James Curtis
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45 “BYGONES”: Leland Hayward, ST, and Fred Zinnemann to Steve Trilling, 5/14/56, Jack Warner Collection.
46 “triumph of man’s spirit”: Fred Zinnemann, A Life in Movies: An Autobiography (New York: Scribner, 1992), p. 148.
47 “Hemingway hated it”: Ibid, p. 150.
48 “tadpole”: Viertel, Dangerous Friends, p. 279.
49 “some difficulty”: Baker, Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, p. 855.
50 “most certainly a problem”: Fred Zinnemann to Selden West, 5/20/92 (SW).
51 “He seemed malevolent”: Fred Zinnemann to Selden West, 9/9/92 (SW).
52 “SAW DAILIES”: Jack L. Warner to Fred Zinnemann, 6/15/56 (AMPAS).
53 “studio tank”: Zinnemann, A Life in Movies, p. 150.
54 “argument had nothing”: Los Angeles Examiner, 6/23/56.
55 “One time at Romanoff’s”: Jean Porter Dmytryk to the author, Encino, 11/17/04.
56 “one damned thing”: Kanin, Tracy and Hepburn, p. 108.
57 “My elusive tenant”: George Cukor to Katharine Hepburn, 2/26/54 (AMPAS).
58 “He knew the way”: Katharine Hepburn, at “A Tribute to Spencer Tracy,” Majestic Theatre, New York, 3/3/86 (courtesy of American Academy of Dramatic Arts).
59 “Kate very attractive”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Selden West.
60 “little wop”: Rex Harrison, Rex (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 173.
61 “lifted a few”: Frank Sinatra, at “A Tribute to Spencer Tracy.”
62 “in a sailor suit”: Frank Sinatra to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, Los Angeles, 12/12/85 (TH).
63 “he did love her”: Seymour Gray to Selden West.
CHAPTER 29 THE LAST HURRAH
1 “no more than adequate”: Daily Variety, 9/27/56.
2 “an actor”: Dmytryk, It’s a Hell of a Life, p. 206.
3 “hard to determine”: New York Times, 11/15/56.
4 “We made inquiries”: Carle, “Magnificent Katharine Hepburn.”
5 “It is regrettable”: Los Angeles Times, 8/26/56.
6 “That morning”: Henry Ephron, We Thought We Could Do Anything (New York: Norton, 1977), p. 184.
7 “great with Bogie”: Lauren Bacall to the author.
8 “For one thing”: Los Angeles Times, 11/25/56.
9 “the whole scene”: Ephron, We Thought We Could Do Anything, p. 188.
10 “desperately ill”: Katharine Hepburn in Bacall on Bogart, Educational Broadcasting Corporation/Turner Entertainment Co., 1988.
11 “deliver the eulogy”: Lauren Bacall to the author.
12 “blocking and rehearsing”: Dina Merrill to Scott Eyman, 4/12/05 (courtesy of Scott Eyman).
13 “remarkable example”: Katharine Hepburn to Heeley and Kramer.
14 “You don’t know”: Joel Greenberg, “The Other Lang,” Focus on Film, summer 1974.
15 “reading a magazine”: Dina Merrill commentary track, Desk Set, DVD edition, 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment, 2004.
16 “Shut your mouth”: Greenberg, “The Other Lang.”
17 “gave it to her”: Dina Merrill to Scott Eyman.
18 “mischievous kid”: Ephron, We Thought We Could Do Anything, p. 191.
19 “didn’t even go”: Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph, 2/27/57.
20 obvious jab: Ingrid Bergman did indeed win the Best Actress Oscar for Anastasia.
21 “felt he was too old”: Greenberg, “The Other Lang.”
22 “schoolgirl crush”: Henry Ephron to Charles Higham, circa 1975 (USC).
23 “They got mixed up”: Paul Mayersberg, Hollywood, the Haunted House (London: Penguin, 1967), p. 93.
24 “powerful generators”: James Wong Howe, “Necessary to Hide Evidences of ‘Fixed Light’ in Film on Sea,” Film and A-V World, August 1960.
25 “my life’s work”: Dallas Morning News, 7/29/57.
26 “make money”: Ernest Hemingway to Leland Hayward, 7/5/57 (EH).
27 “very appealing”: Leland Hayward to Ernest Hemingway, 8/9/57 (NYPL).
28 “Maybe Zinnemann”: New York Post, 8/12/57.
29 “Tracy’s performance”: Leland Hayward to Ernest Hemingway, 8/9/57 (NYPL).
30 “repulsed her”: Fresno Bee, 8/29/57. See also Los Angeles Times, 8/29/57.
31 “She spoke of him”: John Houseman, Final Dress (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 81.
