Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [62]
“I have decided to accept Wright’s proposition for the summer,” Tracy advised Chamberlain Brown, “which is a good one. Louise and I playing joint leads, and in addition he is giving me ten percent of the gross over $4000. He claims we will do as high as $5000 nearly every week. I am doing this to get on my feet. Cromwell thinks I am wise to do it, and has definitely set me for his new play and also Sidney Howard’s for next season. I should return in August with a nice little bankroll and get out of the financial rut in which I have been.” He added: “I hope this will be the last time I’ll have to do this, but feel it won’t hurt me any and I need the money.”
When Louise arrived with Johnny to read for a part with Cromwell, Spence had a small apartment waiting near Lincoln Park, having abandoned a room at the swanky Allerton Club when the salary cut took effect. There was a Murphy bed (one of the hardest Louise ever slept on), a room scarcely large enough for Johnny’s crib, a bath, a tiny kitchen, and something akin to a breakfast nook. It was in the kitchen that Johnny’s habitual jabbering filled the air. “One evening,” Louise said, “while I was cooking the dinner and he was playing near me, out of a ribbon of meaningless sounds came suddenly, ‘Mama, mama, mama’ over again, sing-song fashion. He had hit upon the combination—strange he had not done so before, as it is one of the most natural—and, perhaps liking the feel of it, continued to say it. A perfectly clear and beautiful ‘mama.’ ”
Louise immediately dropped what she was doing and grabbed him. He smiled up at her. “Yes, yes!” she said, trembling with excitement. “Mama, mama!”
As he watched my moving lips, realization slowly dawning on his face, he repeated with me, “Mama, mama.” At last he knew that something went with those strange movements we made with our lips, movements of which he was growing more and more aware, movements requiring him to wave his hand when he or someone else went away—he even took it upon himself occasionally to do this now without waiting for the lips—to drink his milk, to wipe his mouth, and lots of other things. He did not know what he had done, or how he had done it, but he found he could do it again and again; he did not know what it meant, but he knew it pleased that person who seemed so very necessary to him, and somehow her laughing and dancing around and kissing him created a very pleasant feeling inside him, and I am sure, from a certain something in his expression, and from the renewed gusto and assurance with which he attacked what he was doing, he felt as though he had done something pretty smart.
Spence closed in Ned McCobb’s Daughter after six discouraging weeks, and he and Louise arrived in Lima on April 9, 1927. The calm and methodical Miss Krause accompanied them, caring for Johnny again as she had in Plainfield. They settled into a large apartment at Moreland Manor, within walking distance of the theater, and rehearsals for the first play of the season, the raucous Laff That Off, began the following Monday. Papa Wright had a habit of moving players around like pieces on a chessboard, and he assembled from his various companies a wildly uneven supporting cast of nine, the only familiar face from Grand Rapids being the dour character man Porter Hall. The schedule was weighted heavily with plays Spence had already done; director Harry Horne’s habit of starting the week with a full read-through