`An Affair To Remember' -- Drien By Demons, Tracy Drank And Had Affairs As Hepburn Chose To Look The Other Way

This is the final installment of Scene's excerpts from "An Affair to Remember: The Remarkable Love Story of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy."

SECOND OF A TWO-PART SERIES

Kate was committed to forging a new and entirely independent career. She would reinvent herself as a Shakespearean actress and be away from Hollywood for months at a time filming "African Queen" and other pictures. . .

In 1952 when Kate traveled to London to film "The Millionairess," Tracy again nagged, cajoled, threatened and pleaded for Kate not to go. The implication was clear. He had barely survived their last prolonged separation. Between the mood swings and the alcohol, there was no telling what might happen if she left again.

But Kate believed that she had become part of the problem. She was his crutch, and he would stay off the booze permanently only if he made the decision to do so on his own. Besides, she would not be leaving Tracy entirely at loose ends. He was to begin "The Plymouth Adventure," an epic retelling of the Mayflower saga. . .

Tracy decided to act on the inclination he had shown toward Joan Fontaine in London. This time he followed through by starting an affair with his stunning "Plymouth Adventure" leading lady, 31-year-old Gene Tierney.

By the time she starred in the classic 1944 whodunit "Laura," Tierney had already divorced fashion designer Oleg Cassini and carried on a torrid affair with a young naval officer named John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Just before Tracy, Tierney had been carrying on an affair with rising star Kirk Douglas.

Tierney broke off the affair with Douglas the minute he told her he was not interested in marriage. She had just started work on "The Plymouth Adventure" and within weeks told Douglas that she would be marrying Spencer Tracy. "This all happened so quickly," Douglas recalled. "I didn't believe it. She showed me a saccharine letter that he had written, telling her that he wanted to arrange things so that they could go off together."

"Gene, I don't believe it," Douglas told her. "First, Spencer's married. Second, he has a very intense relationship with Katharine Hepburn, and he'll never give it up."

Tierney ignored Douglas, just as she had ignored Oleg Cassini when he warned her that Jack Kennedy would never marry her. But it troubled Douglas that Tracy would lead on a gullible, obviously troubled woman 21 years his junior. "I don't know what was in Spencer Tracy's head.". . .

Before long, Kate heard about Spencer's cozy dinners with Tierney. She chose, wisely, to ignore the evidence. Eventually, he grew tired of Tierney.

In 1954, when Kate was in Venice filming "Summertime," word reached Venice via the Hollywood grapevine that Tracy was cheating on Kate with the woman set to star with him in his next film. Her name was Grace Kelly.

When asked by MGM's publicity department to talk to reporters about the making of "Bad Day at Black Rock," Tracy promised to only if they would set him up with Grace Kelly. . .

Kelly, who was drawn to older men, could hardly resist the one figure in Hollywood acknowledged by all to be the greatest actor ever to step before a camera.

According to Joe Mankiewicz, the affair with Kelly was brief. . . As soon as he could, (Tracy) joined Kate in Venice to reassure her that news of an affair with the comely Miss Kelly was "nonsense." For Kate the whole situation seemed more than vaguely reminiscent of Spencer's infatuation with the young and "innocent" Ingrid Bergman. She and Tracy had carried on a torrid, public affair during the filming of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in 1940, a year before Tracy met Hepburn. Still, she was grateful to have his company for at least a few days and accepted his explanation. "What am I supposed to say when this comes up?" she asked a friend. "I mean, he was married to someone else. Besides, we never owned each other. If a person wants to stray, there isn't a hell of a lot you can do about it. Is there?" An awkward wake

Within two hours of Spencer's death (in 1967) the house had filled with family and friends. When Garson Kanin and his wife, actress Ruth Gordon, walked into the living room Kate, now dressed in her trademark pants and man's white shirt, rushed up and embraced him. "Oh, Gar," she said before he could utter a word of condolence, "I'm so sorry for you." Joining Phyllis (her secretary) in the kitchen, she started pouring coffee and serving people from platters heaped with bacon, eggs and toast. Kate served Louise - a palpably awkward moment for both women - then watched as her man's widow moved slowly toward the bedroom.

