Kate Remembered (33 page)

So it came as a shock to me that summer when I received one of the most unforgettable phone calls of my life—one in which, after a few minutes of pleasantries, Irene said, “I'm calling to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye? Where are you going?”

“I said, ‘I'm calling to say goodbye' . . . goodbye . . . the big trip.” It dawned on me what she was saying, but I couldn't believe it.

“Is everything all right?” I asked. Irene said, “Don't I sound all right?” I replied that she sounded better than she had in ages. “That's right,” she said, “That's why I'm calling to say goodbye.”

Irene explained that for the first time in years, she was happy with her life. “Everything's in order,” she said. And because she was relatively free of pain, she didn't want to endure “the real thing” when it came along. “Well, maybe it won't come along,” I suggested, and she could go on in her present state for many more years. “I don't want to go on for many more years,” she replied.

“But don't you want to see your children's lives play out, and your grandson. You adore him. And what about your friends? I've just started this book, and I want to be able to share it with you.”

“Darling,” she said, “I do care about your book. So we'll keep talking to each other every few days . . . and you'll come to see me every few months. And I'll ask about your book, and you'll tell me, and I know how this whole chapter of your life will end. I'm tired of watching things when I know how they'll end.”

I suggested that she was probably going through a kind of depression, and maybe a little time and perhaps some medication would change her attitude. “Do I sound depressed?” she asked. “I can't remember the last time I felt this good.”

“So why are you calling then? What can I do?” I asked. She told me that I could just carry on being her friend as though this call had never happened. She explained that she was calling five or six people, whom she named. Kate was not among them. She said we had become “special friends”; and she didn't want me to pick up the paper one morning and suddenly read her obituary.

“Well, you're smart enough to know that this is a cry for help, then,” I said. “And I'm going to call somebody—a mutual friend, a doctor, your boys, Kate.”

“No!” she shouted into the phone. “If you discuss this call with anybody, I will never speak to you again.”

We talked for another two hours, and I reluctantly agreed to her terms. But I begged her to discuss the matter with her sons. If she didn't, I argued, she was putting an unfair burden on her friends. She agreed.

“So is this really goodbye then?” I asked before hanging up. “No,” she said, “—probably late September, but certainly by the first week of October.”

I was stunned. I thought, perhaps, a doctor had given her a death sentence of some kind. A recurrence of her cancer, maybe? But Irene had said that was not the case; or, I tried to recall, had she merely issued a non-denial denial? So I played by the rules and said nothing to anybody. Our conversations with each other continued without further reference to the phone call, though I did send her missives with small comments that revealed that I had listened to everything she had told me over the years. She replied with grateful notes.

On October 11, 1990, during a break at the Yale library, I picked up my phone messages from Los Angeles, which included an urgent call from John Goldwyn, Samuel Goldwyn's grandson and Irene Selznick's godson. He told me the news that Irene had been found dead that morning, wasn't it shocking?

Over the next few weeks, I learned of a few others who had received Irene's farewell phone calls. She had discussed the matter with her children, I learned, though they were obviously unable to thwart her plans. She had not called Kate, who probably would have been more supportive of her exit plan than she imagined. Then I learned that Irene died under circumstances even more mysterious than I had imagined.

There was apparently no evidence that Irene had committed suicide. I was told she had stayed up late that night, fussing with papers and making a few calls. She was found dead in her bed in the morning, with her hands folded over her chest, holding her eyeglasses, and wearing a beatific look. I have since pursued the story of exactly how Irene Selznick died, and the best answer seems to be that she, as only she could do, simply willed it.

The memorial service was arranged for November ninth at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. Kate had no intention of attending. I called her the week before and the night before and argued that I thought she would feel better if she went, that Irene had played an important role in her life. “What's the point?” Kate asked. “She's dead. She won't know the difference.”

“What about Danny and Jeffrey?” I asked. “It would mean a lot to them.” There was no arguing about that.

I swung by the next day and her driver took us to the Ethel Barrymore before the doors inside had even opened. Kate barged in and I followed, and several ushers called out that she couldn't enter yet, as they were still setting up. Hearing the commotion, Danny, who was producing the event, came up the aisle, told the ushers it was all right, and embraced Kate. Her eyes welled up seeing him. He asked us where we wanted to sit, and we selected center orchestra seats. Minutes later the few hundred others were admitted. All the speakers that afternoon were concise, eloquent, funny, and on the mark, just as Irene would have insisted. She came across as a no-nonsense woman whom everybody found challenging.

After quickly escaping to Kate's waiting car, she said, “Don't ever have one of those for me.” I said I was sure some tribute was inevitable. “Well, luckily I won't have to be there for it,” she added, “and neither should you.” I suggested that Irene's service had provided some comfort for everybody there. “Not me,” she said. “She's dead, and nothing's going to bring her back. Better if everybody had stayed home and thought about her for a moment, then gone on with their lives. And that's all they should do when I die. And if anybody wants to do more than that, they can rent one of my movies.”

A few dozen of us, Kate included, went back to Irene's apartment. The rooms were filled with several recognizable faces from an earlier era of show business. They all focused on the foyer when Katharine Hepburn entered. While she spoke to Danny Selznick, I fixed two plates of food. After a few minutes, Kate was making motions to leave, when a short, old man made a beeline toward her, calling out, “Will you speak to me?” I could see she didn't recognize him, and I was able to whisper “Elia Kazan” before he was standing in front of her.

