Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [67]
Tracy entered radio about this time, for he mentioned working as an announcer for Standard Oil in a couple of early interviews. Radio money would have come in handy, for concurrent with the New York opening of The Baby Cyclone, they enrolled Johnny—at the age of three years and three months—in the toddlers’ program at the Wright Oral School. In the morning session, he joined a group of four other children who were learning to lace and tie their shoes and to sort colored yarn. That same month, Louise made a list of thirty-three words the boy was able to lip-read, among them arm, ball, hat, shoe, soap, pillow, chair, and mouth. A spelling list included nineteen words, and after a little time in school, a list of words he could actually say began with mama, thumb, and lamb. She watched as he would stroke his arm from shoulder to wrist and say arm, then stretch it out toward the coffeepot, withdrawing it suddenly, his eyes full of mischief as he shouted “ot!” (The h would come later.) Over time, pineapple became a favorite word (although it sounded a lot like apple pie). The word fish came out sounding like foosh, and on Fridays Spence took to murmuring, “Ah, foosh for dinner!”
In February 1928 Johnny developed a bad case of the measles, and Spence, upon his recovery, suggested that Weeze take him to Florida. “Florida!” she exclaimed. “He’s in school and he shouldn’t miss any.”
“You can teach him,” he said, urging her along. “He’s so young. The change will do John good and his health comes first. Besides, you should have a trip.”
Louise and John spent most of their days at Miami Beach. “John was crazy about the water,” she said, “and had we stayed another week or two, I think he would have been swimming.”
As his namesake was growing and learning to talk and understand spoken English, John Tracy was slowly fading away. The curious illness that had overtaken him in Milwaukee had been diagnosed as rectal cancer, and the crude radiation treatments of the day were taking their toll on a vibrant and generous man. He worried endlessly about money and his ability to make ends meet. In New York he took a position with General Motors, assigned to the National Account Division, but he suffered bouts of weakness and fatigue, and they were as unhappy with him as he was with them. At the same time he grew enormously proud of his son’s success in New York and his association with the great George M. Cohan. (“He was a long time coming around,” Spence marveled, “but—”) Now practically a Broadway insider, he would stand at the back of Henry Miller’s Theatre every night at 8:25 and count the house. And after the performance the two men would go to supper, arm in arm.
Cohan sold the movie rights to The Baby Cyclone and sent the play out on the road, first to Boston, then to Philadelphia. John regarded Spencer’s absence with melancholy, but Carrie seized the opportunity to fix up the kids’ new place. “I suppose Mother is up at your apartment by this time,” he wrote one morning in a letter. “No doubt she will be busy there for a while, and you won’t know the place … Am going to keep off my feet as much as possible today. I have rather an uncomfortable sensation where the trouble is, and it may be due to too much walking or a reaction from the treatments I have taken recently.” He added: “Don’t forget your Easter duty while in Boston.”
The play’s return to Boston lasted only a week, but Spence took advantage of Louise’s absence to bring Lorraine Foat backstage on opening