Kate Remembered (23 page)

“Of course she knows who you are!” Phyllis interjected with her lovely way of stating the obvious. “Everybody knows who you are. Why, everybody in the world knows who you are.”

“Yes, dearie. Of course they do. But this is a tricky situation. Think about it. I'll write a letter tomorrow, and you can decide then if I should send it.”

I said that was a good idea, and a generous one at that . . . and that we must all keep mum on the subject. “Oh, don't worry about Phyllis,” Kate assured me. “She's an absolute crypt. She's walking around with all sorts of secrets. Of course, she's losing her mind, so God only knows what she even remembers any longer.”

“That's not true,” Phyllis protested. “I remember everything I remember.”

“Yes, of course, dear.”

The next day Kate showed me her letter, which she had entrusted Cynthia to type. It was strong and concise; and we agreed it could only help. Just days after Kate mailed it, I learned that Mrs. Lindbergh was willing to meet me, the first sure sign that the permissions to write her late husband's biography might be mine. Weeks later, they were.

Suddenly, I had unique access to some two thousand boxes of papers, the bulk of which were in Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University in New Haven, about forty miles down the turnpike from Fenwick. The headquarters for my work for the next few years would become Connecticut, and the time I would get to spend with Kate would increase and intensify.

Hepburn continued to become more public than she had in the past. She agreed to show up at benefits for the Actors' Home in New Jersey, to accept an occasional fashion award (“Are you sure they didn't mean Audrey?” I asked her while opening one such invitation, and she pushed an ice-cream cone in my face), and to be the guest of honor at the annual Planned Parenthood banquet, for which she wrote a long, moving speech. (I urged her to conclude her remarks with the statement, “I believe strongly in Planned Parenthood because I had the benefit of a mother and father who planned theirs.” But she dismissed it as “too corny.”) In 1990 she accepted one of the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors, having refused the decoration several times. When I asked why she had finally agreed to take part in the ceremonies that year, she explained that she just couldn't turn down George Stevens, Jr.—one of the founders of the award and the son of her former paramour—any longer. “And,” she said, “I was waiting until the Reagans were out of the White House, because I wanted nothing to do with either of them.”

She also began to allow documentary filmmakers into her life—into her houses and her history. She sometimes called the night before a shoot, ostensibly about something else but ultimately to discuss what she might talk about. Katharine Hepburn hardly needed coaching; but I think she was questioning the seemliness, at her age, of talking about her personal life, notably the one topic she had avoided most of her lire—Spencer Tracy. The primary reason she had long held out was Tracy's widow. But Louise Tracy had died in 1983, and Kate had since come to meet their daughter, Susie. She took a real liking to her and repeatedly made a point of saying they were friends.

I gave one general piece of advice to Kate—that if she was about to discuss Spencer Tracy in an upcoming documentary, she should not be coy. Kate asked what I meant by that. I said that a lot of people for a long time had made certain assumptions about her relationship with him, but that until somebody heard something from her lips, it was hearsay. Only she, I said, knew her true feelings; and if she planned to “go public,” then she should be specific about them.

She asked how frank she should be. Coming from someone who had guarded her privacy so masterfully for so many decades, this question threw me. I could see that she was growing anxious—eager to impart but not to exploit. I suggested she make her comments more about herself than about Tracy, about how
she
felt. If you could, I asked, what would you say to him today? That, I explained, might show the audience what he meant to her, with twenty years of hindsight. That night she wrote a letter to Tracy, which allowed her to put some of her thoughts and feelings in perspective. To my amazement, she read it the next day—rather dramatically, as it turned out—on camera.

My friend Irene once said, “I liked Spence, but I never really understood him or what his life with Kate was about.” In many ways, neither did Kate. Her open letter to him was largely a litany of questions—Why couldn't he sleep? What did he like to do? What were the demons he was battling? Why the “escape hatch” of alcoholism “to get away from the remarkable you? What was it, Spence?” Even more revealing, Kate added, “I meant to ask you.”

