Spencer Tracy

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 5, 1900-Los Angeles, California, June 10, 1967) was an American actor, winner of two Oscars and a Golden Globe., was one of the most recognized of Classic Hollywood.

Biography

Early Years

Tracy at the Northwestern Military and Naval Academy in 1919.

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was born on April 5, 1900 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the second son of a truck salesman and an Irish-born homemaker. His father, according to his older sister Carroll, “was a stern, serious, and determined man, and there was never any doubt that we were brought up Catholic. When we were old enough, Spence and I became altar servers... one of Dad's greatest wishes was that one of us would be a priest." Little Spence was a troubled and hyperactive child who paid little attention in school At the age of nine, he came under the tutelage of Dominican nuns in an attempt to improve his behavior. He later commented that he "would never have gone back to school if there had been another way to learn to read the intertitles of movies". And he was fascinated by the world of cinema, watching the same movies over and over again and replicating the scenes he had seen with his friends and neighbors. During his adolescence, he thought about being a Catholic priest or a doctor, but neither in Latin nor in chemistry did he obtain the necessary marks to qualify for either of the two.

At Marquette Academy she met actor Pat O'Brien and together they dropped out to enlist in the Navy, Tracy was 17 years old. He dreamed of going into combat, but when World War I ended, Tracy was still at a US Navy base in Virginia. He decided to resume his studies (to give his father that satisfaction) and at Ripon College he participated in a theatrical performance for the first time. The experience fascinated him.

Tracy was a popular student at Ripon, where he served as president of the canteen and was involved in a multitude of school activities. He made his debut there in June 1921, starring in the play The Truth. He said that acting became an "obsession with acting the more talked about it". Together with some friends they formed an acting troupe called Campus Players, which they took on tour. debate, Tracy also excelled in this aspect and it was while touring with the debate team that she auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) in New York. He was offered a scholarship to attend school after performing a scene in one of his previous roles.

Tracy left Ripon and began classes at the AADA in April 1922. O'Brien also enrolled there and the two shared a small apartment. Money was tight, they often lived on meals of rice and pretzels, and shared a decent suit between the two of them. Tracy was deemed fit to advance to senior classes, allowing her to join the theater of the Academy. His New York debut was in a play called The Wedding Guests in October 1922. His Broadway debut would be three months later, playing a robot role in R.U.R. He graduated from AADA in March 1923.

Career

Theatrical stage and Broadway (1923–30)

After graduation, Tracy joined an established theater company in White Plains, New York, playing supporting roles. She was not happy there and joined another Cincinnati company, but also remained in the shadows. November 1923, he had a small role in the Broadway play A Royal Fandango, starring Ethel Barrymore. The critics were not good and the public was scarce so the play was canceled after 25 performances. After this failure Tracy would say, "My ego took a terrible blow." He went to work at a struggling New Jersey company for a wage of 35 cents a day. In January 1924, he had his first leading role with a Winnipeg company, but it went out of business after a short time.

Tracy eventually achieved some success by joining forces with noted theater manager William H. Wright in the spring of 1924. He formed a great partnership with the young actress Selena Royle, who had already made a name for herself on Broadway. He became a popular stage actor, and his productions were well received. In one of these, he caught the eye of a Broadway producer, who gave him the leading role in his new production. The Sheepman was released in October 1925, but received poor reviews and closed after its Connecticut tour. Dejected, Tracy was forced to return to Wright and the promise circuit.

In 1926, Tracy was offered a role in George M. Cohan's new play, Yellow. Tracy vowed that if the play was not a success, he would leave the stage and work in a 'normal' business. He was nervous about working with Cohan, one of the leading playwrights on the stage in America, but already in rehearsals Cohan told her: "Tracy, you are the best actor I have ever seen!" Yellow premiered on September 21. Reviews were mixed but 135 performances were performed. It was the beginning of an important collaboration between Tracy and Cohan. "I would have left the stage entirely," he later commented, "if it hadn't been for George M. Cohan." Cohan wrote a role specifically for Tracy in his next play, The Baby Cyclone, which was released in September 1927 and was a complete success.

Tracy at the bottom of the work The Last Mile – the Broadway role that catapulted Hollywood.

Tracy followed with another hit Cohan play, Whispering Friends, and in 1929 shared the bill with Clark Gable in the drama Conflict. Other roles followed, including but it was the play Dread, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Owen Davis, that was a real setback. It tells the story of a man who goes mad. Dread was previewed in Brooklyn to rave reviews, but the crash of '29 hit and it didn't open on Broadway.Disheartened, Tracy again considered leaving the theater to return to her native Milwaukee to look for a more stable job.

