Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [587]
14 “You don’t know”: Joel Greenberg, “The Other Lang,” Focus on Film, summer 1974.
15 “reading a magazine”: Dina Merrill commentary track, Desk Set, DVD edition, 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment, 2004.
16 “Shut your mouth”: Greenberg, “The Other Lang.”
17 “gave it to her”: Dina Merrill to Scott Eyman.
18 “mischievous kid”: Ephron, We Thought We Could Do Anything, p. 191.
19 “didn’t even go”: Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph, 2/27/57.
20 obvious jab: Ingrid Bergman did indeed win the Best Actress Oscar for Anastasia.
21 “felt he was too old”: Greenberg, “The Other Lang.”
22 “schoolgirl crush”: Henry Ephron to Charles Higham, circa 1975 (USC).
23 “They got mixed up”: Paul Mayersberg, Hollywood, the Haunted House (London: Penguin, 1967), p. 93.
24 “powerful generators”: James Wong Howe, “Necessary to Hide Evidences of ‘Fixed Light’ in Film on Sea,” Film and A-V World, August 1960.
25 “my life’s work”: Dallas Morning News, 7/29/57.
26 “make money”: Ernest Hemingway to Leland Hayward, 7/5/57 (EH).
27 “very appealing”: Leland Hayward to Ernest Hemingway, 8/9/57 (NYPL).
28 “Maybe Zinnemann”: New York Post, 8/12/57.
29 “Tracy’s performance”: Leland Hayward to Ernest Hemingway, 8/9/57 (NYPL).
30 “repulsed her”: Fresno Bee, 8/29/57. See also Los Angeles Times, 8/29/57.
31 “She spoke of him”: John Houseman, Final Dress (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 81.
32 “sensed an affinity”: Laurence Olivier to Katharine Hepburn, 7/10/67 (KHLA).
33 “a party to celebrate”: London Sunday Express, 5/21/61.
34 “first citizen”: Philip Dunne, n.d., Philip Dunne Collection, University of Southern California.
35 “out of the black”: Katharine Hepburn to Ella Winter, 11/13/57, Ella Winter Collection, Columbia University.
36 “There were giants”: Los Angeles Examiner, 11/1/57.
37 “BRILLIANT DIRECTOR”: ST to Leland Hayward, 6/28/54 (NYPL).
38 “theory about acting”: Shearer, “Spencer Tracy.”
39 “The wake is as obsolete”: Los Angeles Examiner, 5/4/58.
40 “strong habits”: Katharine Hepburn to Dan Ford, n.d., John Ford Collection.
41 voice of the Old Man: John Sturges didn’t want Tracy to attempt an accent. “We used Hemingway’s trick, which is to drop in a Spanish word once in a while, but when a Spanish person or Cuban speaks to another Cuban, they don’t have an accent. And that was Hemingway’s approach to doing that.” John Sturges to Heeley and Kramer.
42 “Worth all the agony”: Louise Tracy to Mary Kennedy Taylor, 1/12/58, Taylor Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
43 “emotional quality”: Leland Hayward as reported to Jack L. Warner by Steve Trilling, 3/10/58, Jack Warner Collection, University of Southern California.
44 “went to the preview”: Lauren Bacall to the author.
45 “twenty-eight years”: New York Times, 3/16/58.
CHAPTER 30 OUR GREATEST ACTOR
1 “Irish revolutionary”: John Sturges to Heeley and Kramer.
2 Gersten reported: Houseman, Final Dress, p. 123.
3 “meek and motherly”: Graham, Confessions of a Hollywood Columnist, p. 38.
4 “utterly dependent”: Betsy Drake to the author, via telephone, 10/29/05.
5 “She was abject”: Sally Erskine to Selden West, 12/5/91 (SW).
6 “Spence was down”: Chester Erskine to Katharine Hepburn, 5/27/58 (KHNY).
7 “He would come up”: Eddie Lawrence to Selden West.
8 “a beautiful piece”: Hollywood Reporter, 5/19/58.
9 “remarkable achievements”: Daily Variety, 5/21/58.
10 “pay was low”: Donald Spoto, Stanley Kramer, Film Maker (New York: Putnam, 1978), p. 23.
11 vacationing in Europe: After March’s turndown, Shumlin got Melvyn Douglas to fill in for Paul Muni.
12 “enough trouble”: Stanley Kramer to Selden West, Los Angeles, n.d. (SW).
13 “Everyone identified”: George Stevens, Jr., Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age, p. 569.
14 “Kramer said”: William Weber Johnson, rough notes of an unpublished Tracy interview for Time, 10/14/58 (KHLA).
15 price tag: To be exact, the negative cost of The Old Man and the Sea was $5,487,000.
16 “arrange for someone”: