Photoplay (Jan-Sep 1937)

THE ADVENTUROUS LIFE By HOWARD SHARPE SPENCER TRACY (thirtyish, a husband, a father, once of the stage but so lately of the cinema) awoke to the rhythmic beat of train wheels clattering over ties. In the close heat of the stateroom — it was before a-ir conditioning — he sat up, raised the blind, and looked out over the bleak wastes of the Mojave. This afternoon, unless there were an accident or something, the Tracy family would be in Hollywood; and Peck's Bad Boy of Milwaukee and environs, who so shortly before had sat at lessons and muttered against the discipline of schooling, would be a full-fledged movie star, with all the attendant publicity and adulation. Lying on his elbow, Spencer reviewed his circumstances. "If I get a cold in the head, it'll be news and people in Kalamazoo and Idaho will say, 'Spencer Tracy's sick,' " he thought. "When I walk down the street, people will turn and stare." The idea, so monstrous and so impossible, pleased him inordinately. For a long time he lay and watched himself walking through lanes of staring people. He remembered, for no reason, the day he had first run away from home and had spent the afternoon playing with a saloon keeper's sons in the alley behind the saloon. There was an inexplicable relation between that adventure and this, the same unreality. Amazingly ingenuous, he was. The several years of touring, of narrow dressing rooms and hasty make-up and Broadway audiences, had made little impression on the simple Irish personality of Mr. Tracy. They say that you can't invade the decadent clearing house of the show world without inhaling its sophisticated breath, without assuming its special worldliness. How can a single spirit, despite its personal strength, escape the insidious influence of a world pitifully cynical, completely synthetic, within its small confines? But Spencer had, incongruously. Living, to him, was still a matter of existence in the sun, shelter before the rain, food to eat, a wife, children, the straightforward happiness engendered only within a straightforward mind. He had his wife, his children, his living. Laughter still poured from him with spontaneous ease. And this new adventure — this invasion of the magic land called Hollywood — was an exciting thing. Whistling slightly off-key, he disentangled himself from his berth and started the search for his shaving implements. | — IIS contract was with the old Fox company, and you must not confuse that organization (of heated memory) with the new Twentieth Century-Fox machine which is a superb collection of genius, managed with precision. On the earlier lot contract players led a nervous life, fraught with options unrenewed. There were innumerable one-shots. People came from other studios, or were "discovered" with much fanfare, and then, after a brief meteoric period of fame, disappeared once more into the limbo of cinema's forgotten. There were a few, however, who survived: Will Rogers was one. His new and good friend Spencer Tracy, was another 56 Concluding the biography of the turbulent Irishman. His escapades led him through misery and heartbreak, but he emerged victorious and faces the future unafraid I suppose if Spencer had been starred to such an extent that the public had become over-aware of him, oblivion would have been his after the first two or three pictures. But working doggedly, he managed to fill his secondary roles with such assured ability — and with such seeming lack of self-importance— that the powerswho-were found opening after opening for him. He played in an imposing collection of productions without ever achieving the star billing which, in his own mind, he had awarded himself that day on the train. He made "Quick Millions," "Goldie," "Six Cylinder Love," "She Wanted a Millionaire," "Disorderly Conduct," "Young America," "Society Girl," and "The Painted Woman." He made "20,000 Years in Sing Sing," "Me And My Gal," "Sky Devils," "Face in the Sky," and "The Power and the Glory," which is still his favorite He made "Shanghai Madness," 'Looking for Trouble," and "Marie Galante.' There were others, but lists are boresome. In the meantime the business of creating for his family the sort of home and background he had always dreamed about went on apace. Pursuing his penchant for quiet, unpretentious comfort, he bought a beautiful house which rambled in picturesque disregard of convention over several acres in a sunlit valley. There he planted fruit trees and built pens for chickens; he bought dogs for little John and for Louise (who came to them soon after their arrival in Hollywood) to play with, and several horses for his own amusement. Mrs. Tracy, Spencer's mother, lonely without her husband and bored at last with Milwaukee, packed her trunks and came to California to live with her son. Spencer's brother, Carroll, came too and assumed his position in the menage as business manager and adviser. The old friendship with Pat O'Brien, himself in Hollywood now as a Warners' star, was resumed. Specialists came to the house and examined Johnny, and said that his deafness need not interfere with his progress as a normal, happy youngster. Life settled again into routine, more opulent now and less hurried, less nervous Spencer worked hard, unsatisfied with his progress but soothed by the steadily increasing salary checks. He played polo on Sundays, gave an occasional quiet dinner party, and read a lot. The months passed, unchanging, peaceful . . . And then Spencer Tracy — he of the steadfast Celtic attitude, he of the common viewpoint — went stark, raving crazy. I confess the difficulty of recounting the year that followed in his life with any sort of clarity or understanding. When you have heard the story from his own lips then the task of setting it down in prosaic type on prosaic paper seems an uncongenial one. Facing each other from opposite chairs in a little studio office, we thrashed the thing out between us during two hours, while the afternoon light faded and dusk seeped in. When he had finished his story finally, I could say nothing for a moment or two. Conflicting emotions, of admiration and pity and sheer amazement, held my tongue silent I don't think Tracy has ever re-lived that period in words so genuine, so unashamed, so heartbreaking to another listener. And I know he won't again, because it's a part of the past