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was born in Milwaukee on April 5, 1900, the second son of Carrie Brown, a Protestant turned Christian Scientist, and John Tracy, a hard-drinking Irish Catholic whose parents had been refugees from the Great Potato Famine. In one generation, the Tracys had become middle-class, middle-of-the-road Midwesterners, as John worked his way up to becoming general sales manager of a trucking company. According to Kate, who never met him, “he worked hard and drank hard” and made his two sons toe the line. Spencer often fell short.

Possessed of seemingly ordinary intelligence and looks, he stumbled through his youth, getting kicked out of several schools and serving a hitch in the navy before completing high school and entering Ripon College. He didn't find himself until a dorm-mate introduced him to college dramatics. On the Ripon stage, Tracy proved to have a prodigious memory for dialogue and an utterly natural acting style. He suddenly had an identity on campus, doing something at which he excelled.

Road companies of Broadway hits often came to Milwaukee, and one provided Tracy his first glimpse of a professional theatrical production—Laurette Taylor in a wildly popular sentimental comedy,
Peg o'My Heart.
By the time the collegian saw the play, it had become Taylor's war-horse, a role she had played on and off for a decade. Kate noted, “Spence always said it was the most exciting piece of theater he ever saw in his life.”

At the end of his first school year, Tracy leapt at an offer to join the Ripon debating team—because it meant a trip to New York City. There he not only saw more plays but he also auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Upon his acceptance, he dropped out of Ripon to study acting. His father's unexpected approval of the decision came no doubt because Spencer was self-supporting, receiving a monthly pension as a veteran. He shared a small room with a friend from Milwaukee who was also taking classes at the American Academy, Pat O'Brien. He quickly picked up bit parts—including a nonspeaking role as one of the robots in the Theatre Guild production of
R.U.R.

In 1923, Tracy graduated from the Academy and went on to small roles in summer stock. In White Plains, New York, he met Louise Treadwell, the leading lady in his repertory company, which dissolved after one season. When she was offered a similar position in another troupe in Cincinnati, she accepted—on the condition that they hire Spencer Tracy as her leading man. That September, they married.

Nine and a half months later, their first child was born—a son, John, who, they realized a year later, was totally deaf. While the boy's condition remained a dark subject into which Hepburn herself seldom delved, she said, “Spencer felt responsible, for the rest of his life. It just didn't seem possible to him that God should have brought such an innocent creature into the world that way, and, so, it must be his fault. This was his cross to bear, and when he could take it no longer, he drank to forget about it.” Kate's few descriptions to me of Tracy's marriage made it sound as though it had been based more on his gratitude toward his wire—for believing in him and his talent—than love, and that the Tracys' lives were bound together by his feelings of indebtedness and guilt.

For a few years, Tracy found little solace in his career. He got a promising part in a forgettable play called
A Royal Fandango,
starring Ethel Barrymore and featuring a young Edward G. Robinson; but it quickly closed. (A framed playbill listing the dramatis personae—Ethel Barrymore at the top of the list and Spencer Tracy at the very bottom—sat on a bookcase in Kate's bedroom.) When he sought comfort in bottles and brothels, his wife looked the other way.

After almost seven years of good enough performances in bad plays to keep getting cast again, Spencer Tracy received the lead role of Killer Mears in a prison drama called
The Last Mile.
It opened in February 1930, and the star became that year's “overnight sensation,” receiving powerful notices in what became a hit play.

Hollywood noticed as well. John Ford was in New York scouting for actors for a prison movie called Up the River, which he was about to direct for Fox. Tracy took a six-week furlough from the play to appear in the film—alongside newcomer Humphrey Bogart. Then he returned to Broadway.

