On the set: Based on a novel by Laurence Hazard, the storyline dealt with an intimate love story of two people struggling to survive the Depression. Add two actors struggling with their own problems but compassionate enough to sense the other’s pain and it was ripe for romance. Spencer was unhappy at home and Loretta Young had just ended a relationship with Lyle Talbot. It wasn’t long before everyone on the set felt like intruders. The attraction between Tracy and his leading lady was so intense that it wasn’t long before the rumors were rampant all over town. Off the set: The affair lasted almost 2 years before Loretta broke it off. “Since Spencer and I are both Catholics and can never be married, we agreed not to see each other again”. Note: Spencer’s refusal to divorce Louise wasn’t because of his Catholic faith. Louise was Episcopalian and they were married in a civil ceremony. The real reason?…. Louise was the mother of his children…a role he held more sacred than his church or his marriage vows.
On the set: This was the kind of dark, psychodrama Fritz Lang loved…a man, traveling through a small town, is mistakenly arrested for a kidnapping. He is presumed dead when a lynch mob sets fire to the jail. Of course, he escapes in the melee and returns to bring justice to the culprits. Spencer played the leading role but got second billing to Sylvia Sidney. The film won critical praise with raves about Tracy ’s performance …”a dramatic star of the magnitude of Paul Muni”. Off the set: The “Boys Club” was now meeting regularly at the Beverly Hills Hotel. About 7 actors with Broadway in their past and Hollywood in their present got together to swap stories of their days in New York and how they were doing in the celluloid world. Regulars besides Spence were Pat O’Brien, James Cagney, Frank McHugh, Frank Morgan, Ralph Bellamy and Lynne Overman. Because most of them had Irish in their background, Sidney Skolsky gave them the name “the Irish Mafia”.
It was Tracy ’s first film with Clark Gable who played the Barbary Coast saloon keeper, Blackie Norton, Father Mullin’s childhood friend. The two actors shared fond memories of their time on Broadway. He also noted that Jeanette MacDonald (Mary) sat alone most of the time…until Nelson Eddy came back from his concert tour and visited the set. Watching them, Tracy said “Those two get more out of a look than I get out of the whole sex act”! Off the set: Tracy, not Gable, won a Best Actor nomination but ironically lost to Paul Muni (The Story of Louis Pasteur).
Off the set: Spencer won his first Best Actor Oscar for his emotional performance. But it was Louise who picked up the golden statuette…Spence was in the hospital for a hernia operation! Notes: Katharine Hepburn, who had not yet met Spencer Tracy, would say later that the first time and every time she watched this movie, she cried.
On the set: Spencer again plays a priest and this time the priest he plays is right there on the set! He discussed all his doubts about being worthy to don the cassock but Father Flanagan assured him he had the right stuff! The two spent hours discussing theology, Boys Town and everything in general. Mickey Rooney also won rave reviews as Whitey Marsh, the juvenile delinquent who got religion and became the young mayor of Boys Town . Off the set: Spencer won his second Best Actor Oscar in a row and this time he picked it up himself. However, he had to beat out an old friend, Jimmy Cagney in “Angels With Dirty Faces”. Notes: He took Louise to Europe where he made enemies with the persistent press. But they wrote glowing stories about him anyway.
On the set: Tracy didn’t want to do it. Even his friends thought it was a bad idea. But L. B. Mayer wanted it done and he wanted Tracy to do it. Tracy said it would be better if the story was done as a lesson about how alcohol could destroy a man (he knew all about that). But that was a “message story” and Mayer hated message stories….and Tracy was under contract! So he went to work. He hated the make-up they lathered on him for Hyde ..the false teeth, the wig and the putty, putty, putty. Ingrid Bergman was scheduled to play the good girl but wanted to play Ivy, the prostitute. Mayer said no until Tracy threatened to walk. That made Lana Turner happy because she was tired of playing sexpots. Then, to make matters worse, Spence and his leading lady began an affair (Ingrid did this with almost all her leading men) while Fleming was also pursuing her. It certainly made things tense on the set. Off the set: The picture was thoroughly panned and Ingrid’s hubby, Dr. Peter Lindstrom was so upset he refused to allow Ingrid to go with Tracy to San Francisco for future film planning. The affair only lasted a few weeks after filming was over.