But his luck changed in January 1930 when he was cast in a new play called The Last Mile. Playing the lead role of a killer who finds himself on death row. Producer Herman Shumlin met with Tracy and would later recall that "beneath the surface, there was a passionate, violent, sensitive and desperate man: not an ordinary man. He was the man for the part." The Last Mile opened on Broadway in February and, at its premiere, Tracy's performance was greeted with a standing ovation and the actor had to come out 14 times to acknowledge the applause. Commonweal magazine wrote that Tracy represents "one of our best and most versatile young actors of the day." The play was critically acclaimed., and was staged in 289 performances.

Fox (1930–35)

In 1930, Broadway was the great mine that the cinema was looking for its new talkies. Tracy appeared in a few castings and acted in two Vitaphone shorts (Taxi Talks and The Hard Guy), but, at the time, he did not consider himself a film actor: "I had no ambitions and was happy on stage," he later explained in an interview.. One of the people who did see The Last Mile was director John Ford. Ford wanted Tracy for the lead role of him in his next film, a prison drama. His producer, the Fox Film Corporation, was not so sure, arguing that he was not photogenic. But Ford convinced them that he was the right person.Río arriba (Up the River) (1930) marked the debut of both Tracy and Humphrey Bogart on the screen. After seeing it on pre-release viewings, Fox immediately offered her a long-term contract. Knowing that she needed the money for her family (her youngest son was deaf and recovering from polio), Tracy signed with Fox and he moved to California. After this, he went on a theater stage just one more time in his life.

Humphrey Bogart and Tracy in the feature film River up which meant the debut on the big screen of both actors.

Fox boss Winfield Sheehan set out to exploit Tracy financially. The studio promoted the actor by putting the subtitle " A New Star Shines". Three feature films followed, all of them failing at the box office. Tracy found himself pigeonholed in comedies, usually playing con men. This pigeonholing was broken with his seventh work, Conducta Disorderly Conduct (1932), which curiously was the first film since Up the River to generate large profits for the company.

By mid-1932, after having worked on nine films, Tracy was still not a familiar face to the general public. He considered leaving Fox once his contract expired, but an increase in his weekly rate to $1,500 per week convinced him to stay. He went on to work on less than memorable films such as My Girl and I (Me and My Gal) (1932) setting an all-time record for box office failure at the Roxy Theater in New York. He was loaned to Warner Bros. to star in Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing (20,000 Years in Sing Sing) (1932), a prison drama where he shared the bill with Bette Davis. Tracy had hoped that it would be his breakout role, but despite good reviews, this did not materialize.

Tracy with Loretta Young in Human strength (1933), an actress with whom she would have a brief romance.

Critics first took notice of Tracy in The Power and the Glory (1933), the story of the rise of an entrepreneur written by Preston Sturges. Tracy's performance as a railroad tycoon was met with rave reviews. William Wilkerson of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "This fine performer has finally been given a chance to showcase a skill that had been pigeonholed by roles. of gangsters [... the film] has introduced Mr. Tracy as one of the best actors on the screen". Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times wrote: "No a more convincing screen performance has been offered than the impersonation of Tom Garner by Spencer Tracy". Shanghai Madness (1933), meanwhile, gave Tracy a sex appeal never before seen and it served to improve his standing. Despite this attention, Tracy's next two films went largely unnoticed. Human Fueros (1933) with Loretta Young was expected to be a hit, but made only small profits. The Show-Off (1934), for which he was loaned to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, proved relatively popular.

Tracy began to drink during his years with Fox, so much so that he gained a reputation as an alcoholic. He failed to show up for the filming of Marie Galante in June 1934 and was found in his room hotel room, unconscious after two weeks of excesses. Tracy was removed from Fox's payroll while recovering in a hospital, and later sued for $125,000 for delaying production. He only made two more films for the studio.

The details of how Tracy and the Fox came to be remain unclear. Later in life, Tracy maintained that he was fired for his drunken behavior, but Fox's records do not support that claim. He was still under contract with the studio when MGM expressed interest in the actor. They needed a new male star and they contacted Tracy on April 2, 1935, offering him a seven-year contract. That afternoon, the contract between Tracy and Fox was terminated "by mutual consent". Tracy had made a total of 25 films in five years for the Fox Film Corporation, many of them box office flops.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1935–55)

The time of success

Tracy in Furia by Fritz Lang (1936), his first world success.