32 “sensed an affinity”: Laurence Olivier to Katharine Hepburn, 7/10/67 (KHLA).
33 “a party to celebrate”: London Sunday Express, 5/21/61.
34 “first citizen”: Philip Dunne, n.d., Philip Dunne Collection, University of Southern California.
35 “out of the black”: Katharine Hepburn to Ella Winter, 11/13/57, Ella Winter Collection, Columbia University.
36 “There were giants”: Los Angeles Examiner, 11/1/57.
37 “BRILLIANT DIRECTOR”: ST to Leland Hayward, 6/28/54 (NYPL).
38 “theory about acting”: Shearer, “Spencer Tracy.”
39 “The wake is as obsolete”: Los Angeles Examiner, 5/4/58.
40 “strong habits”: Katharine Hepburn to Dan Ford, n.d., John Ford Collection.
41 voice of the Old Man: John Sturges didn’t want Tracy to attempt an accent. “We used Hemingway’s trick, which is to drop in a Spanish word once in a while, but when a Spanish person or Cuban speaks to another Cuban, they don’t have an accent. And that was Hemingway’s approach to doing that.” John Sturges to Heeley and Kramer.
42 “Worth all the agony”: Louise Tracy to Mary Kennedy Taylor, 1/12/58, Taylor Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
43 “emotional quality”: Leland Hayward as reported to Jack L. Warner by Steve Trilling, 3/10/58, Jack Warner Collection, University of Southern California.
44 “went to the preview”: Lauren Bacall to the author.
45 “twenty-eight years”: New York Times, 3/16/58.
CHAPTER 30 OUR GREATEST ACTOR
1 “Irish revolutionary”: John Sturges to Heeley and Kramer.
2 Gersten reported: Houseman, Final Dress, p. 123.
3 “meek and motherly”: Graham, Confessions of a Hollywood Columnist, p. 38.
4 “utterly dependent”: Betsy Drake to the author, via telephone, 10/29/05.
5 “She was abject”: Sally Erskine to Selden West, 12/5/91 (SW).
6 “Spence was down”: Chester Erskine to Katharine Hepburn, 5/27/58 (KHNY).
7 “He would come up”: Eddie Lawrence to Selden West.
8 “a beautiful piece”: Hollywood Reporter, 5/19/58.
9 “remarkable achievements”: Daily Variety, 5/21/58.
10 “pay was low”: Donald Spoto, Stanley Kramer, Film Maker (New York: Putnam, 1978), p. 23.
11 vacationing in Europe: After March’s turndown, Shumlin got Melvyn Douglas to fill in for Paul Muni.
12 “enough trouble”: Stanley Kramer to Selden West, Los Angeles, n.d. (SW).
13 “Everyone identified”: George Stevens, Jr., Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age, p. 569.
14 “Kramer said”: William Weber Johnson, rough notes of an unpublished Tracy interview for Time, 10/14/58 (KHLA).
15 price tag: To be exact, the negative cost of The Old Man and the Sea was $5,487,000.
16 “arrange for someone”: Johnson, notes for Time.
17 “all that schmaltz”: Jane Feely Desmond to the author.
18 “getting old”: Johnson, notes for Time.
19 “ ‘Kate’ ”: Dina Merrill to Scott Eyman, 4/12/05. In her column of March 28, Dorothy Kilgallen erroneously reported that Hepburn and her “long-time Great Love” had been “making the scene on the tropical island of Martinique.”
20 “new low”: New York Herald Tribune, 12/29/59.
21 “I earn”: Dallas Morning News, 1/8/60.
22 “The young actors”: Johnson, notes for Time.
23 “really gifted”: Higham and Greenberg, The Celluloid Muse, p. 56.
&nbs
p; 24 “a sort of slightly affected”: Cukor to Higham, Time-Life History of the Movies.
25 “Our company”: Dmytryk, It’s a Hell of a Life, p. 205.
26 “He covers up”: Ezra Goodman, The Fifty Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), p. 269.
27 “an actor is normally trained”: Laraine Day to Barbara Hall.
28 “easy to imitate”: John McCabe, Cagney (New York: Knopf, 1997), p. 256.
29 “the kind of actor”: Truman Capote, “The Duke in His Domain,” New Yorker, 11/9/57.
30 back to the original: First published by the National Book Company of Cincinnati in 1925, the transcripts of “the world’s most famous court trial” were readily available.
31 “improve and sharpen”: Stanley Kramer to Fredric March, 9/8/59, Fredric March Papers, Wisconsin State Historical Society, Madison.
32 “more topical”: Walter Wagner, You Must Remember This (New York: Putnam, 1975), pp. 289–90.
33 supporting cast: Dick York was a last-minute choice for the role of Cates. Kramer originally envisioned Anthony Perkins in the part, later Roddy McDowell.