Three men from the Cunningham and Walsh Funeral Home arrived to remove the body. When Kate told them the clothes she had chosen for Spencer were already out in the living room, Louise was indignant. She was still his wife, she said, and she should be the one to decide what he would be buried in.

"Oh, Louise," Kate sighed. "What difference does it make?". . .

Kate was determined not to embarrass Louise or the Tracy family by showing up at the funeral. Instead she and Phyllis drove to the mortuary for one final goodbye. When they got there, preparations were under way for the trip to the church. The two women asked if it was all right if they pitched in and then helped maneuver the coffin into the back of the hearse. . .

One of the things that most upset Kate was the fact that she had never gotten to know Tracy's children, John and Susie. After only a few days she took the sort of unilateral step she could never have taken while Spencer was alive. She called Louise and suggested that they try to become friends. "I might be a help with the kids," Kate suggested.

"Well, yes. But you see," Louise replied, "I thought you were only a rumor. . ."

One morning in 1983 when Kate was taking her tennis lesson at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a young woman stopped to pet Lobo, the dog she bought for Spencer. "It's Lobo, isn't it?" asked the stranger.

"Yes, it's Lobo," Kate said, slowly realizing that the woman was Susie Tracy. Not long before, Louise Tracy had died at 87 and was buried alongside her husband at Forest Lawn.

"Yes, he's fine, Susie." Pause. "Look, Susie," Kate said, breaking the silence, "if you would like to get to know me . . . you know where I live and you know the telephone number. . ." The next day Spencer Tracy's only daughter called, and the two women became friends "just like that."

Kate and Susie shared a nagging feeling that there was much they did not know about Spencer Tracy the man. . . "He would come home every Sunday and play tennis with us and tell wonderful stories," Susie recalled. "He was generous, funny - he loved to kid. But he was also complex and extremely sensitive. You couldn't convey the depth of feeling he did on screen without knowing what pain was personally." One final letter

Louise's death finally freed Hepburn to talk of her life with Spencer and to express her grief over the questions about him that would forever go unanswered. One day in 1986 Kate was home at her New York town house when she was suddenly "hit by the feeling I had to write to Spence." She bounded upstairs and, sitting on the edge of her bed, scrawled a four-page letter to him. "It took me 10 minutes," she said.

"Living was never easy for Spence," she said. "He was deeply troubled - not at all like that totally confident figure the public saw up there on the screen. But whatever it was that made him so unhappy, he never talked about it - not with me, not to anyone. . ." Then, she added wistfully, "You never really know anybody, do you? I never really knew Spencer, not really. I was very, very close to my mom and dad, but I'm not certain I knew them. We all say, `I'm going to put this piece of me in a little box and I'll never let anyone see it - not anyone.' "

In her letter Kate asked Spence about the demons that had driven him to the bottle. "Why the escape hatch?" she asked. "Why was it always opened to get away from that remarkable you? What was it, Spence? I meant to ask you. Did you know what it was? What did you say? I can't hear you. . ."

"You know, I've had a pretty good run of it," said Kate, who would never see their last picture, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" ("Too painful. I couldn't"). More than a quarter-century after his death, Spencer's monogrammed bathrobe still hung on a hook in her bathroom. "As a matter of fact, I rather look forward to dying. It's a tremendous relief, isn't it? The Big Sleep." If there is an afterlife? "Well, then I'm just waiting to join Spencer." Sadly, when that moment comes, the curtain will be drawn on Hollywood's Golden Age. (Copyright 1997 by Christopher Andersen) From the book "An Affair to Remember: The Remarkable Love Story of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy" by Christopher Andersen.