just $594,000. It was the first Tracy picture since Whipsaw to post total billings of under $1 million.
5 “Failure … is a more common”: Schary, Heyday, p. 258.
6 “adhered too closely”: Darryl F. Zanuck to Sol Siegel and Richard Murphy, 8/21/53 (USC).
7 “STARTED NEW YEAR”: ST to Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, 1/11/54, Gordon-Kanin Papers/SW.
8 “not going”: Emily Torchia to Selden West.
9 “newest admirer”: Lowell Sun, 2/5/54.
10 “beginning of the end”: Eyman, “Clarence Brown: Garbo and Beyond.”
11 “disgusted, upset”: Tornabene, Long Live the King, p. 345.
12 “He saw me”: Robert Wagner to the author, Brentwood, 8/29/05.
13 “He’d agonize”: “Edward Dmytryk,” Films in Review, December 1985.
14 “Spence did everything”: Edward Dmytryk, It’s a Hell of a Life But Not a Bad Living (New York: Times Books, 1978), p. 182.
15 “pissed off”: Hugh O’Brien to the author, via telephone, 5/1/05.
16 “down-to-earth”: Ronald Neame (with Barbara Roisman Cooper), Straight from the Horse’s Mouth (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2003), p. 145.
17 “diffident at working”: Dmytryk, It’s a Hell of a Life, p. 185.
18 “I told Tracy”: “Richard Widmark Part II,” Films in Review, May 1986.
19 “one thing pleased me”: Hollywood Citizen-News, 4/14/52.
20 Tracy’s guests: Tracy made careful note of his drug and alcohol intake in his 1955 datebook.
21 “she and Tracy”: Sandy Sturges to the author, via telephone, 3/30/04.
22 “our first evening”: Dmytryk, It’s a Hell of a Life, p. 201. In his book Dmytryk has this taking place in August 1955, when he and Tracy were on their way to France to make The Mountain. But Tracy’s datebooks show that he flew directly to Paris for the start of that film and that Hepburn was still touring Australia at the time. Dmytryk dined with Tracy and Hepburn on May 11, 1954.
23 “Years ago”: Los Angeles Times, 1/31/54.
24 “go to London”: Jane Feely Desmond to the author, via telephone, 3/29/04.
25 “granite-like wedge”: Bad Day at Parma, incomplete screenplay by Millard Kaufman, 8/26/53 (MGM).
26 “Daddy loves”: Jill Schary Zimmer, With a Cast of Thousands (New York: Stein and Day, 1963), p. 50.
27 “liked the idea”: Millard Kaufman to the author.
28 “We simplified it”: Dore Schary, Oral History with Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Franklin, Columbia University, November 1958.
29 “his opinion”: Ibid.
30 “people at Metro”: John Sturges commentary track, Bad Day at Black Rock, laserdisc edition, Criterion Collection, 1991.
31 “an idea”: Joseph J. Cohn Oral History with Rudy Behlmer, August–November 1987 (AMPAS).
32 “new boy”: Schary, Heyday, p. 279. Schary describes this exchange as taking place the Friday before the start of shooting, which would have been July 16, 1954. However, Tracy’s datebook shows their last meeting as having occurred a week earlier, on July 9, 1954.
33 “I anticipated”: John Sturges to Heeley and Kramer.
34 “hardly had it altered”: Millard Kaufman to the author.
35 “ ‘I figure’ ”: John Sturges to Heeley and Kramer.
36 “My first scene”: Ernest Borgnine to Scott Eyman, via telephone, 3/4/08 (courtesy of Scott Eyman).
37 “form of torture”: Anne Francis, interviewed in Spencer Tracy: Triumph and Turmoil, Peter