In 1935, he signed an exclusive contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. When Tracy got there, he was practically a stranger. His biographer James Curtis writes, "Tracy was hardly an upstart in the box office barometer in 1935, a critics' darling and little else." However, he was well known as a troublemaker. Producer Irving Thalberg was excited to work with him, telling reporter Louella Parsons: "Spencer Tracy is going to become one of the most valuable stars at MGM."

Curtis says the studio tried to treat him gently, a change coming from the apathy he had known while at Fox, and that it was like a "shot of adrenaline" For the actor, his first film under the new contract came quickly: The Murder Man (1935), which also included the debut of James Stewart. Thalberg began a strategy of pairing Tracy with the big stars of the studio: Whipsaw in Check (1935) opposite Myrna Loy and which was very well received, and Flor de suburb (Riff raff) (1936) with Jean Harlow. Both feature films, however, were designed for the actresses, so Tracy continued to take a backseat.

Fury (1936) was the first film to show that Tracy could be a box office hit on his own. Directed by Fritz Lang, Tracy plays a man who seeks revenge after escaping of a lynch mob. Both the film and his performance received rave reviews and grossed $1,300,000 worldwide. Curtis writes, "Audiences who, just a year earlier, weren't sure how to understand him, were suddenly turning to see him. It was a transition that was nothing short of miraculous...[and showed] a willingness on the part of audiences to embrace a leading man who was neither handsome nor larger than life."

Fury was followed a month later by another blockbuster, San Francisco (1936). Tracy played a supporting role in the shadow of Clark Gable, allowing the public to see him with the greatest male star in Hollywood. Playing the role of a priest, Tracy felt a great responsibility in representing the church. Despite appearing so Just 17 minutes on screen, he was widely praised to the point of receiving his first Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category. San Francisco became the box office smash of 1936. ^{[citation needed]} Donald Deschner, in his book on Tracy, credits "Fury" and "San Francisco" the "two movies that changed his career and gave him major star status."

At this point, Tracy entered a period of acting sobriety, and MGM expressed its satisfaction with Tracy's professionalism. Her reputation continued to grow with Libeled Lady (1936), a screwball comedy in which he shared a cast with William Powell, Loy and Harlow. According to Curtis, "Powell, Harlow and Loy were among the biggest draws in the industry, and equal billing at such a powerful company could only serve to enhance Tracy's standing." Libeled Lady was his third work in a space of six months.

The Oscars are here

Tracy appeared in four films in 1937. They Gave Him a Gun, a crime drama, went largely unnoticed, but Captains Courageous was one of the biggest hits of the year. Tracy played a Portuguese fisherman in this adventure film, based on the novel by Rudyard Kipling. Tracy had a hard time trying to imitate the foreign accent, but this character wowed viewers and Tracy won his first Best Actor Oscar. Captains Intrepid was followed by Big City with Luise Rainer and Mannequin (Mannequin) with Joan Crawford, the latter doing well at the box office. With a few hits in two years and industry recognition, Tracy became a bona fide star. Already in the 1937 list to find the "King and Queen of Hollywood", Tracy was listed in sixth place. Tracy reunited with Gable and Loy in Test Pilot (1938), which was another critical and commercial success, permanently cementing the notion of Gable and Tracy as a team.

Tracy and Freddie Bartholomew in Intrepid captains (1937).

In response to the good response from the priest in San Francisco, MGM cast him again as a religious for Forge of Men (Boys Town) (1938). Embodying to Edward J. Flanagan, a Catholic priest and founder of Boys' Town, it was a role Tracy took to heart: 'I'm so anxious to do a good job as Father Flanagan that I worry, I keeps you up at night". Tracy was well received and the film grossed $4 million worldwide. For the second year in a row, Tracy received the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was humble about the recognition, saying in his acceptance speech: "Honestly, I don't feel like I can accept this award;... I can only accept it as it was meant to be for a great man: Father Flanagan." Although he received the Oscar, Tracy sent this second statuette to Flanagan himself. Tracy ranked as the fifth highest-grossing actor of 1938.

