“Hell, I used to take two-week lunch hours.”
Known for quiet confidence and effortless presence, Spencer Tracy was one of MGM’s top leading men, and indeed one of the top leading men of all time. Tracy studied drama in New York and spent several years making ends meet in summer stock and repertory productions. His performance in the Broadway crime drama The Last Mile (1930) caught the eye of director John Ford, who cast him opposite Humphrey Bogart in Up the River later that year. Tracy appeared in twenty-five films for Fox between 1930 and 1935, primarily in tough-guy roles. One notable exception was The Power and the Glory, written by Preston Sturges; Tracy’s performance was praised, but it didn’t translate at the box office, and Fox slowly soured on him. He switched to MGM in 1935, and his career took off. He won Best Actor Oscars two years in a row—the first actor ever to do so—for Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938). He was nominated another seven times during his career for such iconic roles as Father of the Bride (1950), Inherit the Wind (1960), and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967). (Tracy is tied with Sir Laurence Olivier for the most Best Actor nominations of all time.) While filming Woman of the Year (1942), Tracy began an affair with costar Katharine Hepburn that lasted the rest of their lives, though it was never acknowledged publicly. Tracy suffered from both diabetes and emphysema. He died of a heart attack just seventeen days after completing Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
THE PHONE RANG. Not his office phone; the special one. As MGM’s Vice President of Publicity and its resident fixer, Howard Strickling figured that almost any call to his office would be a new mess to clean up, but when this specific phone rang, he knew it was a mess. It was, more or less, a dedicated line. Dedicated to Spencer Tracy.
Strickling picked up and, sure enough, the Trocadero nightclub was calling to say that Strickling “might want to know” Spencer Tracy was at the club. That was it—no shouting, no fisticuffs. Tracy was simply present. Strickling hung up and called MGM’s chief of security, Whitey Hendry. Hendry was the former chief of police of Culver City and his instructions were simple: “Assemble the Tracy Squad.”
Spencer Tracy had been part of MGM’s roster for less than a year. His films at Fox had fared so poorly, and his tendency to go on drinking binges was so troublesome, that the studio had let him go in April 1935. But MGM’s Irving Thalberg knew talent when he saw it, and he signed Tracy the very day Fox severed ties with him. Thalberg’s boss, Louis Mayer, was hesitant; he didn’t need “another drunken Wallace Beery.”
Thalberg managed to sway his boss, but in truth, Beery was a model citizen compared to the unique mess that was Spencer Tracy. Tracy wasn’t just a drunk—he was a self-flagellating, self-immolating, utterly filthy drunk. Sure, Tracy understood the value of public image and so yes, his binges were kept very private. Tracy rarely drank in public and, other than a few exceptions, was the consummate professional when working. That said, privacy did nothing to dilute the extremity of his habits.
Tracy’s most common binge technique was locking himself in a room at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn for weeks at a time, downing bottle after bottle of whiskey while sitting naked in the bathtub. It was a peculiar routine. Afraid of airplanes, he would take the train to New York (a four-day ride) just to drink in that tub—rising not even to use the toilet. Maybe Tracy knew that he would sit there forever if he didn’t make it so unfathomably disgusting that he’d rather quit drinking than remain one minute longer. Or maybe he enjoyed it. Nobody knows anything, except that after a few weeks of marinating in his own waste, Tracy would emerge and act like a human again.
Unfortunately, Tracy sometimes slipped in public. Like the night he was hauled off to jail in handcuffs and leg straps for resisting arrest, this when Tracy was still working for Fox. The cops had caught him on Sunset Boulevard driving erratically. (What star didn’t drive drunk on Sunset?) It seemed the Clover Club (an illegal casino) was located next to Lee Francis’s (a brothel the studios used for visiting VIPs). Tracy had been found drunk in a borrowed car trying unsuccessfully to navigate the driveway that separated the two. This would not look good.
Louis B. Mayer was not about to let such a incident happen again. Tracy was what the MGM fixer Strickling called a “multiproblem person,” and multiproblem people needed multiperson solutions. So Strickling had assembled the Tracy Squad: an ambulance driver, a doctor, and four security guards dressed as paramedics, all of whom served no function at MGM other than picking up inebriated stars. As further protection, every drinking establishment within twenty-five miles of the MGM lot had been given the number of that private, direct line to Strickling and instructed to call the moment Tracy walked in. It seemed a good strategy, but it also hadn’t been put to the test until now.
By the time the Tracy Squad pulled up at the Trocadero, there’d already been an incident, apparently with director William Wellman. Wellman had uttered some unflattering remarks about the actress Loretta Young, who he directed in The Call of the Wild and with whom Tracy had been in a much-publicized affair. In defense of Young’s honor, Tracy had taken a swing. Some said the punch hit Wellman in the gut; others said it missed altogether. What no one disputed was that Wellman’s counterpunch landed nicely. Tracy flew over a nearby table. That was when the Squad arrived. They grabbed Tracy, put him in the back of the ambulance, and drove him home, where security stood guard until he sobered up. It could’ve been worse. Still, the Tracy Squad would have to work on their response time.