Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [98]
Jean Harlow’s participation in Goldie brought Tracy to the attention of Howard Hughes, who, having amassed some two million feet of stunt flying footage for Hell’s Angels, was looking for stories in which he could incorporate the trims. In the movie business since 1926, Hughes had distinguished himself with a comedy called Two Arabian Knights, a buddy picture on the order of What Price Glory? that won an Academy Award for its director, Lewis Milestone. Almost immediately there was talk of a sequel, but Hughes got mired in the making of Hell’s Angels and struggling with the problem of how to release a $2 million silent film when the public was clamoring for talkies. His solution—reshoot it with dialogue—occupied most of his time for another year. He produced just two other pictures in the interim: The Racket (again with Milestone) and The Mating Call. By the time he got back to the notion of a Two Arabian Knights sequel, Louis Wolheim, one of the two original stars, was dead, and William Boyd, the other half of the team, was working at RKO.
Hughes focused on developing a script, a gloss on the original as reimagined by Joseph Moncure March, the author of Hell’s Angels. The project never really coalesced until Hughes saw Tracy as the bacchanalian seaman of Goldie and impulsively made the deal to borrow him for six weeks at a flat rate of $11,187.50. With Tracy set to start with Hughes on May 10, the rest of the package was carelessly thrown together. Veteran comic George Cooper (who was in the shots to be used from the earlier film), George Irving, and actress Lola Lane were all added to the cast. The crucial role of Sergeant Hogan, the Wolheim part, was filled by actor-playwright Sidney Toler, who played cops and comic heavies but was as unlike the gnarled Wolheim as any actor could be.
At first Tracy was glad to be out of Fox, even though the company would be collecting considerably more on the loan-out than he.2 Filming on Ground Hogs (as the film was to be titled) got under way at the Armory in Culver City on Tuesday, May 19, the company shooting a full day of exteriors and working well into the night. The director Hughes picked for the film was Edward Sedgwick, who had turned out a number of silent comedies but whose experience with sound was limited to Buster Keaton’s recent features. Sedgwick was a throwback to the days when a director could talk an actor through a scene while the cameras were cranking, and he apparently had no knowledge or appreciation of Tracy’s stage experience. Ridgeway “Reggie” Callow, one of the assistant directors on Hughes’ payroll, witnessed a testy exchange between Sedgwick and Tracy: “[Sedgwick] told him to take three steps forward and then turn sideways and reach out—all these meticulous directions—so Spencer said, ‘One, two, three, and then I turn, reach out … now, what the hell do I do next?’ ”
The atmosphere on the set wasn’t good at all, and Sedgwick compounded the problem when he refused to show Hughes the rushes, claiming they weren’t yet ready for viewing. Tracy worked well with Cooper, wide-eyed and elfin, but the on-screen chemistry between him and Toler was poor, Toler being wholly unsuited for the part of a roughneck sergeant. On Sunday, May 24, they traveled to Riverside, two hours east of Los Angeles, where they roomed at the Mission Inn and spent nine days shooting exteriors at March Field. Away from Louise and Johnny, Tracy recalled his days at Norfolk and behaved much as his character Wilkie would have under similar circumstances. “It was just the role he was playing,” said Callow. “You know, he was drinking pretty heavily in those days, particularly with his buddy Warren Hymer … But the drinking never interfered with his performance; he always had his lines down.”
Once the March Field scenes were in the can, the company returned for studio work on the Metropolitan lot in Hollywood, where Hughes’ production company,