Tracy was absent from the screens for nearly a year before returning to Fox on loan and appearing as Henry M. Stanley in "Stanley and Livingstone" (1939) with Nancy Kelly. Curtis argues that Tracy's lack of visibility did not promote acceptance by the public. In October 1939, Fortune magazine named Tracy to the top of its list of favorite actors.

Star in Time

MGM capitalized on Tracy's popularity by casting him in four films in 1940. The first of these I Take This Woman with Hedy Lamarr was a commercial flop, but the historical epic Northwest Passage—Tracy's first Technicolor film—was very popular. Later, he played Thomas Alva Edison in Edison, the Man. Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune disliked the story, but wrote that Tracy, "through the sheer persuasion of her performance," made the film worthy. >Fruto dorado (Boom Town) was the third and last work by the Gable-Tracy duo, where they shared the bill with Claudette Colbert and Hedy Lamarr, making it one of the most anticipated films of the year.

Tracy signed a new contract with MGM in April 1941, charging him $5,000 a week and limiting himself to making three pictures a year (Tracy had previously expressed the need to reduce his workload). The contract also established for the first time that his payroll would be "that of a star". Contrary to popular belief, the contract did not include a clause that he received a higher cache, but from this point on, every movie Tracy appeared in featured his name first.

Tracy reprized Father Flanagan in the sequel Men of Boys Town (1941). This was followed by his only foray into the horror genre, an adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde opposite Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner. Tracy was not happy with the movie because he didn't like the heavy makeup he needed to play Hyde.Critics were divided about the movie but it did well at the box office grossing $2 million.

Cartel The woman of the year (1942), the first of the nine films he worked with Katharine Hepburn.

Tracy was chosen to star in the film version of The Yearling in 1942, but scheduling problems and bad weather at the location where it was to be shot forced MGM to abandon the project. With this cancellation, Tracy was available to be the partner in Katharine Hepburn's new film, Woman of the Year (1942). Hepburn greatly admired Tracy, calling him "the best movie actor there was" and had already wanted him in Philadelphia Stories (1940). The comedy was well received by critics and audiences alike. William Boehnel wrote for the New York World-Telegram, "For starters, it has Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in the lead roles. This in itself would be enough to make any movie memorable. But when you get Tracy and Hepburn to turn in brilliant performances, you have more to celebrate."

Woman of the Year was followed by an adaptation of a John Steinbeck play Life Is Like That (Tortilla Flat) (1942) which met with a lukewarm reception. MGM decided to reunite the Tracy-Hepburn couple and they did so in the mystery film Keeper of the Flame (1942). Despite the negative reviews comparing it to Woman of the Year, the couple's chemistry was further strengthened for future projects.

Tracy's subsequent projects had a war theme. Two in Heaven (A Guy Named Joe) (1943) with Irene Dunne surpassed San Francisco in box office success. The Seventh Cross) (1944), a thriller about an escape from a Nazi concentration camp, was critically acclaimed. It was followed by the aviation film Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). Based on these three releases, the annual survey "Quigley Survey" revealed that Tracy was MGM's biggest star in 1944, His only film in 1945 was his third with Hepburn, Without Love, a light romantic comedy that met with a good response in the box office despite the silence of the critics.

Theater and cinema

Weed sea (1947).

In 1945, Tracy returned to the theater for the first time in 15 years. He had personally been through a dark period, culminating in a stint in the hospital, and Hepburn felt a play would help him regain his focus. Tracy told a reporter in April, "I'll go back to Broadway to see if I can." keep acting." The play was The Rugged Path by Robert E. Sherwood. The premiere was in Providence on September 28, with all the seats sold out and a lukewarm response. It was a difficult production. Director Garson Kanin later wrote: 'In the ten days before the New York opening, all important relationships had soured. Spencer was uptight and adamant, unable or unwilling to take direction'. Tracy considered leaving the play before it opened on Broadway, and lasted there for only six weeks before announcing her intention to close the show. The play closed on January 19, 1946, after 81 performances. Tracy later explained to a friend, "I couldn't say those damn lines over and over and over every night... At least every day is a new day for me in movies."

Tracy was not in a film in 1946, the first year since her debut that such a thing occurred. Her next film was The Sea of Grass (1947) a melodrama set in the Old West with Hepburn. Similar to Keeper of the Flame and Without Love, it garnered a lukewarm response from critics but that didn't stop it from being a box-office hit both at home and abroad. This project was followed by Two Ages of Love (Cass Timberlane) , in which he plays a judge. It was another commercial success, but Curtis notes that her co-star Lana Turner outshone Tracy in much of the criticism.