“Gadg,” she said to a man she had not spoken to in more than forty years, “that can't be you.” He beamed and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. While they exchanged greetings, I could see another elderly man watching the reunion. Emboldened, he walked over as well, and said, “And will you speak to
me?”

“Of course, I will,” she said, having no idea who was then pecking at her other cheek. As he spoke to Kazan for a moment, I whispered, “Joe Mankiewicz.”

“Good God,” she said.

For the next two minutes everybody was all smiles. Then Kate said she had to leave. I accompanied her to the street. She said she was going home but that I should go back to the party and come over when it was done. She climbed into the backseat of the waiting car, and before the driver pulled away from the curb at the Pierre's Sixty-first Street entrance, she rolled down her window and said, “Do I look as awful as they do?”

“God no, Kate. At least they knew who
you
were.”

I returned to the tenth floor. After a few minutes, I slipped away from the living room and retreated to the den, where Irene and I had always sat. A guard was posted there, watching over the artwork and personal effects. I went to the little refrigerator and pulled out the bottle of “Cary's aquavit” and poured myself a shot. Then I sat in the chair in front of the Mary Cassatt picture of the little girl and cried.

N
o, I couldn't in all truth say I was surprised by the offer,” Kate remembered of that afternoon at the end of 1966. “But, honestly, can you imagine me as a fireman's wife?”

Stanley Kramer, who had become Hollywood's most socially conscious filmmaker and who had directed Spencer Tracy three times already, visited the Cukor guesthouse with a new idea for a movie he was hatching with the screenwriter of
It's a Mad
,
Mad, Mad, Mad World
, William Rose. A handsome—and alcoholic—American expatriate living on the Channel Island of Jersey, Rose was plotting the story of a wealthy British couple whose daughter brings home the man she intends to marry, “perfect in every way”—except for his being of another race. Sidney Poitier, then the most successful man of color ever to have appeared in motion pictures, had already expressed interest in playing the fiance, a cultivated professional man, the kind of role model that had not appeared in a mainstream film. With that piece in place, Kramer set about casting the costars.

A devoted friend and fan of Spencer Tracy, Kramer had suddenly thought this film might provide a glorious last hurrah for the ailing actor. By transplanting the story from its English locale to American soil, Tracy could easily play a retired, middle-class Irish-American, a former cop or fireman. Having broached the idea to Tracy without being brushed off, Kramer continued to spin his gears. If, indeed, this was likely to be Spencer Tracy's last appearance in motion pictures—in a love story at that—he asked himself what would be more moving than casting him opposite his romantic partner of twenty-five years.

By the time Kramer had arrived at the cottage, the story had shifted even further. “Once I heard Stanley describe the setup, and he was suggesting that the fireman be in a more elevated position,” Kate recalled, “I knew that he was thinking of me to play the wife.” The three kicked around several possibilities that day. Tracy, who had for decades played the “conscience” in so many dramas—the all-American voice of truth and justice—would be wasted playing a priest in this romantic story; and he had already portrayed a judge for Kramer. They discussed his being a newspaper publisher, a man who had long been a liberal voice of reason, a man who stood for social justice—who suddenly balked when the ultimate test of his liberalism landed on his own doorstep. He would find himself coming up against his wife, who would be speaking from the heart, a sensible woman who would be the voice of romance.

Kate had mixed feelings about the project. She thought it sounded like a wonderful film—“with something important to say”; and she was eager to do it. For the first time, however, she worried that Tracy was not physically able to complete the job. Even in the world of studio doctors who routinely signed off on major health risks so that movies could get made, Spencer Tracy had become uninsurable. Knowing that, Kramer made two unusual promises to the actor. He said he would arrange the entire shooting schedule around Tracy, so that he would only have to shoot a few hours a day—and in the morning at that, when he was at his best. Furthermore, he said if Hepburn and Tracy would not make this movie, neither would he.

Columbia Studios agreed to finance the picture only if Hepburn would put her quarter-million-dollar salary in escrow along with the director's half million until the completion of principal photography. That would provide enough insurance to reshoot with another actor, should that eventuality arise. Kramer put his money where his mouth was, an act of faith and friendship that Hepburn never forgot. “All of Stanley's movies came straight from the heart,” she said. “There are damn few like him.”

He retreated to Jersey with writer Rose, who knocked out the script of
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
in a matter of weeks. In some ways, the material might have been better suited as a play. A handful of characters—the young lovers, their respective sets of parents, and a priest and maid for some comic relief—converge upon a single set, the San Francisco home of Matt and Christina Drayton, where they deliver speeches that argue all sides of the issue of the impending interracial marriage. But knowing they had Tracy and Hepburn—with at least one of them in a valedictory role—gave Rose and Kramer not only the voices to work with but also years of cinematic history.

Unlike Garbo and Gilbert, Myrna Loy and William Powell, Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan—even Abbott and Costello—Tracy and Hepburn had matured as a couple. Over a generation, the public had watched them encounter a number of different situations together, always a little ahead of their times. Paradoxically, this unmarried twosome had become the symbol of the all-American couple, exemplars of family values and, even more, of human values. Kate told me years later that while working on his script, “Willy Rose said he'd often ask himself, ‘Now what would Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn say here?' Not the real Spence and the real me. But the images everybody knew. Queer, isn't it?”