34 “first exchange”: New York Times, 11/1/59.
35 “We were rehearsing”: Stanley Kramer, unpublished interview with Pete Martin, December 1960 (USC).
36 “doing waltzes”: Donna Anderson to the author, Los Angeles, 1/16/05.
37 “fine powder”: Stanley Kramer, Southern Methodist University Oral History with Ronald L. Davis.
38 “I had been warned”: Stanley Kramer to Pete Martin.
39 “sort of petrified”: Jimmy Boyd to the author, via telephone, 8/27/05.
40 “extras as spectators”: Stanley Kramer to Pete Martin.
41 “Better stand up”: New York Herald Tribune, 12/29/59.
42 “fucking fan”: Robert Wagner to Scott Eyman.
43 “lot of fun”: ST to Pete Martin.
44 “I could understand”: Clive Hirschhorn, Gene Kelly (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), p. 229.
45 “quite a system”: Stanley Kramer to Pete Martin.
46 “Tracy was so good”: Elliott Reid to the author, Los Angeles, 10/21/03.
47 “very funny”: Stanley Kramer to Pete Martin.
48 “At one performance”: Lauren Bacall, By Myself (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 301.
49 “a pair of hands”: Martin Gottfried to Selden West.
50 “struck me as fantastic”: Abby Mann, Judgment at Nuremberg (London: Cassell, 1961), p. v.
51 “Kate … was out”: Philip Langner to the author, via telephone, 3/31/05.
52 “tremendous responsibility”: New York Times, 1/31/60.
53 “our greatest actor”: Newsweek, 6/13/60.
54 “the thing she didn’t admire”: William Self to the author.
55 “Mervyn LeRoy said to me”: Frank Sinatra to Heeley and Kramer.
56 “a certain amount”: Bertha Calhoun to the author.
57 “ringing phrases”: Hollywood Reporter, 6/28/60.
58 “casting genius”: Daily Variety, 6/29/60.
59 “reviews I could have written”: Stanley Kramer to Heeley and Kramer.
60 “enjoyed the movie”: John T. Scopes and James Presley, Center of the Storm (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), p. 270.
61 “reprehensible”: Los Angeles Times, 2/9/60.
62 “The first day”: Kerwin Matthews to the author, 2/26/04.
63 “never interfered”: Mervyn LeRoy, Mervyn LeRoy: Take One (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1974), p. 211.
64 “near perfect”: Gregoire Aslan, unpublished interview with Pete Martin, December 1960 (USC).
65 “Tracy’s turn”: Bob Yager, unpublished interview with Pete Martin, December 1960 (USC).
66 “The problem”: Jean-Pierre Aumont, Sun and Shadow (New York: Norton, 1977), p. 198.
67 “particularly horny”: George Jacobs and William Stadiem, Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra (New York: Harper Entertainment, 2003), p. 212.
68 “brilliant and engrossing”: New York Times, 10/13/60.
69 “first run houses”: Stanley Kramer to Pete Martin.
70 “double disappointment”: Stanley Kramer, American Film Institute Seminar with James Powers, 2/1/77 (AFI).
71 flop: According to records in the Stanley Kramer collection at UCLA, Inherit the Wind had a domestic gross of $1,100,000. In April 1962 it became one of the recent releases acquired by the American Broadcasting Company for its new Sunday night movie slot.
72 “good reporter”: Joe Hyams to Selden West, via telephone, 12/15/93.
73 “thought about directing”: New York Times, 11/3/60.
74 “rare exception”: Beverly Hills Citizen, 6/11/59.
75 “wonderful people”: Los Angeles Mirror, 12/5/60.
76 “By the end”: Kerwin Matthews to the author, 3/14/05.
77 “a lovely set”: LeRoy, Mervyn LeRoy: Take One, p. 211.
78 “I called him”: Stanley Kramer to Pete Martin.
79 “the boy’s big chance”: ST to Pete Martin.
80 “half a million”: Despite Kate Buford’s assertion in her biography of Lancaster that he was paid his usual fee of $750,000 for Judgment at Nuremberg, the actor’s contract in the Stanley Kramer collection shows that he was paid $500,000 and a percentage of the gross. Tracy’s compensation was adjusted to $375,000 to accommodate Lancaster’s percentage. Kramer himself took a producer’s fee of $75,000, deferring the $50,000 he was due as director of the picture.
81 “Frank wasn’t there”: ST to Pete Martin.
CHAPTER 31 THE VALUE OF A SINGLE HUMAN BEING
1 “Dorothy and Louise were two”: Frank Tracy to Selden West.
2 “Being Mrs. Spencer Tracy publicly”: Larry Swindell to the author.