The fifth film with Hepburn, was Frank Capra's political drama State of the Union, released in 1948. Tracy played a candidate for President, who was warmly received. It was followed by Edward, My Son (Edward, My Son) (1949) with Deborah Kerr. Tracy disliked the role, telling director George Cukor, "It is quite disconcerting for me to discover how easily I touch a heel." After the premiere, The New Yorker wrote that "desperate miscasting of Mr. Tracy".

Tracy ended the 1940s with Malacca (1949), an adventure film opposite James Stewart, and Adam's Rib i> (also 1949), a comedy with Tracy and Hepburn playing two married lawyers facing off in a court case. Tracy and Hepburn's friends Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon wrote the characters specifically for the two leads. The film received rave reviews and became the highest-grossing Tracy-Hepburn film to date. Film critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "Mr. Tracy and Ms. Hepburn are the star performers on this show. and it's a delight to see their perfect compatibility in comedic antics".

Last years with MGM

Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor in the promotional image The father of the bride (1950).

Tracy received his first Oscar nomination in 12 years for his role as Stanley Banks in Father of the Bride (1950). In this comedy, Banks tries to get in the way of his daughter's (Elizabeth Taylor) wedding preparations. "This is the second straight comedy for Spencer Tracy, playing the lead, and it qualifies," commented Variety. six million worldwide. MGM wanted a sequel but Tracy, although she did not see it clearly, accepted. The father is grandfather (Father's Little Dividend) (1951) was released months later and it also worked at the box office. Thanks to these two films, Tracy was once again one of the main stars of the country.

Tracy played a lawyer in The O'Hara Case (The People Against O'Hara) (1951) and reprized with Hepburn in the sports comedy The Impetuous (Pat and Mike) (1952), the second feature written expressly for them by Kanin and Gordon. Pat and Mike became one of the duo's most popular and critically acclaimed films. Tracy continued to work with Plymouth Adventure (also in 1952), a rather boring historical drama aboard the Mayflower, with Gene Tierney as co-star. It met with poor critical and box office response and recorded a loss of $1.8 million for MGM. Tracy returned to the role of a concerned father in The Actress (1953). Producer Lawrence Weingarten recalled, "That movie... got more [acclaim] from the critics than any movie I've made in all these years, but we didn't make enough to even pay theater ushers." Her performance in The Actress, Tracy won a Golden Globe Award and received a British Academy Film Award nomination.

MGM loaned Tracy to Fox to play the western Broken Lance, her only work in 1954. In 1955, Tracy refused to work for William Wyler with Desperate Hours (The Desperate Hours) because he refused to work with Humphrey Bogart. Instead, Tracy appeared as a one-armed man facing hostility from a small desert town in Conspiracy of Silence (Bad Day at Black Rock) (1955), a film directed by John Sturges. For his work, Tracy received his fifth Oscar nomination and was awarded the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Tracy was personally unhappy with the image and threatened to leave during production. This behavior became a constant for Tracy, who was carving out a lethargic and cynical attitude. In fact, he began production on Tribute to a Bad Man in the summer of 1955, but pulled out when he claimed that the filming location in the Colorado mountains gave him a bad temper. height and was replaced by James Cagney. The problems caused by this attitude caused Tracy to break with MGM. By June 1955, he was one of the last two remaining stars from the studio's heyday (the other being Robert Taylor), but with his contract up for renewal, Tracy opted to go freelance for the first time in his film career.

Freelance Actor (1956–67)

His first job after leaving MGM was The Mountain (1956) with Robert Wagner, who played his much younger brother (Wagner had previously played his son in Broken Lance). Filming in the French Alps proved a difficult ordeal and Tracy threatened to leave the project, but his performance earned him a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Actor. Subsequently, Tracy and Hepburn starred in their eighth film together with the comedy His Other Wife (Desk Set) (1957). Again, Tracy had to be kept on set because he wanted to leave and, perhaps because response, the film met with a cool reception.

Picture of the film The old and the sea (1958).

