Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [99]
Tracy returned to his home studio with time on his hands. If news of his drinking had gotten back to Louise, it wouldn’t have surprised her. In New York, he did most of his imbibing at the Lambs, where he was contained and protected and surrounded by pals like Pat O’Brien and Frank McHugh. The booze was of the highest possible quality, a step above the industrial and grain alcohols served in most speakeasies (where the flavoring could range from prune juice to creosote). In Hollywood, the best stuff—genuine or slightly cut—came from inside the studio walls, where it seemed fully half the mechanics, doormen, chauffeurs, and office boys were dealers. Hymer had no trouble staying sloshed, despite the warnings and entreaties of the studio brass, and he proved a poor influence on Spence, especially when the two were disgruntled at work or away on location.
Louise would take a sherry before dinner, but she never particularly cared about it, and neither, really, did Spence. “It had always been there,” she said of his intolerance for alcohol, “[but] I was not [aware of it]…there seemed to be no reason. He always liked milk and donuts and buttermilk.” The root of his problem, she came to realize, was not his taste for the stuff, but his very genuine awkwardness in social situations and the inability to make small talk: “My husband had a shy side. Many times he was very ill at ease. Actually, the gruffness, the shortness, was a cover-up. I’ve seen him struggle very hard to relate to others.”
An industry journalist, a freelancer from Memphis named S. R. “Dick” Mook, frequented the Fox lot at the time of Up the River and observed the struggle firsthand:
I had seen a few rushes of the opus, and knew both Spence and the film were going to be sensational. Imagine my delight when Robert Montgomery brought him down to Neil Hamilton’s beach home one Sunday when I was there. I sat back and confidently waited for the flow of wisecracks to start—wisecracks his film portrayal had led me to believe I might expect from him. I was doomed to disappointment. Beyond “Hello” when he came in and “Bye” when he left, I don’t believe Spence uttered a half-dozen words during the afternoon. The meeting was a complete flop. Long afterwards, when I got to know him well, I started jibing him about that day. “I didn’t know any of you people,” Spence muttered uncomfortably. “I just can’t give out with strangers.”
And so to get through the obligations the industry naturally placed on a contract player of Tracy’s standing, he would take a drink to calm himself, make himself more at ease around people he didn’t know. “He could drink the least little bit,” Louise said, “[and] it simply [went] straight to the brain … He couldn’t [have drinks before dinner]. He struggled against it…[and] I gradually saw that he really shouldn’t drink at all.”
The closing down of Ground Hogs dovetailed neatly with the end of the lease on the house in Westwood. Having gradually discarded his casts, John was now on crutches, vigorously swinging from room to room and up and down the walk in front of the house. Thinking it might benefit him, the Tracys took a little cottage for the months of June and July at Las Tunas, a quiet strip of beach about midway between Santa Monica and Malibu that nestled up against Roosevelt Highway on the back side. Carroll’s arrival in California that spring had enabled Mother Tracy to take a house of her own in Los Angeles, leaving Spence, Louise, and John to fit compactly into two relatively small but very livable bedrooms.
After little more than a week at Las Tunas, John’s back was entirely well and Dr. Wilson decided he should start walking without the crutches for a half hour each day. His first steps took place in the living room