Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [92]
Mother Tracy was only told of her grandson’s illness the day before he was due to arrive from New York. In the aftermath of her accident, Carrie had suffered a complete nervous collapse and it was feared the shock of the news might be too great for her. Her orthopedist, Dr. Charles Pease, was present when Spencer broke the news, and he asked if he might drop around and see John the following day. When he did, he confirmed the other doctor’s endorsement of Dr. Wilson, but then he went a step further.
“Every day is precious,” he said. “It will be another three or four days at least before anything can be done in Los Angeles. If you will stay over one more day here, and allow me to, I will take him to the Children’s Memorial Hospital and put a cast on his leg. That, at the moment, is the most important thing to be done.”
As the Tracys learned, the affected muscles should have been put in a cast to enforce complete rest immediately after the attack. The fact that Johnny had instead been encouraged to work the muscles had undoubtedly resulted in permanent damage, though it was impossible to say exactly how much. The next day, the boy’s leg was encased in plaster from hip to toe. Then Louise mentioned a persistent weakness in John’s back, and Dr. Pease ordered some x-rays of the spine. After they had returned to the hotel, the doctor called and said he would like to make a back cast, too, a removable one. It wouldn’t delay their departure; he’d come to the hotel and do the job right there. So that evening, with Louise assisting, he made a half cast for Johnny’s back that reached from his shoulder to his hips and around under his arms.
They left Chicago in the midst of a blinding snowstorm and were met in California by Leo Morrison, who had two taxis on hold and promptly hailed a third when he took in the size and breadth of the party. He knew a boarding kennel where they could leave the dog, essentially taking charge of everything. “I feel sure,” said Louise, “I must have drawn a long sigh of relief as I sank onto the brown leather seat of the cab, with Pat—no longer carsick—sitting quietly at my feet. We were there! That mad ten days were over and we were there. I could have said home, but that would not have occurred to me.”
When they saw Dr. Wilson, he listened to a history of the case and then walked over to the table on which John was lying and told him to raise his leg—his good one. John did so and moved it easily from side to side.
“Now the other one,” he said.
“But he can’t—” Louise began, but even as she spoke, and to John’s wide-eyed amazement, he raised the leg with its heavy cast almost straight up.
“Well,” said the doctor, turning to Louise. “You see what just a few days of immobilization has done for this leg? You fell into good hands in Chicago. I feel sure we can do a lot for this boy.”
The Fox Film Corporation was an organization in free fall. William Fox, the visionary head of the empire, had been crippled by the stock market meltdown and forced to sell when some $25 million in short-term notes came due. A company called General Theatres Equipment paid $18 million for Fox’s voting shares—a bargain price considering the deal included control of Fox Film, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Gaumont British, and 1,500 theaters in the United States and Great Britain. Fox’s cronies, including his two brothers-in-law, were swept from the board, and Fox himself was handed the chairmanship of a newly created “advisory board” that left him with no authority. In charge of the restructured company would be Fox’s former secretary and longtime lieutenant, Winfield R. Sheehan.
Winnie Sheehan (as he was known to practically everyone) was a police reporter on the New York World when he made the jump to machine politics as secretary to city fire commissioner Rhinelander Waldo. At about the same time, a former cloth sponger named Bill Fox was entering into a partnership with Tammany