Tracy then appeared in The Old Man and the Sea (1958), a project that spanned five years. As an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel of the same name, the writer's agent, Leland Hayward, had written to the author in these terms: "Of all the people in Hollywood, the closest to the character in quality, personality and voice, personal dignity and ability, is Spencer Tracy". Tracy was delighted when she was offered the role. She was told to lose some weight before filming began, but was unable to do so. Therefore, Hemingway reported that Tracy was a "terrible liability to the film" and the star was assured that she was being carefully photographed to disguise her weight problem. Appearing on-screen alone for most of the film, Tracy considered The Old Man and the Sea his most difficult role. I had never performed. Reviewing the performance, Jack Moffitt of The Hollywood Reporter said it was "so intimate and revealing of the universal human experience that, for me, it almost transcended acting and it became reality'. Tracy received Oscar and BAFTA Award nominations for this work.

After leaving two projects (the first project is the adaptation of The Blue Angel with Marilyn Monroe, and the second is Ten North Frederick), his next job was The Last Hurrah (1958). Tracy was meeting with the director who offered her her debut, John Ford, after 28 years and with his friend Pat O'Brien. It took Tracy a year to commit to the project, in which he played an Irish-American mayor seeking re-election. The film was critically acclaimed but had little box office appeal. In late 1958, the National Board of Review named Tracy the best actor of the year. However, the actor was beginning to reflect on his retirement, and Curtis wrote that he was "chronically tired, unhappy, ill, and uninterested in work."

Partner of Stanley Kramer

The legacy of the wind (1960), the first of the four feature films he would do with Stanley Kramer.

Tracy would not return to the screen until the premiere of The Inheritance of the Wind (1960), a film based on the Scopes Trial where the right to teach the theory of evolution in schools was debated. schools. Director Stanley Kramer thought of Tracy to play the role of lawyer Henry Drummond (based on Clarence Darrow).The opposite of him would be Fredric March, a couple that the magazine & # 34;Variety & # 34; would describe as "a stroke of casting genius... Both men are wizards in the laudest sense of the word." The film would give Tracy one of her most powerful performances, earning her another nomination an Oscar and a BAFTA award and a Golden Globe.

In El diablo a las cuatro (The Devil at 4 O'Clock) (1961), Tracy entered the disaster film genre playing a priest for the fourth time in his career. His co-star Frank Sinatra gave up part of his salary to allow Tracy to be on the project. Continuing his pattern of indecision, Tracy briefly withdrew from the production before recommitting. enthusiastic about the film, even though it was Tracy's biggest box office success since Father of the Bride.

Inheritance of the Wind began a long-lasting collaboration between Stanley Kramer and Tracy. The director featured Tracy in three films. Winners or losers?, released at the end of 1961, was their second feature film together. The film depicts the 'Judges' Trial', the trial of Nazi judges for their role in the Holocaust. Abby Mann wrote the part of Judge Haywood with Tracy in mind, Tracy said it was the best script she had ever read.At the end of the film, Tracy gave a 13-minute speech. She recorded it in one take and received applause from the cast and crew.Watching the film, Mann wrote to Tracy: 'Every writer should have the experience of having Spencer Tracy do his lines. There's nothing in the world quite like it.” The film received positive reviews and huge audiences, and Tracy received her eighth Oscar nomination for his performance.

In Guess who's coming tonight. (1967). Tracy would die 17 days after the shooting was finished.

Tracy scrapped two projects in Long Journey Into Night (1962) and The Leopard (1963), and decided to join the great cast of MGM in Winning the West (1962). He was able to record the narration track for the film Tracy was very sick and every job became a challenge. In 1962, he took on the role of Captain TG Culpeper in Kramer's comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), a small but key role that he was able to complete in nine days. Despite his brief intervention, Tracy headlined the cast and became the big box office success of the year. As his health worsened, he had to cancel projects to which he had committed such as The great combat (1964) and The King of the Game (1965). Although the offers kept coming, Tracy would not appear before the cameras again until 1967 to be directed again by Kramer in Guess Who's Coming Tonight (1967), his ninth and final film with Hepburn.

Guess Who's Coming Tonight explores the theme of interracial marriage, with Tracy playing a liberal-minded newspaper editor whose values are challenged when his daughter wishes to marry a black man, played by Sidney poitier. Tracy seemed happy to be working again, but told reporters visiting the set that the film would be his last because he would retire for good after filming due to health problems. Before shooting began, Tracy had to be secured by a hefty $71,000 bonus if he died during filming. Hepburn and Kramer put their salaries in trust until Tracy finished her scenes. In very poor health, Tracy could only work two or three hours a day. Her last scene would be filmed on May 24, 1967 and she would die 17 days later. after a heart attack.

