The Show-Off

Spencer Tracy was busy working at Fox Studio at this time, turning out a succession of B film programmers that gave very little indication of the star he would eventually become. Fox loaned him out occasionally and they did here to MGM where he would really hit the big time.

Watching The Show-Off today I thought of two early television characters that Tracy reminded me of. A little bit of Phil Silvers as Sergeant Bilko and a whole lot of Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden.

The film is of course based on George Kelly's play of the same name and in doing a little research on Kelly I found there was a live production on television in the Fifties that starred none other than Jackie Gleason. Red Skelton did a remake of this as a feature film, but I hope that Gleason's performance is not lost and a kinescope of the performance exists and is preserved.

Tracy's a lovable mug with a gift for gab who like Ralph Kramden had every big scheme blow up in his face. And he's got his Alice here in the person of Madge Evans who Audrey Meadows could have played in a remake. Tracy's not a womanizer here, he really does love Madge and she him. But Madge is about at her wit's end with him.

During the course of things they have to move back with her mother. You remember Ralph's mother-in-law? Clara Blandick almost steals the film as Madge's mom who cannot stand her son-in-law. Like Bilko and Ralph he's always "on" all the time. I know I couldn't stand living with someone like that.

Tracy gives it a good try and the cast does well. But maybe the film needed a Norton character.

Studio hacks didn't come any hackier than Charles Reisner, and his inept editing, mise-en-scene (how many useless reaction shots can one programmer contain?), and pacing almost sink this adaptation of a hit stage comedy-drama by George Kelly, uncle of Grace. A prosaic screenplay, surprisingly by Herman Mankiewicz, doesn't help. And the title character, a tediously lying blowhard, wouldn't be interesting to watch if Spencer Tracy, at the beginning of a long and profitable association with MGM, weren't playing him. Tracy brings some variety and emotional ballast to this one-note braggart, whom you might expect to be played by that other MGM Tracy of the day, Lee. Spence even makes him--almost--sympathetic by the rather rushed fadeout. Madge Evans, near the end of her too-brief career, is a lovely and womanly leading lady--you buy the devotion between her and Tracy, though nothing about him seems to warrant it--and Clara Blandick gets lots of footage entertainingly grumping about. And it's hardly the finest moment for the great cinematographer James Wong Howe, but he does come up with a couple of arresting compositions, as well as some expert fakery of New York locations in the first reel.

When George Kelly's play was written, in the Twenties, and when this movie was made, it was natural to call it, and Aubrey Piper (Spencer Tracy) a show-off. Today, with a lot more psychological knowledge and frankness about, that wouldn't do--the story would have to be titled The Immature Man, The Cruel Man, The Selfish Man, or The Liar.

Piper continually lies to make himself look bigger in other people's eyes but really succeeds only in making himself feel better. They nearly always disbelieve and ridicule him. (The exception being his fiancee, then wife, Madge Evans, who romanticises him and finds out her mistake only after marriage.) True, the wife eventually tells him that he is not a man, and his mother-in-law, Clara Blandick, the sourball to end all sourballs, is always sending hilariously scornful put-downs his way. But on the whole the movie regards Piper with tolerant affection.

But if we look at Piper seriously, what is he? A man who causes his wife worry and distress so that he can sustain the fiction of wealth and generosity. A man to whom other people are no more than an audience. One might affectionately tolerate a six-year-old who carried on as Aubrey does, but the way this man ignores reality and people's feelings make him more of a psychopath than a show-off.

What is ironic is that Kelly in fact had got hold of one of the big changes in American life but came at it from the wrong angle. The Twenties was when promotion began to be a powerful force, when fast talk and ballyhoo triumphed over sober reality, and advertisers learned to sell not the steak but the sizzle. But this idea is conveyed far better by characters such as Lee Tracy and James Cagney, who gleefully carried off stunning feats of well-plotted chicanery. Aubrey Piper, on the other hand, with his inept schoolboy antics, grinning and patting himself on the back, is just a loudmouth amateur.

One reviewer has mentioned that this characterisation is a big change from Spencer Tracy's usual solemnity. If you want to see a manic Tracy whom you can regard with affection, look for The Actress, Ruth Gordon's story of her early years. He plays her manic and utterly lovable papa.

I think if viewed as a culture clash - upper-middle-class Puritans who are slipping economically - and desperately need some new blood - having a head-on collision with Irish-Catholic culture - where forgiveness always waiting around the corner.

As someone who grew up with that clash - though it was Puritan vs. Italian-Catholic, with the Irish as referrees, I loved this movie. The Puritans were so perfectly portrayed, and WHO CAN CRITICIZE Clara Blandick? If she isn't waving the "white" flag better than anyone for our culture going down in all its glory - as the WASP business class did in the 1930s, then I don't know who..

Clara is superb and her character pegs Tracy for the blowhard that he is. But he is more than a blowhard - he is genuinely tender with Madge, and his love for her - albeit the puppy love of a couple in their 20s - is real and sincere.

Clara reminded me of a maternal grandmother - granted, grandma, born Charlotte Evelyn Hemmings, was on the serious narcotic known as Roman Catholicsm by the time I knew her (having converted 20 years before I was born), and to a lesser extent, my dear mother, gone these three years, who not only was on Roman Catholicism, but also on real narcotics after having Irish triplets, courtesy of the Latino known as Daddio.

Anyway, I love these portrayals of Yankee/Puritan/WASP womanhood (don't all happy people love their mothers?) - both Clara and Madge are honest to the core - and like Kay Johnson in Passion Flower - they are willing to accept the "other" - in this case the new blood that is Spencer Tracy - daughter lovingly, mother grudgingly.

No coincidence that Kay Francis is the femme fatale in Passion Flower - like Tracy she was culturally Irish, right down to the convent schools (when Ma could afford them).

So watch this movie as a culture class and enjoy it. The Irish had a few things to teach the white people...

This is an amiable version of an interesting play about a genial but dangerous bullslinger played by Tracy. He is just barely successful with personal relationships (his in-laws can't stand him) and gets fired from his job, but in the end triumphs! A good lesson about the way the corporation works, and why the rewards for a good salesman are so great.