Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was an American actor. He was known for his natural performing style and versatility. One of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, Tracy was the first actor to win two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor, from nine nominations. During his career, he appeared in 75 films and developed a reputation among his peers as one of the screen's greatest actors. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Tracy as the ninth greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Tracy first discovered his talent for acting while attending Ripon College, and he later received a scholarship for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He spent seven years in the theater, working in a succession of stock companies and intermittently on Broadway. His breakthrough came in 1930, when his lead performance in The Last Mile caught the attention of Hollywood. After a successful film debut in John Ford's Up the River, he was signed to a contract with Fox Film Corporation. Tracy's five years with Fox featured one acting tour de force after another that were usually ignored at the box office, and he remained largely unknown to movie audiences after 25 films, nearly all of them starring him as the leading man. None of them were hits, although his performance in The Power and the Glory was highly praised at the time.
In 1935, Tracy joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Hollywood's most prestigious studio at the time. His career flourished after his fifth MGM film, Fury, and in 1937 and 1938 he won consecutive Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. Tracy teamed with Clark Gable, MGM's most prominent leading man, for three major box office successes, and by the early 1940s, he was one of MGM's top stars. In 1942, he appeared with Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, beginning a professional and personal partnership that led to nine films over 25 years. In 1955, Tracy won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film Bad Day at Black Rock.
Tracy left MGM in 1955 and continued to work regularly as a freelance star, despite several health issues and an increasing weariness and irritability as he aged. His personal life was troubled, with a lifelong struggle against severe alcoholism and guilt over his son's deafness. Tracy and his wife Louise became estranged in the 1930s, but the couple never divorced. His 25-year relationship with Katharine Hepburn was an open secret. Towards the end of his life, Tracy worked almost exclusively for director Stanley Kramer. Tracy made his last film with Kramer, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, with filming completed just 17 days before he died.
Early life and education
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was born in Milwaukee on April 5, 1900, the second son of Caroline and truck salesman John Edward Tracy. His mother was from a wealthy Presbyterian Midwestern family, while his father was of Irish Catholic descent. He had a brother Carroll, who was four years older.Tracy was a difficult and hyperactive child with poor school attendance. Raised Catholic, he was placed in the care of Dominican Order nuns at the age of nine in an attempt to transform his behavior. Later in life, he remarked that he "never would have gone back to school if there had been any other way of learning to read the subtitles in the movies". He became fascinated with movies, watching the same ones repeatedly and later re-enacting scenes to his friends and neighbors. He attended several Jesuit academies in his teenage years, which he claimed took the "badness" out of him and helped him improve his grades.
At Marquette Academy, he began attending plays with lifelong friend and fellow actor Pat O'Brien, awakening his interest in the theater. With little care for their studies and "itching for a chance to go and see some excitement", Tracy and O'Brien enlisted in the Navy together during World War I when Tracy turned 18. They were sent to the Naval Training Station near Chicago, where they were still recruits-in-training when the war came to an end. Tracy achieved the rank of seaman second class, but never went to sea and was discharged in February 1919. His father's desire to see one of his sons gain a college degree drove Tracy back to high school to finish his diploma. Studies at two more institutions, plus the additional allowance of "war credits", won Tracy a place at Ripon College. He entered in February 1921, declaring his intention to major in medicine.
Tracy was a popular student at Ripon, where he served as president of his hall and was involved in a number of college activities. He made his stage debut in June 1921, playing the male lead in The Truth. He was very well received in the role and quickly developed a passion for the stage; he was reportedly "obsessive about acting to the degree that he talked about little else". He and some friends formed an acting company called the Campus Players, which they took on tour. As a member of the college debate team, Tracy excelled in arguing and public speaking. It was during a tour with the debate team that he auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. He was offered a scholarship to attend the school after performing a scene from one of his earlier roles.
Tracy left Ripon and began classes at AADA in April 1922. O'Brien was also enrolled there and the two shared a small studio apartment. Money was scarce, and the two often lived on meals of rice and pretzels and shared one decent suit between them. Tracy was deemed fit to progress to the senior class, allowing him to join the academy's stock company. He made his New York debut in a play called The Wedding Guests, which opened in October 1922. He made his debut Broadway appearance three months later, playing a wordless robot in R.U.R. He graduated from AADA in March 1923.
Career
Stock theater and Broadway (1923–1930)
Immediately following graduation, Tracy joined a new stock company based in White Plains, New York, where he was given peripheral roles. Unhappy there, he moved to a company in Cincinnati, but failed to make an impact. In November 1923, he landed a small part on Broadway in the comedy A Royal Fandango, starring Ethel Barrymore. Reviews for the show were poor and it closed after 25 performances; Tracy later said of the failure, "My ego took an awful beating." When he took a position with a struggling company in New Jersey, Tracy was living on an allowance of 35 cents a day. In January 1924, he played his first leading role with a company in Winnipeg, but the organization soon closed.Tracy finally achieved some success by joining forces with the notable stock manager William H. Wright in the spring of 1924. A stage partnership was formed with the young actress Selena Royle, who had already made her name on Broadway. It proved a popular draw and their productions were favorably received. One of these performances brought Tracy to the attention of a Broadway producer, who offered him the lead in a new play. The Sheepman previewed in October 1925, but it received poor reviews and closed after its trial run in Connecticut. Dejected, Tracy was forced back to Wright and the stock circuit.