The film was released in December 1967, and while reviews were mixed, Curtis notes that "Tracy's performance was praised by almost everyone." Brendan Gill of The New Yorker wrote that Tracy gave "an impeccable and, under the circumstances, heartbreaking" performance. The film became Tracy's highest-grossing film. She received numerous posthumous nominations including the Academy Award for Best actor, the Golden Globe and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor.

Personal life

Tracy always had a complex personality: tough, dry, passionate, alcoholic and short on words, preferring infidelity to divorce. Married from 1923 until his death in 1967 to Louise Treadwell, by whom he had two children. Their son, John Ten Broeck Tracy, was born in June 1924. When he was 10 months old, Louise discovered that the boy was deaf but not he said nothing to Tracy until three months later. Tracy was devastated by the news and always felt guilty about it, as a consequence of his own sins.As a result, Tracy always kept a certain distance from his disabled son, and his family from him.

Tracy abandoned his family in 1933, and he and Louise began a separation reported in the press, although they announced that they remained friends and would not divorce. From September 1933 to June 1934, Tracy had an affair public with Loretta Young, his partner in Human Fueros. He reconciled with Louise in 1935. After that, there was never an official separation between Tracy and his wife but the marriage continued to be troubled. Tracy he was living in hotels in the 1940s, leading separate lives. He was linked to numerous extramarital affairs; his lovers included fellow filmmakers Joan Crawford in 1937 and Ingrid Bergman in 1941.

Katharine Hepburn

The relationship between Tracy and Katharine Hepburn began in 1941 until his death. Promotional image Without Love (1945).

On the set of Woman of the Year in September 1941, Tracy began a relationship with Katharine Hepburn. The actress revered him, and the secret relationship lasted until Tracy's death 26 years later.

The MGM moguls tried hard to protect their stars from controversy, and Tracy wanted to hide his relationship with Hepburn from his wife, so they did not appear together at public events. The couple did not live together until Tracy's final years, when they shared a cabin on George Cukor's estate in Beverly Hills. In Hollywood, however, the relationship was an open secret. Angela Lansbury, who worked with both in The State of the Union, he later said: "We all knew, but nobody said anything. There was no arguing in those days. Tracy did not often express her emotions in public, but her friend Betsy Drake believed that she was "completely dependent on Hepburn". there is evidence of an affair with Gene Tierney during the filming of Plymouth Adventure in 1952.

Despite their estrangement, neither Tracy nor his wife considered divorcing. Tracy told Joan Fontaine: 'I can divorce anytime I want, but my wife and Kate like things the way they are'. Hepburn did not interfere and never fought for the marriage.

Personality

Tracy was an outspoken Catholic, but his cousin, Jane Feely, said he was not a devout follower of religion: "he was not a practicing Catholic either. I would call him a spiritual Catholic'. Garson Kanin, a friend of Tracy's for 25 years, described him as "a true believer" who respected religion. At various periods in his life, Tracy he spoke to the media regularly. Tracy did not believe that actors should go public with their political views, but in 1940 he lent his name to the 'Hollywood for Roosevelt' committee and identified himself personally by the Democrats.

Tracy had a drinking problem throughout his adult life, a problem that already ran in his father's family. Rather than being a constant drinker, as was commonly thought, he was prone to intermittent periods of binge drinking. Loretta Young remarked that Tracy was "awful"; when he was drinking, and was arrested on a couple of occasions for his intoxicated conduct. Because of his poor reaction to alcohol, Tracy regularly embarked on extended periods of sobriety and developed an all-or-nothing routine. Hepburn commented that he could quit drinking for "months and even years" before falling back without warning.

Tracy was also prone to bouts of depression and anxiety: Ms. Tracy described him as having "the most volatile disposition I have ever seen in my life: in the clouds one minute and in the depths the next. And when she got low, she went really, really low'. She had bouts of insomnia throughout her life. As a result, Tracy became dependent on barbiturates to sleep and dexedrine to perform. Hepburn, who Also taking on the role of Tracy's nurse, she never understood her partner's constant unhappiness. She wrote in her autobiography: "What was it?... he was never at peace... seized with a kind of guilt." Some terrible misfortune."

