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Spencer Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10,
1967) was a two-time Academy Award-winning American film actor who
appeared in 74 films from 1930 to 1967. He is often described as one of
the finest actors in motion picture history. In 1999, the American Film
Institute named Tracy among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking
at No. 9.
****
Birth name Spencer Bonaventure Tracy
Born April 5, 1900
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Died June 10, 1967, aged 67
Beverly Hills, California
Height 5' 10" (1.78 m)
Spouse(s) Louise Treadwell (1923-1967)
Academy Awards
Best Actor
1937 Captains Courageous
1938 Boys Town
****
Career
He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the
second son of John Edward Tracy, an Irish American Catholic truck
salesman, and Caroline Brown, a Protestant turned Christian Scientist,
and was christened Spencer Bonaventure Tracy.
Tracy's paternal grandparents, John Tracy
and Mary Guhin, were born in Ireland. His mother's ancestry dates back
to Thomas Stebbins, who immigrated from England in the late 1630s. Tracy
attended six high schools, starting with Wauwatosa High School
(1915-1916), and St. John's Cathedral School for boys in Milwaukee
(autumn 1916). The Tracy family then moved to Kansas City, where Spencer
was enrolled at St. Mary's Academy, a boarding school near Topeka,
Kansas, then transferred to Rockhurst, a Jesuit academy in Kansas City,
Missouri. John Tracy's job in Kansas City did not work out, and the
family returned to Milwaukee six months after their departure. Spencer
was enrolled at Marquette Academy, another Jesuit school, where he met
fellow actor Pat O'Brien. The two left school in spring 1917 to enlist
in the Navy with the American entry into World War I, but Tracy remained
in Norfolk Navy Yard, Virginia throughout the war. Afterwards, Tracy
continued his high school education at Northwestern Military and Naval
Academy in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, but finished his studies at
Milwaukee's West Division High School (now Milwaukee High School of the
Arts) in February 1921.[1]
Afterward he attended Ripon College where
he appeared in a leading role in a play entitled The Truth, and decided
on acting as a career.[2] While touring the Northeast with the Ripon
debate team, he auditioned for and was accepted to the American Academy
of Dramatic Arts in New York. His first Broadway role was as a robot in
Karel Čapek's R.U.R. (1922), followed by five other Broadway plays in
the 1920s. In 1923 he married fellow actor Louise Treadwell. They had
two children, John and Louise (Susie).
For several years he performed in stock in
Michigan, Canada, and Ohio. Finally in 1930 he appeared in a hit play on
Broadway, The Last Mile. Director John Ford saw Tracy in The Last Mile
and signed him to do Up the River for Fox Pictures. Shortly after that
he and his family moved to Hollywood, where he made over 25 films in
five years.
In 1935 Tracy signed with Metro Goldwyn
Mayer. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor two years in a row, for
Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938).
He was also nominated for San Francisco
(1936), Father of the Bride (1950), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The
Old Man and the Sea (1958), Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgment at
Nuremberg (1961), and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). He and
Laurence Olivier share the record for the most best actor Oscar
nominations (9).
In 1941, Tracy began a relationship with
Katharine Hepburn, whose agile mind and New England brogue complemented
Tracy's easy working-class machismo very well. Though estranged from his
wife Louise, he was a practicing Roman Catholic and never divorced.[3]
He and Hepburn made nine films together.
Seventeen days after filming had completed
on his last film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, with Hepburn, he died
from heart failure at the age of 67.
Almost forty years after his death, Tracy
is still widely considered one of the most skillful actors of his time.
He could portray the hero, the villain, or the comedian, and make the
audience believe he truly was the character he played. In the 1944 film
The Seventh Cross, for example, he was effective as an escaped prisoner
from a German concentration camp despite his heavy-set build.
Tracy was one of Hollywood's earliest
"realistic" actors; his performances have stood the test of time. Actors
have noted that Tracy's work in 1930s films sometimes looks like a
modern actor interacting with the more stylized and dated performances
of everyone around him.
A new full length biography of Spencer
Tracy is currently being written by James Curtis, author of the
acclaimed 2003 biography of W.C. Fields.
In 1988, the University of California, Los
Angeles' Campus Events Commission and Susie Tracy created the UCLA
Spencer Tracy Award. The award has been given to actors in recognition
for their achievement in film acting. Past recipients include William
Hurt, Jimmy Stewart, Michael Douglas, Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, Sir
Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Harrison Ford, Angelica Houston, Nicolas
Cage, Kirk Douglas, Jack Lemmon and Morgan Freeman.