On the set: The original screenplay was done by a young writer, Ring Lardner, Jr., about his father, the famous humorist and short story writer. He wrote the script with Michael Kanin and it evolved into a story about the tempestuous relationship between a sports writer and a political columnist. When Kate Hepburn saw the final result, she announced to L. B. Mayer that she not only wanted to do it, she wanted to do it with Spencer Tracy. According to writer Michael Kanin “Kate and Spence fell into a wonderful, natural working relationship after just a few days of sparring on the set….Kate had known men like Spence before (but) Spence had never known anyone like Kate”. Off the set: When the movie was released, it was a huge success and critics wrote about “the magic” of Tracy and Hepburn on the screen. The magic off-screen lasted another 26 years.
On the set: In this film, Tracy dies in the beginning and stays dead for the whole picture. He plays a combat pilot who dies and comes back to interfere in the lives of his grieving girl friend (Irene Dunne) and his pal (Van Johnson). Poor, prim Irene had a difficult time surviving Spence’s teasing and practical jokes. But when Van was almost killed in a motorcycle accident, they both went to L.B. Mayer (who wanted Johnson replaced) and Spence threatened to quit on the spot. The studio agreed to shoot around Van until he recovered. “Without Tracy, my career could have ended right there” Johnson said later. Off the set: This had been a bad year for Spencer. His mother Carrie had died and Kate was in New York doing a play. He was drinking after work which was always the beginning of bigger binges. When Kate returned and found Tracy falling apart, she spent many nights sleeping outside his room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Note: It was also about the time the doctor prescribed Dexedrine for his depression. The drug had major side effects and increased his insomnia. The bad effects of these kinds of amphetamines wouldn’t really be known until years later.
On the set: This was based on the play Kate had just done on Broadway and MGM decided to bring it to the screen for Kate and Spencer. But screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart threw out the Irish political angle and made the male lead an American scientist-inventor struggling with the the housing shortage in Washington, DC. Kate, a rich widow, lets him use her basement as a lab. Keenan Wynn and Lucille Ball made the movie and the set even livelier. Off the set: The picture had just wrapped when Tracy got a call from the White House. FDR wanted him to head up a morale-building tour of overseas bases and also handle a special covert mission. But a week later Roosevelt was dead and Spencer never found out who he was to see or the reason for the message and it haunted him the rest of his life. Note: Spencer left Hollywood soon afterward to do “The Rugged Path” on Broadway.
On the set: Tracy seemed to take his job as Elizabeth Taylor’s “father” to heart by giving her advice about her upcoming wedding to Nicky Hilton, heir to the hotel fortune. Elizabeth was finally allowed to grow up on screen but this was still a long way from “Butterfield 8”. The wedding was one month before the picture’s release date giving MGM a publicity coup. Both Spence and Joan Bennett who played mother of the bride attended the real nuptials. Off the set: Spencer was given his fourth Oscar nod for this picture but lost to Jose Ferrer for “Cyrano de Bergerac”. Notes: Tracy didn’t drink during the run of his play on Broadway but had one of his worst binges directly afterward. However, by the time this film began,while his drinking had declined measurably his health had gotten perceptively worse.
On the set: His character had only one usable arm but his performance was twice as powerful. Tracy was also very comfortable on the set. He liked the director and appreciated the talents of the cast…Robert Ryan , Anne Francis, Ernest Borgnine, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, and Lee Marvin. But there was one typical Tracy incident. Ryan and Tracy were doing a scene considered so difficult that an entire day was scheduled for it. But the two stars worked so well together they zapped it on one take. Sturges was ready to move on when Tracy yelled “Oh, no! This scene we just did was scheduled for a day and we’ve done a day’s work” And both Ryan and Tracy walked off the set. Off the set: Spence earned his fifth Oscar nomination but lost to, believe it or not, Ernest Borgnine for “Marty”!
On the set: Spencer really wanted to do this movie. The film’s location was Chamonix, 12,000 feet up in the French Alps. Dmytryk didn’t want Tracy up at the top but when Spence saw that Robert Wagner was afraid to take the dangerous tram ride up to the peak, he offered to go along just to reassure the young actor. Halfway up, the cable car slipped the track and was hanging several hundred feet above terra firma. Even though a rescue team got them down, Spence was all shook up, Yep, he went out and got drunk…and Robert Wagner went with him. Off the set: Spence didn’t drink again until the film was finished then got drunk at the wrap party. He was still drunk when the plane landed. Louise and daughter Susie bundled him up and deposited him at his rented cottage on the Cukor estate. Kate got there on a later flight.
