Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [72]
No one thought the play a disaster, but the fact that it needed work was indisputable. Tracy thought Banks the strongest part he had yet played before a New York audience, and when the author announced his intention to revise the play over a Holy Week recess, Spence joined him in making the rounds of the various dailies, going from one drama critic to the next, notices in hand. Conflict hit the boards again on Monday, April 1, and the critics were invited to come take another look. Regrettably, the play wasn’t much better than before, but virtually every critic gave it a kinder notice. Trade improved slightly, but the company managed to survive only on cut rates.
Conflict closed on April 27, 1929, and Tracy went almost immediately into rehearsals for an ill-fated comedy titled Salt Water. They tried it out in Mamaroneck, where it was well received, then moved it to Atlantic City, where, despite sterling reviews, the play’s coauthor, actress Jean Dalrymple, concluded her lead actor had “no sense of comedy.” She pushed director John Golden to replace him with actor Frank Craven. “So there we all were, down in Atlantic City, and the show went very well. But, of course, Tracy was really heavy in the part, and afterwards Frank Craven said, ‘Oh, I could really play that part. I could play the hell out of that part.’ So Golden closed the show and let Spencer go.”
Smarting from such a summary dismissal, Tracy returned to Manhattan in a surly mood. Broadway had suffered its worst season in nine years, due largely to the proliferation of talking pictures. Dramatic stock wasn’t doing any better against the onslaught of amplified dialogue. Two years earlier Tracy had advised Chamberlain Brown he was playing Lima strictly for the money. “Next season,” he said, “I should have a nice bankroll, and I hope this will be the last time I have to do stock—unless it’s a real good one.” Now, miraculously, a real good one presented itself, almost on cue.
Selena Royle had settled into a pattern of playing summers with the Albee stock of Providence, Rhode Island, one of the top two or three companies in all of North America. When the company’s leading man, Walter Gilbert, quit early in the season, she naturally thought of Spence. “By this time,” she said, “we had played together so often that we automatically knew what to expect of the other on stage—a great advantage in stock, especially in Providence, where we played five matinees a week … So, on my recommendation, Spencer was sent for.” Tracy settled in for the remainder of the season, taking a house for the summer that would give Johnny the experience of having a yard of his own. His debut at Providence was in a four-act mystery called The Silent House, and while he was universally well received, nobody mistook him for a traditional leading man.
(SUSIE TRACY)
“There is nothing stagy about him,” the critic for the Providence Journal declared. “No makeup—none to speak of—no tricks whatever; just an unassuming, easy manner that gets him about the stage without your quite knowing how he does it. He belongs to that school of acting—if it is a school—which doesn’t want you to think it is acting. It is acting, though, of a very high order, forceful, reserved, artistic.”
It looked as if the season at Providence would be a triumph, and Louise happily settled into the relaxing