SPENCER TRACY

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 48, Issue 2923, 3 July 1939, Page 3

SPENCER TRACY

\ VISIT MADE TO ENGLAND ' ! t ~ - ’ COMMENTS ON THE COUNTRY / ‘ ’ ; A platform at Waterloo Station again became the film stars’ battle ground when Spencer Tracy arrived aboard the Queen Mary boat train on a visit to England. Scenes as fantastic as when Robert Taylor arrived last year took place. More than 1,000 surging, shrieking girls rushed the barriers a few minutes before the express arrived and collected outside the pullman car in which Spencer Tracy, his wife, Lady Jean Rankin, and myself were sitting. Police and station officials rushed to the spot were inadequate to keep back the crowds, and after several girls had been trampled on in the » attempt to reach him Spencer Tracy was smuggled out through three empty trains in succession to a quiet

platform from which he was able to leave the station unobserved.

His Fourth Try

Rated just about the best straight and character actor in Hollywood—certainly the most unassuming—he has at last arrived in England for a holiday.

This is his fourth attempt. Last year he got as far as the boat in New York when the studios cabled him, to return.

After meeting him with several other film celebrities at Southampton, including George Arliss, Phyllis Brooks, and Robert Sherwood the Daily Mail reporter travelled in the boat train with him.

"My! - Isn’t everything cute and small,” was his first comment as we drew out of the docks and passed a small tank engine with some goods wagons.

He was particularly interested in Winchester ("Isn’t that where one of your famous schools is?”), soma anti-aircraft guns near Basingstoke ("That makes one realise how you take this war scare”), and a group of horses in the corner of a field near a training .paddock (There’s some fine horseflesh, let. me tell you”).