On the set: DirectorStanley Kramer had always been fascinated by the 1925 Scopes ‘monkey trial” in Tennessee and when he found a fictionalized play he could work with, he grabbed it. He also knew that the only actor in the world that could play the character based on Clarence Darrow was Spencer Tracy. Once he had Tracy, he convinced Frederic March, an old pal of Spence’s to take the William Jennings Bryan character and brought in Gene Kelly for the reporter based on journalist H. L. Mencken. But on the set, everyone was watching as Tracy and March went nose-to-nose in long courtroom confrontations using all their scene stealing tricks. Tracy actually picked his nose during March’s summation! Off the set: Spence got his seventh Oscar nomination and was gaining on Kate. But he lost to Burt Lancaster’s “Elmer Gantry”. Notes: Stanley Kramer was one of the few friends Kate and Spence invited over to the cottage. He directed four of Tracy’s last five films.
On the set: Tracy said he” could handle” playing an alcoholic Irish-American priest and he got his chance in this film. Father Matthew Doonan and 3 convicts had to evacuate a children’s hospital on a tropical island before an erupting volcano blew up the whole place. The cast included Frank Sinatra, Jean-Pierre Aumont and Kerwin Matthews and Tracy agreed that Frank was the star of the picture. They were friends but Tracy grumbled incessantly about Frank’s work habits. For one thing, the Chairman of the Board never came on the set until afternoon! Off the set: Kate went along on location and worried daily about the heat and how it would affect Spencer in that heavy black cassock, She kept running up between takes with water and a wet cloth. Notes: Spencer lost another friend in November,1960 before this picture was released. Clark Gable died of a heart attack. Already gone were pals Ronald Colman, Tyrone Power and Humphrey Bogart, a reminder that time was slipping by.
On the set: Abby Mann had created a brilliant play for television’s Playhouse 90 and had extended it into a full-length screenplay with Stanley Kramer. Stanley also wanted to direct it and Spencer Tracy wanted to do it…but not in Berlin. He felt he was much too sick to travel that far and was also terrified of the long transatlantic flight. It was Kate who got him to Berlin. The cast was all-star….Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Widmark and Maximillian Schell who reprised his television role as Hans Rolfe, the German lawyer. Off the set: Tracy predicted that Schell would win the Oscar for Best Actor even though they were both nominated and he did. Kramer and Abby Mann both won Oscars for writing the screenplay with Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift nominated for supporting actors (neither won). Notes: Montgomery Clift literally came apart on the set. He was very ill and in the last throes of alcohol and drug abuse. He couldn’t remember his lines in a critical scene with Tracy. Spence grabbed him and told him he was the greatest young actor alive and “Look, it doesn’t matter to Stanley or me what the words are. …just look into my eyes and tell me how you feel.” Clift followed his advice and it became one of the most powerful scenes in the picture.
On the set: Kramer knew this script by William Rose would be just the thing for Spencer Tracy with a few tweaks here and there. But he hadn’t envisioned Kate doing it. It was all her idea. She knew Spence needed to work and presenting it as a “duet” would be the clincher. But the insurance company wouldn’t take him until Kramer and Kate gave them collateral….their combined salaries. Tracy worked short hours and had frequent days off but his ability to digest dialogue or do scenes in silence with just the expression his face conveying meaning was priceless. Sidney Poitier said he felt he was working with “giants”. Kate’s niece, Katharine Houghton played their daughter in the movie. Off the set: Both Kate and Spencer won nominations for Best Actor awards. He lost to Rod Steiger for “In the Heat of the Night” also with Sidney Poitier. Kate won for both of them. Notes: When the picture wrapped, Spencer told Kramer “Well, Stanley, you’ve had me doing it against the Bible and for the Jews and now for the blacks. What the hell is next?” For Spencer Tracy, that was all there was…but to parody the line from “Pat and Mike” ….”but what there was was cherce”. |
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