3 “a saint”: Jane Feely Desmond to Selden West.
4 “trailing the Clinic”: Louise Tracy to Mary Kennedy Taylor, 1/12/58, Taylor Collection.
5 “very gratified”: Dr. Edgar Lowell to Jane Ardmore, 8/2/72 (JKA).
6 “absorb my life”: Ardmore, “Clinic,” 7/20/72.
7 “first person”: A kinescope of Louise Tracy’s remarks is at John Tracy Clinic.
8 “go to the back”: Ardmore, “Clinic.”
9 “art director”: William Self to the author.
10 “a lot of things”: Ruthie Thompson to the author.
11 “his eye trouble”: Ardmore, “John.” Although John Tracy Clinic was strictly oralist during Louise Tracy’s lifetime, many graduates of the program went on to learn American Sign Language (ASL), using speech and lipreading to communicate with the hearing world and ASL to talk with their deaf friends (and those hearing friends who knew ASL). Sign is almost universally regarded as more precise than lipreading.
12 “distribution objection”: Steven Bach, Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend (New York: Morrow, 1992), p. 407.
13 “Tracy’s no lodestone”: Abby Mann to the author, via telephone, 1/23/05.
14 “character was guilty”: Kate Buford, Burt Lancaster: An American Life (New York: Knopf, 2000), p. 212.
15 “single scene”: Patricia Bosworth, Montgomery Clift (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), p. 359. According to his friend Jack Larson, Clift was offered $200,000 to play Colonel Lawson, the part subsequently played in the film by Richard Widmark. Evidently Clift found the role of Petersen more interesting from an actor’s perspective and agreed to do it for expenses alone. “He had a car and driver on call twenty-four hours a day,” Larson recalled. “I’m sure they ended up spending more than $10,000 on his expenses.”
16 “ ‘pace-setting’ ”: Daily Variety, 2/20/61.
17 “hard ticket”: Variety, 3/8/61.
18 “still in use”: Spoto, Stanley Kramer, Film Maker, p. 229.
19 “Max Schell arrived”: Marshall Schlom to the author, Brea, Calif., 8/11/05.
20 “I acted less”: New York Herald Tribune, 12/6/60.
21 “An actor’s personality”: James Zunner, �
��Tracy: The Great Stone Face,” Cue, 7/12/58.
22 “what he really meant”: Erskine, Spencer Tracy: A Biographical and Interpretive Symposium, p. 15.
23 “he could play anything”: John Ford to Katharine Hepburn, n.d., John Ford Collection.
24 “Everyone in the crew”: Spoto, Stanley Kramer, Film Maker, p. 231.
25 “All you can do”: New York Times, 4/30/61.
26 “She was nice”: “Richard Widmark Part II,” Films in Review, May 1986.
27 “good character shots”: Bob Yager to Pete Martin.
28 “Cook County”: ST to Fredric March, 3/3/61, Fredric March Papers.
29 “I care about”: ST to Pete Martin.
30 “I can’t really answer”: Los Angeles Times, 3/19/61.
31 “very low point”: Richard Widmark to David Heeley and Joan Kramer, Los Angeles, 12/17/85 (TH).
32 “greatest reactor”: Bosworth, Montgomery Clift, p. 360.
33 “If I remember”: Erskine, Spencer Tracy: A Biographical and Interpretive Symposium, p. 60.
34 adjusted his dialogue: The blue pages for Judgment at Nuremberg are in the Montgomery Clift Collection at New York Public Library.
35 “a better job”: Marshall Schlom to the author, via e-mail, 4/10/09.
36 “Julie Harris”: Hollywood Citizen News, 3/22/61.
37 “cliché come true”: Ibid.
38 “It meant a lot”: “Richard Widmark Part II.”
39 “a performance!”: Hollywood Citizen News, 3/22/61.
40 “almost a symbol”: New York Times, 4/30/61.
41 “laughed a lot”: Marlene Dietrich, Marlene (New York: Grove Press, 1989), p. 110.
42 “not my type”: Bach, Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend, p. 408.
43 “very lonely man”: Dietrich, Marlene, p. 242.
44 dissenting opinion: It’s interesting to note that Judge Kenneth Norris, the third member of the tribunal, was played by actor-director Kenneth MacKenna. In 1928 MacKenna was, very briefly, Katharine Hepburn’s leading man in The Big Pond. For years he was also head of the Story and Scenario Department at M-G-M. In 1941 it was MacKenna who handled the purchase of Woman of the Year.
45 “During rehearsals”: Los Angeles Times, 8/28/61.
46 Lancaster approached: Erskine, Spencer Tracy: A Biographical and Interpretive Symposium, p. 71.
47 “almost conked”: Ft. Pierce (Fla.) News Tribune, 5/15/61.