... And who does not know Spencer Tracy? Of whom it has been said in Hollywood: were it not for Clark Gable, he would be king of the actors outright. It may please our lady readers to learn these amusing facts about him...
Spencer Tracy's wardrobe, like actors' wardrobes generally, is packed with many elegant suits, but they are confined to three colors and no more: blue, gray, and brown — colors that harmonize with his red hair and his clear blue eyes — for this sedate actor wears no other colors. As for his shirts, they are all white! — all, that is, except one shirt of light gray that can hardly be told from white!
Tracy hates "make-up," and whenever the "make-up man" — the person who prepares the actors' faces to suit their roles — comes near him, Tracy flees from him as from a leper, lest he force him to put creams and powder on his face. In this respect he is like Clark Gable — both of them are men, and both believe that adornment and the beautifying of the face are the business of ladies alone! Even on the screen.
Among this actor's habits: he takes to his bed at half past eleven every night, and sets to reading books of history and legend until his eyelids grow heavy and he sleeps... only to
Spencer Tracy, the good man
spring up at four, before dawn, wrap himself in his house coat, and go down to the kitchen, where he boils his coffee himself and sits by the stove, sipping it and puffing his cigarette. All this as a prelude to studying his new role and preparing himself for it... And everyone
who knows this actor wonders how he manages to balance his calm, even nature against this scant measure of sleep!
In many of his habits and traits he is like children: he loves sweets to the point of madness, hunts for them more than his two children
Johnny and Susie do, and his pockets are never without them...
And he has a tender, gentle heart that will not allow him to watch a bird slaughtered or hunted. For this reason alone Tracy hates hunting, and does not encourage his children to take it up...
1 — If you live with your daughter and her husband, do not interfere in her affairs, or try to impose your will upon her..
2 — Do not be a nag, forever making demands, for much demanding brings on weariness..
3 — Do not make your daughter's husband feel that your mission is to champion your daughter, be she wronging or wronged.
4 — Beware of being a fifth column in the house, whose task is to spy on the husband and stir up suspicions in his wife's heart.
5 — Do not imagine that the husband won a very paragon of grace and beauty in the person of your esteemed daughter. And remember that your own heart danced with joy when you succeeded in bringing him into the trap — back when he was, in your eyes, a bridegroom who was a real "find"..
6 — If you do not live with your daughter, make your visits short and at long intervals. And warn your daughter against starting a quarrel with her husband right after you leave, or else he will accuse you of setting her on.