Try as I will

[excerpt from book about Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn]
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Jules Dassin submits a play to Kate. It is an English adaptation of a French success, Days in the Trees, by Marguerite Duras. Dassin hopes to interest Kate in a Broadway production. She reads it at once, goes to her desk, sits down, begins to write. "My dear Mr. Dassin: Thank you so much for sending me this fascinating play. I found it most interesting, but unfortunately...."

She stops. Her false tone offends her. She picks up a new sheet of paper and begins again. "Dear Jules Dassin: Try as I will I cannot make head or tail of this confusing manuscript, and therefore..."

She stops again. Once more, "Mr. Dassin: This is surely the most idiotic and depressing piece of claptrap I have ever in all my life..."
No. She has gone too far, she thinks.
Finally, "Dear Mr. Dassin: I am grateful to you for thinking of me in connection with your play. I am returning it to you unread, as, alas, I am not available at this time, and have no idea as to when I might..."
No, again. Why lie?

Later, she tells us of her struggle to find the proper response, and quotes these four beginnings.
"And what did you decide in the end?" asks Ruth.
"Oh, I just put all four of them into an envelope and sent it off to him!"
-----------------[end Excerpt]

[From Tracy And Hepburn, by

Garson Kanin. CopyR. 1970,

Viking Press, New York, N.Y.]

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