Cinema: Balcony Scene

Last week a Hollywood actor lost his job for being drunk and disorderly on foreign soil. To Mexico City to make a picture called Viva Villa, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had sent Lee Tracy, famed for his staccato characterizations of reporters, press agents and politicians. Noted for his eccentric conviviality, Actor Tracy used to frequent Manhattan speakeasies with pockets full of cheese crackers and popcorn. Last week when 30,000 Mexican cadets paraded past his hotel he appeared on the balcony outside his bedroom, wrapped in a blanket. Throwing that off, he shouted profanities at the crowd, waved his arms in insulting gestures, committed a nuisance. Next morning he was ar rested. When he explained that he had forgotten what had happened, he was released. Later after a Mexican lawyer said that his daughter had been shocked, Actor Tracy was rearrested, was again released. While authorities were investigating, he secretly climbed into an airplane, fled to El Paso. When he arrived he told what he remembered about the incident: “I was just helping them celebrate. I’d been on a cabaret party and had some drinks and, like any drunk, began yelling. Someone yelled back and I shouted ‘Why don’t you go to Hell?’ ”

The Tracy episode kindled into flame bad feeling already caused by complaints that Viva Villa was rowdily derogatory to revolutionary Mexico. Nellie Campobello, adopted daughter of the late Pancho Villa, now director of the dance department of the public education ministry, called the film an insult to Mexico” because one scene in it depicted her father experimenting with a civilized bathroom as though he had never seen one before.

To President Abelardo Rodriguez, Vice President Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer promptly wired his apologies: “The insult offered by this actor to the Mexican cadet corps has embarrassed and shocked the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer organization fully as deeply as it has the Mexican people. As a result of this actor’s deplorable behavior, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has removed him . . . not only from Viva Villa but . . . canceled his long term contract. . . .”

With no likelihood that Mexico City would welcome new performers to retake the picture, most of the Viva Villa aim so far completed was burned in an airplane crash near El Paso, Tex.