Tracy and Hepburn: An Intimate Memoir, Tom 10

"It was always Tracy and Hepburn," Garson Kanin recalls. The billing never changed: the gentleman preceded the lady. Once, when Kanin chided Tracy for his insistence on first billing, he said, "Why not?" his face full of innocence. "Well, after all," his friend replied, "she's the lady. You're the man. Ladies first?" "This is a movie, chowderhead," said Spence, "not a lifeboat." They were one couple everyone knew of but no one really knew anything about. What kept these two--so opposite in taste and technique--so fiercely together for 27 years? Kanin remained close to the two great stars throughout their long friendship. Here he shares his experience and his affection for them with us by recounting the times--troubled, hectic, or satisfying--that they spent in Hollywood, New York, London, and Paris; and how it was for Kate after Spence's passing. Kanin gives us his Kate--the born eccentric, charming, brilliantly inventive, and determined--as she conquers every obstacle; getting around a no-ladies-in-trousers rule in a stuffy London hotel; dealing with a surprise "coaching" session from John Barrymore; persuading the entire crew on a New York construction site to cease drilling during her major number in the Coco matinees across the street. And here is Spence, the greatest screen actor of his generation: sharp, magnanimous, joking, tense, he receives an unforgettable lesson in projection from Laurette Taylor, inspiration from George M. Cohan; he forces the desegregation of Washington, D.C.'s National Theater; he becomes an involuntary member of an acrobatic act at the Lido in Paris. This book is a joyous tribute to two extraordinary people, from a great Hollywood writer-director who was their friend.--Adapted from dust jacket.