Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [6]
Taking the part created by Mary Nash in the original New York production, Louise tore into Marcelle’s big scene in Sam Shew Sing’s dingy opium joint. The dead center of the stage was defined by a circular radiance of yellow light and the walls were comprised of tattered bunks. Cornered by the man she had followed in vain from San Francisco to Shanghai, she called out to Tracy, now a dope fiend thrashing helplessly on one of the bunks: “Where are you now, Binksie?”
And from the shadows he wailed, “I’ve looked through most every star and I can’t find her! I can’t find her!”
Louise leveled a bone-chilling stare at Woodward. “Binksie there made a fool of himself over a girl—a girl who wasn’t anything or anybody until Binksie came along and taught her. Then he grew tired of her, or he wanted to reform or something, and he went to her to let her know. There was a quarrel. He was nasty and perhaps she was nastier. He started to go. She swore he’d never leave her, that she’d follow him wherever he went, and he … he only laughed.”
Woodward stood frozen at the edge of the light. “Go on—,” he said softly.
“She told the truth,” Louise continued. “She took strychnine there before him and—” A strange smile came over her. “Did you ever see anyone die of strychnine poisoning? It’s a nasty way to die—body all shook to pieces, eyes grinning—and she died that way in Binksie’s arms.”
A slight pause to let the image sink in.
“Well, she followed him all right. Even the dope won’t help him to forget her, and wherever she is—in Heaven or Hell—she’s got the laugh on Binksie.”
Louise picked a bottle of rye whiskey up off the floor. “Do you mind?” she asked matter-of-factly, not really caring if he did or he didn’t. But he did mind, and gently he took it from her.
Her face turned hard, defiant. “If a man ever did a thing like that to me, I’d never kill myself that way—it’s too painful, too quick. No, I’d live … live to let him see her dying slow … body and soul rotting before his eyes …”
When the performance came to an end, the crowd gave her a rousing ovation—the loudest of the evening—and Weston came to her afterward and said, “We’re going to keep you here.”
Business improved as the week progressed, and Wood, who rarely came down from his office, took to haranguing the locals with quarter-page ads in the Daily Reporter.
Ticket sales jumped for It’s a Boy, the company’s offering for the week of April 23, but it was the musical comedy Buddies that brought the people out in droves. Louise sang Julie, the part made famous by Peggy Wood on Broadway, and the theater was nearly full on a Saturday night when kids whistled and catcalled from the balconies and seats ranged from twenty-five cents to a dollar twenty-five, plus war tax.
Tracy played a peripheral part each week, inhabiting the background while Louise drew the crowd’s attention and acclaim. His projection was good and his diction clear, and from the very start he showed he could deliver the most innocuous of lines with a startling intensity. He took the stage just ahead of Marcelle in The Man Who Came Back, and as the pipe-smoking Captain Gallon his exit line was “To hell with him!” Louise, immersed in her own role, took particular notice: “The way he did it was so effective he always got a nice little round of applause, and I remember thinking, ‘That boy has got something there.’ ”
She naturally gravitated to Tracy, whose experience was nowhere near her own, but whose enthusiasm was infectious and whose natural gifts as an actor were plain to see. She found him a fast study with an almost photographic memory. Lines were much harder for her to absorb, and he would feed her cues during breaks and prompt her when the words wouldn’t come. She, in turn, taught him how to use makeup, since he had