Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [59]
And now Cohan saw the same qualities in Spencer Tracy, whose big scene that Sunday night came toward the end of the third act. Figuring he had nothing to lose, Tracy invested a tight, almost negligible exchange between himself and Marjorie Wood with all the animation and gravity he could muster, holding nothing back but remaining at all times in absolute command of the role. Tracy’s young husband, boisterous and lusty, gave Cohan a lift toward the end of a particularly long and grueling night, and George M. may well have overreacted. Certainly Tracy thought as much. “Spencer looked startled,” as Selena recounted it, “and, to us who were watching, turned slightly pale. After the scene was over, he came over to me and said, ‘What did he mean?’ I laughed. It’s like an actor never to believe or remember the good notices. You can’t forget the bad. ‘You silly fool,’ I explained, ‘he meant it.’ ”
With Marjorie Wood in George M. Cohan’s production of Yellow, 1926. (PATRICIA MAHON COLLECTION)
Spence played the rest of the rehearsal in something of a daze. “That was a wonderful night,” Louise recalled. “He didn’t get back to the hotel until very late—four or five in the morning. I was in bed. He just couldn’t get over it. He sat on the bed and said, ‘Listen what happened …’ He told me all about it…[He said,] ‘I thought I was going to be sacked.’ He always thought that. I think it was one of the highlights of his career.”
For its out-of-town opening, Yellow was accorded a warm reception by what Louise described as a “Cohan-minded audience.” The advance notice in Variety was an outright rave: “Loaded with nervous theatrical dynamite, it sent the hard-boiled local first-nighters out raving with frazzled nerves, wet handkerchiefs, and wilted collars.” In New York the show was hampered by the fact that the street out front of the National Theatre was under construction, as were the avenues at each end of its block. Patrons had to drive over loose planks or stumble through muddy, unpaved walkways, unlighted and treacherous, to reach the lobby. Consequently, Yellow was reviewed almost exclusively by the second-string critics, only a couple of whom truly liked it. Most thought it convoluted, poorly structured, and overlong.
“It is easy to perceive the role that delighted the heart of George M.,” L.W. M’Laren wrote perceptively in the New York Journal. “It is that of the bank clerk with a small flat and a wife, played well by Spencer Tracy. One suspects that Cohan broadened it considerably. Certain it is that his smile of satisfaction was broad as Tracy went through the part last night.”
John Tracy was proud of his grandson and rarely missed an opportunity to show him off. Johnny was a beautiful child, with long auburn curls, exquisite skin, and, in Louise’s words, “a sweetly grave expression” that rarely failed to attract attention. While at Lake Delavan, the elder Tracy frequently ran “errands” to a particular drugstore known for its malted milks, and he generally found an excuse to take the boy with him. It was on one such expedition that a woman spoke to Johnny. She remarked on what a handsome child he was, but he did not turn. She spoke again, then looked at John: “He is hard of hearing, isn’t he?”
As he hesitated, not knowing quite what to say, the woman introduced herself as Matie E. Winston, a teacher for the Wright Oral School in New York City. A native of Wisconsin, Miss Winston was home on vacation when she noticed all the obvious signs and concluded that Johnny must be either very hard of hearing or completely deaf. Then, when she heard the name “Tracy,” she remembered having answered