Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [63]
Having not worked since August, Louise enjoyed Lima. Horne’s quiet style (“I try,” he said, “to avoid thunder and lightning interference and dogmatism”) suited her, and she liked the idea of the weekly read-throughs around the table. She sat for an interview with the Lima News on her first Tuesday in town, trim and tailored in a brown velvet frock, and dismissed the widely held notion that the theater wasn’t a proper vocation for a career-minded young woman. “How many bankers, lawyers, physicians, and other professional men become known outside of their home town or state?” she reasoned.
The profile ran that same day, stimulating matinee sales for Laff That Off, but Louise fell ill toward the end of the week and was unable to open with Spence the following Sunday (which happened to be Easter). Her understudy, Geraldine Browning, went on in her place, and the News reported “large audiences” in its notice the next evening. Browning played out the week, Louise focusing on rehearsals for The Patsy instead and spending as much time as possible with Johnny. She loved the stimulation and challenge of a lead character, and the wisecracking Patsy became one of her favorites.
“Miss Louise Treadwell, leading lady of the company, makes her debut to Lima audiences this week in the title role,” a notice in the News reported. “She possesses charm, vivacity, and ability seldom found on the stock stage.” Playing opposite Spence was fun, too, especially in a spirited comedy, and it was a great help to be onstage with someone so thoroughly in command of the text. “[E]very once in a while he threw me a line,” she said. “He knew lines were difficult for me to learn in stock, especially, [and] once in a while I would go blank when he was on stage. All I had to do was look at him and he’d mumble something that would give me a clue.”
Louise had started the Wright Oral School’s correspondence course in November, but had little time to devote to Johnny and his lessons with rehearsals most every morning, three matinees a week, and nightly performances. Miss Krause carried on as best she could, adding skeins of colored yarn to the blocks he had gotten so good at separating, and commencing with lipreading lessons. In time, he not only knew what to do when he saw his mother say, “Wipe your mouth,” but he also came to know what the individual words wipe, your, and mouth meant. Auricular exercises—ear training—were less productive, for, unlike most children who were hard of hearing to varying degrees, Johnny was as close to stone deaf as it was possible to get, and no amount of testing would ever suggest otherwise.
The 1,200-seat Faurot Opera House was rarely filled to capacity, effectively negating Spence’s percentage, but the $300 a week the Tracys pulled down as a team helped pay off a lot of old bills. By the middle of May, Tracy was able to send Chamberlain Brown all the back commissions he owed, a total of seventy-five dollars. “Things are running along here as well as could be expected,” he said, “but frankly I don’t like it and would like to break away in about six more weeks. Next season my plans remain the same as far as I know. I am to begin rehearsals August first with John Cromwell’s new play, and Sidney Howard’s is to be done later. All of which is fine, but at the same time I don’t want to let anything slip by. Something better might come up in the meantime. I have hopes of doing something for George Cohan. If he or anyone else should want me, or if anything good comes up, please let me know and I will give my notice.”
Toward the end of the month, a contract arrived from Cromwell which specified $175 a week for the juvenile lead in What the Doctor Ordered, a farce comedy set to open mid-August. Lacking anything else in the way of offers, Tracy impulsively signed the contract and returned it. Less than a week later, a wire arrived from Cohan, offering him a “specially written part” in his new play, The Baby Cyclone. Spence and Louise opened The Cat and the Canary that Sunday