Death

His adult life of alcoholism, cigarette smoking, pill taking, and being overweight left him in poor health by the time he reached his 60s. On July 21, 1963, Tracy was hospitalized after a severe attack of dyspnea. Doctors ruled that he suffered from pulmonary edema, where fluid accumulated in the lungs due to the inability of the heart to pump properly. To the press, they only stated that she had high blood pressure. From then on, Tracy remained very weak, and Hepburn moved into her home to provide her with constant care. In January 1965, she was diagnosed with hypertensive heart disease and began treatment for previously undiagnosed Type II diabetes. Tracy nearly died in September 1965 and was hospitalized for a prostatectomy which caused his kidneys to fail, spending the night in a coma. His recovery the next day was described by doctors as a "sort of miracle".

Tracy moved into the Hepburn home for the remaining two years and devoted herself to an uneventful life: reading, painting, and listening to music. On June 10, 1967, 17 days after filming of had finished Guess Who's Coming Tonight Tracy got up at three in the morning to make herself a cup of tea in her Beverly Hills apartment. Hepburn described in her autobiography how she followed him into the kitchen: "Just as I was about to push [the door], there was the sound of a cup crashing to the floor, then a grunt, a loud growl."She entered the room to find him dead of a heart attack. appalling for him". MGM publicist Howard Strickling told the media that Tracy was alone when he died and was found by his housekeeper.

Tracy was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale with his wife, Louise, and their son, John. Out of respect for his wife and family, Katharine Hepburn did not attend the funeral, which was officiated by Monsignor John O'Donnell at the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in Hollywood.

Reputation and acting style

Tracy, c. 1935

Tracy had a strong reputation among his peers in the trade and received much praise from the industry. and more protean actor of our screen". He was also named many times for the great actor of his generation Clark Gable, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, John Ford, Garson Kanin, and Katharine Hepburn. actor Richard Widmark, who idolized Tracy, called him "the best movie actor that ever lived" and he said that "he had learned more about acting by watching Tracy than in any other way."

Tracy was respected for his on-screen ease. Hume Cronyn, who worked with him on The Seventh Cross, admired his screen presence: “His method seemed to be as simple as it was difficult to achieve. He seemed to do nothing. He listened, he felt, he said the words without forcing anything." Joan Crawford also expressed her admiration for Tracy's seemingly effortless performances, stating that he was "inspiring." co-star with him and that "his is so simple to play, such naturalness and humor [...] that she walks through a scene [and] makes it look so easy". four productions Joan Bennett said that she "had never had the feeling that she was 'acting' in a scene, but the truth is that it was happening, spontaneously, at the moment he said his lines & # 34;. Cagney noted that Tracy was rarely the target of impressionists because "you can't imitate reserve and control very well [...] there's nothing to imitate except her genius and you can't imitate that".

Tracy was praised for his ability to listen and react; Barry Nelson said that he "took the art of reacting to a new height", while Stanley Kramer declared that he "thought and listened better than anyone in the history of cinema". Millard Kaufman commented that Tracy "listened with every fiber of his whole body". In his memoirs, Burt Reynolds noted Tracy's emphasis on naturalism when, as a novice actor, he observed Tracy on the set of " 34;Inherit the Wind". Later, Reynolds introduced himself to Tracy as an actor, and Tracy replied, "An actor, huh? He just remembers not to let anyone know."

Despite the perception that she could sit in and act effortlessly, Tracy's acquaintances said she carefully prepared for each role in private. Joseph L. Mankiewicz lived with him during the production of & # 34; Test Pilot & # 34;, and said that Tracy locked himself in her room & # 34; working very hard & # 34; every night. Many co-workers commented on his strong work ethic and professionalism. However, he disliked rehearsing and quickly lost his "effectiveness"; after shooting two or three takes of the same scene. Kanin described him as "an instinctive player, trusting in the moment of creation". A close friend of Tracy Chester Erskine noted his shooting style. performance as one of "selection", stating that he strove to give as little as was necessary to be effective and achieved "a minimum to make the maximum".

Tracy disliked being asked about his technique or what advice he would give to others. Often disparaging the acting profession, he once told Kanin: "Why do actors think they are they so damn important? They are not. Acting is not a major job in the scheme of things. Plumbing is." He was also humble about his skills, telling a reporter: "I just don't try tricks. No profile. No 'great lover' act... I just project myself as I am: simple, trying to be honest'. He was known to have enjoyed the prank he once pulled on Alfred Lunt, & #34;The art of acting is: learn your lines and don't bump into the furniture!" Hepburn, in an interview six years after Tracy's death, suggested that the actor wished he had a different profession.

Filmography

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards

BAFTA Awards

Golden Globe Awards

Cannes International Film Festival