Online Book Reader

Home Category

Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [593]

By Root 3499 0
to Michael Blake, this was a common practice in color filmmaking through the mid-1970s, when film speeds got faster and less light was necessary to bring out the features of darker skin. Without makeup, lighter-skinned actors would typically wash out. “As for the correct term, we would say ‘bump up their color,’ which means take them a bit darker than their natural skin tone.” Cinematographer Sam Leavitt, who had shot the black-and-white Defiant Ones for Kramer, favored TV-style lighting for much of the picture, possibly to minimize problems of skin tone and contrast, possibly to shoot more quickly at times when Tracy was available. A trade item in the Reporter noted that Leavitt, at Kramer’s request, had suspended all the lighting needed to illuminate the set from above—no floor lamps or fill lights—so that Kramer could make circular shots if he wished.

39 “In the rehearsals”: Higham, Kate, p. 200.

40 “My aunt”: Katharine Houghton to the author, Sherman Oaks, 3/1/05.

41 “The key to Spencer”: Jack Hamilton, “A Last Visit with Two Undimmed Stars,” Look, 7/11/67.

42 “all the words”: Sidney Poitier to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, Los Angeles, 1986 (TH).

43 “quite a few scenes”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer. In his autobiography Poitier remembers asking Kramer to send them home, and the production report for that day appears to bear that out: Tracy and Hepburn finished at 4:50 p.m., while Poitier remained on the set until 6:45.

44 “play tennis”: Leah Bernstein to the author, Los Angeles, 9/14/04.

45 “strange relationship”: Higham, Kate, p. 201.

46 “Your job”: Katharine Houghton to the author.

47 “he was embarrassed”: Marshall Schlom to the author.

48 “tried to work him”: Katharine Houghton to the author.

49 “Milkman”: Hamilton, “A Last Visit with Two Undimmed Stars.”

50 “best actor”: Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 4/30/67.

51 “my last picture”: Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 5/10/67.

52 “I miss M-G-M”: Spencer Tracy interview with Roy Newquist, cassette tape, n.d. (courtesy of Susie Tracy).

53 “Uncle Spencer?”: Bobs Watson to Selden West, via telephone, 7/9/91 (SW).

54 “go visit him”: Jean Simmons to the author.

55 “Please wait”: A. C. Lyles to the author.

56 “love of your life”: Katharine Houghton in A Special Kind of Love, Sony Home Entertainment, 2007.

57 “One night”: Katharine Houghton to the author.

58 “Watch out for Kate”: Katharine Houghton to the author, New York, 4/25/08.

59 “walked into this house”: Katharine Houghton to the author, New York, 3/1/05.

60 “the summation”: Stanley Kramer to Heeley and Kramer.

61 “tenser than tense”: Mark Harris, Pictures at a Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2008), p. 322.

62 after some preliminaries: Tracy may well have delivered the entire speech on set before any film got exposed, as there are witnesses who recall that he did it straight through. “As I remember it,” said Katharine Houghton, “he did the whole damn thing from beginning to end.” An examination of the film establishes, however, that it could not have been shot in one take, and the daily production reports clearly show the scene took five days to complete.

63 “first day’s work: Details of the production of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner are from the daily production reports in the Stanley Kramer Collection at UCLA.

64 “I came to visit”: Karen Kramer to the author.

65 “Our reaction shots”: Katharine Houghton to the author, via e-mail, 7/24/05.

66 “superb, moving”: Los Angeles Times, 6/12/67.

67 “Every person”: Poitier, This Life, pp. 286–87.

68 “very relieved”: Katharine Houghton to the author, via e-mail, 7/24/05.

69 “You know, Kiddo”: Wagner, You Must Remember This, p. 293.

70 “He didn’t know”: Tina Smith to the author, Milwaukee, 7/9/06.

71 “I rehearsed”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.

72 “shot the scene”: Marshall Schlom to the author, via e-mail, 4/10/09.

73 “rehearsed quite a bit”: D’Urville Martin to Selden West, 12/27/77 (SW).

74 Ivan Volkman: Details of Tracy’s last shot on the picture are from Marshall Schlom. It was customary for the assistant director to make such

Return Main Page Previous Page Next Page

®Online Book Reader