In the fall of 1926, Tracy was offered his third shot at Broadway: a role in a new George M. Cohan play called Yellow. Tracy swore that if the play failed to be a hit he would leave stock and work in a "regular" business instead. Tracy was nervous about working with Cohan, one of the most important figures in American theater, but during rehearsals Cohan announced, "Tracy, you're the best goddamned actor I've ever seen!" Yellow opened on September 21; reviews were mixed but it ran for 135 performances. It was the beginning of an important collaboration for Tracy: "I'd have quit the stage completely," he later commented, "if it hadn't been for George M. Cohan." Cohan wrote a part specifically for Tracy in his next play, The Baby Cyclone. It opened on Broadway in September 1927 and was a hit.
Tracy followed this success with another Cohan play, Whispering Friends, and in 1929 took over from Clark Gable in Conflict, a Broadway drama. Other roles followed, but it was the lead in Dread, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Owen Davis that gave Tracy high hopes for success. The story of a man's descent into madness, Dread previewed in Brooklyn to an excellent reception, but on the next day—October 29—the New York stock market crashed. Unable to obtain funding, Dread did not open on Broadway. Following this disappointment, Tracy again considered leaving the theater and returning to Milwaukee for a more stable life.
In January 1930, Tracy was approached about a new play called The Last Mile. Looking to cast the lead role of a murderer on death row, producer Herman Shumlin met with Tracy, and later recounted: "beneath the surface, here was a man of passion, violence, sensitivity and desperation: no ordinary man, and just the man for the part." The Last Mile opened on Broadway in February, where Tracy's performance was met by a standing ovation that lasted 14 curtain calls. The Commonweal described him as "one of our best and most versatile young actors". The play was a hit with critics, and ran for 289 performances.
Fox (1930–1935)
In 1930, Broadway was being scouted to find actors to work in the new medium of sound films. Tracy was cast in two Vitaphone shorts, but he had not considered becoming a film actor: "I had no ambition in that direction and I was perfectly happy on the stage", he later explained in an interview. One person who saw Tracy in The Last Mile was director John Ford.Ford wanted Tracy for the lead role in his next picture, a prison movie. Production company Fox Film Corporation was unsure about Tracy, saying that he did not photograph well, but Ford convinced them that he was right for the role. Up the River marked the film debut of both Tracy and Humphrey Bogart. After seeing the rushes, Fox immediately offered Tracy a long-term contract. Knowing that he needed the money for his family, with his young son deaf and recovering from polio, Tracy signed with Fox and moved to California. He appeared on the stage only once more in his life.
Winfield Sheehan, the head of Fox, committed to making Tracy a bankable commodity. The studio promoted the actor, releasing ads for his second film Quick Millions with the headline "A New Star Shines". Three films were made in quick succession, all of which were unsuccessful at the box office. Tracy found himself typecast in comedies, usually playing a crook or a con man. The mold was broken with his seventh picture, Disorderly Conduct, and it was the first of his films since Up the River to return a profit.
In mid-1932, after nine pictures, Tracy remained virtually unknown to the public. He considered leaving Fox once his contract was up for renewal, but a raise in his weekly salary to $1,500 convinced him to stay. He continued to appear in unpopular films, with Me and My Gal setting an all-time low attendance record for the Roxy Theatre in New York City. He was loaned to Warner Bros. for 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, a prison drama co-starring Bette Davis. Tracy was hopeful that it would be his break-out role, but despite good reviews, this failed to materialize.
File:Spencer Tracy Loretta Young Man's Castle.jpg|thumb|Tracy appeared with Loretta Young in Man's Castle.
Critics began to notice Tracy with The Power and the Glory. The story of a man's rise to prosperity had a screenplay by Preston Sturges and Tracy's performance as railroad tycoon Tom Garner received uniformly strong reviews. William Wilkerson of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "This sterling performer has finally been given an opportunity to show an ability that has been boxed in by gangster roles ... has introduced Mr. Tracy as one of the screen's best performers". Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times stated: "No more convincing performance has been given on the screen than Spencer Tracy's impersonation of Tom Garner." Shanghai Madness, meanwhile, revealed Tracy to have a previously unseen sex appeal and served to advance his standing. Despite this attention, Tracy's next two movies went largely unnoticed. Man's Castle with Loretta Young was anticipated to be a hit, but made only a small profit. The Show-Off, for which he was lent to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, proved popular, but his subsequent outings continued to be unsuccessful.
Tracy drank heavily during his years with Fox and gained a reputation as an alcoholic. He failed to report for filming on Marie Galante in June 1934, and was found in his hotel room, virtually unconscious after a two-week binge. Tracy was removed from the Fox payroll while he recovered in a hospital, and then sued for $125,000 for delaying the production. He completed only two more pictures with the studio.
The details on how Tracy's relationship with Fox ended are unclear: later in life Tracy maintained that he was fired for his drunken behavior, but the Fox records do not support such an account. He was still under contract with the studio when MGM expressed their interest in the actor. They were in need of a new male star, and contacted Tracy on April 2, 1935, offering him a seven-year deal. That afternoon, the contract between Tracy and Fox was terminated "by mutual consent". Tracy made a total of 25 pictures in the five years he was with Fox Film Corporation, most of which lost money at the box office.