When
Up the River
proved to be a hit, Fox offered Tracy a five-year contract. The actor moved to Hollywood with his wife and son. He made two dozen films during that period, most of them forgettable. Unlike Katharine Hepburn, who became an instant star, Tracy followed the path of most studio players, who had to slog through scripts whose primary distinction was that they were ready to be filmed right away, thus fulfilling the studio-owned theaters' need for new product. Tracy continued to drown his sorrows and to find solace in one-night stands, becoming known as one of the biggest drunks and womanizers in town. Louise Tracy revealed her concern publicly only when one of her husband's affairs with a costar proved to be of greater significance. The Tracys separated, and he announced that he wanted to marry Loretta Young. Ultimately, she refused his offer, however, and Louise Tracy took her husband back.

His studio no longer felt the same. Despite Tracy's consistently strong performances—notably in Preston Sturges's production of
The Power and the Glory
—Fox wearied of his drunken escapades and resultant bad press. In one picture, he went missing so long that they had to replace him. In April 1935, Fox let his contract lapse.

MGM wasted no time in offering him a richer one. With it came better material and bigger costars. Within the next five years, Tracy had worked with Clark Gable twice (in
San Francisco
and
Test Pilot
) and won his back-to-back Oscars. He also made films—and had affairs—with Myrna Loy (during
Whipsaw)
and Joan Crawford (during
Mannequin
). Despite the endless gossip about Tracy's escapades, most people in Hollywood contended that he had become the finest actor in movies. Louise contented herself with her ceremonial role as Mrs. Spencer Tracy, which now included caring for their second child as well, the daughter named Louise whom they called Susie.

In 1941 Tracy reluctantly agreed to appear in an MGM remake of the classic story
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
He had hoped to play the dual role with a minimum of makeup, allowing the characterizations of the dueling personalities to come from within. The studio and the director, Victor Fleming, saw things differently. The production was an unhappy experience for Tracy, proving to be his biggest flop and one of the few times he received poor reviews. His only consolation was a love affair that bloomed between him and his leading lady, Ingrid Bergman. The actress had appeared in but a handful of American movies; but, like Hepburn—with her healthy, scrubbed looks and distinctive voice—she had a meteoric rise in Hollywood. Although Bergman was married and a mother, her relationship with Tracy continued beyond their time on the set together. He soon left for Florida to film
The Yearling;
and when that picture shut down, the lovers picked up where they had left off.

I learned over the years that Kate had a rather trustworthy memory of most important moments in her life, but she was genuinely vague concerning those things about which she chose not to know. Of that moment just before she had met Spencer Tracy, she would later write in her memoirs about the details of his performance in
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
how he had been so embarrassed by the theatrical accoutrements demanded for the performance that he used to ride to and from the set in a limousine with the shades drawn. “Ingrid Bergman played the whore,” Kate added correctly; “she won an award, I think.” About that, Kate thought wrong, though she was clearly trying to bend over backwards to give credit to an actress she greatly admired, even where it was undue. Bergman did not receive the first of her three Oscars until
Gaslight,
a few years later.

Woman of the Year
began filming in late August of 1941. As Joe Mankiewicz remembered, “This was the biggest picture on the lot, the one everyone in town was talking about. Of course, anything with Spence was big; and Kate had just come back in a big way. But she knew she was still skating on thin ice. One picture a new career does not make.” As if all that were not enough to keep rumor mills grinding, Kate had selected the director for
Woman of the Year
herself; and instead of attempting to duplicate her recent success with George Cukor, she chose to fall back again on George Stevens.

And, briefly, back again into his arms. Although Tracy and Cukor would become intimate friends over the years, Hepburn—functioning as a quasi-producer on
Woman of the Year
—felt it was essential that Tracy feel “completely at ease” with the director. She said, “I just thought he should have a big, manly man on his team—somebody who could talk baseball.”

Within days, however, something extraordinary happened on their MGM soundstage. The very romance depicted in the movie—the unpretentious, plain-talking guy falling for the fancy, hyperactive cosmopolite—played out before the very eyes of the entire cast and crew. At first, producer Mankiewicz wasn't sure if he was imagining things or not; but with each day of the production, he said, more and more people watching the rushes of the film noticed as well. “It's the goddamnedest thing,” he asserted years later. “It's there in the finished movie for the whole world to see.”