Filmography
The Strong Arm (1930) (short subject)
Taxi Talks (1930) (short subject)
The Hard Guy (1930) (short subject)
Up the River (1930)
Quick Millions (1931)
Six Cylinder Love (1931)
Goldie (1931)
She Wanted a Millionaire (1932)
Sky Devils (1932)
Disorderly Conduct (1932)
Young America (1932)
Society Girl (1932)
The Painted Woman (1932)
Me and My Gal (1932)
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)
The Face in the Sky (1933)
Shanghai Madness (1933)
The Power and the Glory (1933)
Man's Castle (1933)
The Mad Game (1933)
The Show-Off (1934)
Looking for Trouble (1934)
Bottoms Up (1934)
Now I'll Tell (1934)
Marie Galante (1934)
It's a Small World (1935)
The Murder Men (1935)
Dante's Inferno (1935)
Whipsaw (1935)
Riffraff (1936)
Fury (1936)
San Francisco (1936)
Libeled Lady (1936)
They Gave Him a Gun (1937)
Captains Courageous (1937)
Big City (1937)
Mannequin (1937)
Test Pilot (1938)
Hollywood Goes to Town (1938) (short
subject)
Boys Town (1938)
For Auld Lang Syne: No. 4 (1939) (short
subject)
Hollywood Hobbies (1939) (short subject)
Stanley and Livingstone (1939)
I Take This Woman (1940)
Young Tom Edison (1940) (cameo)
Northward, Ho! (1940) (short subject)
Northwest Passage (1940)
Edison, the Man (1940)
Boom Town (1940)
Men of Boys Town (1941)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
Woman of the Year (1942)
Ring of Steel (1942) (short subject)
(narrator)
Tortilla Flat (1942)
Keeper of the Flame (1942)
His New World (1943) (documentary)
(narrator)
A Guy Named Joe (1943)
The Seventh Cross (1944)
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
Without Love (1945)
The Sea of Grass (1947)
Cass Timberlane (1947)
State of the Union (1948)
Edward, My Son (1949)
Adam's Rib (1949)
Malaya (1949)
Father of the Bride (1950)
For Defense for Freedom for Humanity (1951)
(short subject)
Father's Little Dividend (1951)
The People Against O'Hara (1951)
Pat and Mike (1952)
Plymouth Adventure (1952)
The Actress (1953)
Broken Lance (1954)
Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
The Mountain (1956 film) (1956)
Desk Set (1957)
The Old Man and the Sea (1958)
The Last Hurrah (1958)
Inherit the Wind (1960)
The Devil at 4 O'Clock (1961)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
How the West Was Won (1962) (narrator)
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
Books
Spencer Tracy; a Biography by Larry
Swindell, New York, World Pub. Co. 1969
Tracy and Hepburn by Garson Kanin, New
York, Viking 1971
Spencer Tracy : a Bio-bibliography by James
Fisher. Westport, Conn. Greenwood Press, 1994
Quotes
"Know your lines and don't bump into the
furniture."
On drinking: "Hell, I used to take two-week
lunch hours!"
"I couldn't be a director because I
couldn't put up with the actors. I don't have the patience. Why, I'd
probably kill the actors. Not to mention some of the beautiful
actresses".
"I'm disappointed in acting as a craft. I
want everything to go back to Orson Welles and fake noses and changing
your voice. It's become so much about personality".
Trivia
Fellow actor Van Johnson referred to Tracy
as "my mentor". After Johnson was involved in a serious car accident
prior to filming A Guy Named Joe, both Tracy and Irene Dunne petitioned
the MGM studio heads to wait for Johnson to recuperate, rather than
replace him. [citation needed]
Had a brief fling with Gene Tierney while
filming Plymouth Adventure. [citation needed]
References
1. David A.Y.O. Chang, "Spencer Tracy's
Boyhood: Truth, Fiction, and Hollywood Dreams," Wisconsin Magazine of
History, Autumn 2000, pp. 30-35.
2. Tracy received an honorary doctorate
from Ripon College in 1940.
3. Tracy's decision not to divorce was not
based on Catholic Church law. His wife Louise was not Catholic, and they
were not married in the Catholic church, making divorce and remarriage
possible for Tracy without violation of church law. "It is also certain
that the dissolubility here in question is not limited to the marriages
of pagans, but to all marriages of unbaptized persons, even though they
should belong to some non-Catholic Christian denomination." — Acta
Sanctae Sedis, XXXIII, 550 (1901).
****
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