Tracy, Spencer (5 Apr. 1900-10 June 1967), actor, was born Spencer Bonaventure Tracy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of John Edward Tracy, the general sales manager of the Sterling Motor Truck Company, and Caroline Brown. Known for his professionalism, naturalness, and powers of concentration as an actor, Tracy lacked self-discipline and direction in his childhood and adolescence. Truant and often expelled from school for fighting, he shunned the middle-class setting of his family's Prospect Avenue home and ran with the poorer Irish of South Milwaukee. As a teen, Tracy acted out plays he had written for a basement theater in his parents' second home in West Milwaukee. Older brother Carroll would break up the inevitable fights when fellow actors and young patrons complained about the quality of the scripts.
Tracy attended Marquette Academy in 1917, befriending Bill O'Brien (Pat O'Brien), who became a fellow actor after taking the name Pat. The two joined the U.S. Navy to get in on World War I. They trained at Great Lakes, and Tracy was in the Norfolk navy yard when the war ended. Tracy returned to Marquette under a serviceman's scholarship and transferred to the Northwestern Military Academy in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, still uncertain about his future. In 1921 he enrolled at Ripon College as a premedical student, joined the debate team, and flourished. As the lead in the commencement play, The Truth, he found he could act. That fall he played the heroic prisoner in The Valiant and began talking about a career in acting. Tracy and O'Brien entered the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York on a serviceman's scholarship and pinched pennies by dining on water and pretzels, while studying for a life in the theater.
Their first jobs were as $15-a-week robots in Karel Capek's science-fantasy R.U.R. that opened at New York's Garrick Theatre on 9 October 1922. During the run Tracy got a small speaking part and a raise to $20 a week. O'Brien remembered that even at this early stage, Tracy's unusual gifts as an actor were apparent. Reviewers later described Tracy's acting as so effortless it appeared as if the lines occurred to him spontaneously. But O'Brien knew better. Tracy would pace their one-room apartment, going over and over each line in the play, like a debater memorizing an argument. Costar Katharine Hepburn and scriptwriter Ruth Gordon observed no actor could get inside a part like Tracy and make the lines his own personal vocabulary.
Tracy honed his craft with the Leonard Wood stock company of White Plains, New York. By the time the Wood Players had closed their run in July 1923, Tracy had fallen in love with the company's leading lady, Louise Treadwell. She found him "earnest" and "attentive." The two joined the Stuart Walker stock company in Cincinnati, and in September 1923 they were married. Spencer supported Ethel Barrymore in Broadway's A Royal Fandango and then worked with Louise in a series of stock companies. Louise gave birth to their son on 26 June 1924.
During Tracy's fall and winter commitment at the Montauk Theatre in Brooklyn, the couple learned that their son was deaf. The news devastated Tracy and, according to some observers, activated the uncertainty, restlessness, and fear of failure that plagued much of his professional life. The Tracys lived the itinerant lives of all stock players, with Louise retreating to Milwaukee from time to time to live with Spencer's mother. These separations increased Tracy's feelings of powerlessness and encouraged his self-defeating bouts of drinking. Tracy got good notices as the lead in George M. Cohan's The Song and Dance Man, a part Cohan had originated on Broadway. However, Tracy was fired when he appeared drunk for an evening performance and was rehired only when a suitable replacement could not be found.
By the fall of 1926 Tracy's frustrations were professional as well as personal. He had been in more than fifty plays, many in small towns and for obscure companies. He needed to make a better salary and provide a suitable home for his wife and their son. The anxiety made him drink, which deepened his guilt. Cohan hired Tracy for a supporting role in Yellow, a three-act melodrama that was to open at the National Theatre on Broadway. During rehearsal Cohan, speaking before the entire company, said, "Spencer Tracy, you're the best damn actor I ever saw." The remark and the play's 135-performance run helped establish Tracy as an actor on the rise.
Cohan wrote Tracy a significant part for The Baby Cyclone, which ran 184 performances on Broadway, and in the spring of 1928 Tracy toured in Cohan'sWhispering Friends. Other Broadway parts followed, some successful, others not, but each furthering Tracy's growing reputation as one of the finest actors in the theater. His performance as Killer Mears in The Last Mile, which opened on Broadway on 13 February 1930, was a smash. John Ford offered Tracy the lead in a prison picture at Fox, Up the River (1930). Fox executives liked the rushes and offered Tracy a contract. During the next three years he appeared in sixteen films, establishing himself as one of the most gifted, if troubled, actors in Hollywood.
Tracy got good notices in invariably inferior material during his five years at Fox Studios. His best performances occurred while he was on loan to other studios. He costarred with Bette Davis in 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) for Warner Bros. and appeared with Loretta Young in Columbia's A Man's Castle(1933). Slated for another potboiler for Fox, he disappeared on a bender on the eve of production. When given an opportunity to do a Preston Sturges script forThe Power and the Glory (Fox, 1933), he turned in a performance critics agreed was "one of the fullest characterizations ever achieved on the screen." When Tracy was loaned to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for the lead in The Show-Off (1934), he impressed Irving Thalberg, head of production. When he returned to Fox for another inferior production, Tracy promptly tore apart a set.
By April 1935 Fox executives had had enough and terminated his contract. At Thalberg's insistence, MGM immediately signed Tracy to a seven-year contract. Over the next twenty years Tracy made forty films, all but two of them at MGM. His brother Carroll became his business manager. The Tracys moved into a twelve-acre ranch Spencer had purchased in the San Fernando Valley, and a daughter was born. Tracy's work and off-screen behavior reflected this change in circumstances. He was widely praised for his role in Fury (1936), a film about mob rule, and he received an Oscar nomination for San Francisco (1936), his first role as a priest. His deft comedy in Libeled Lady (1936) helped make the film a smash. But Victor Fleming's Captains Courageous (1937) was Tracy's breakthrough film. Reviewers were uniformly ecstatic over Tracy's characterization of a Portuguese fisherman who rescues a boy at sea. The role won him an Oscar. He received another Oscar the following year for his portrayal of Father Edward J. Flanagan in Boys Town (1938). Tracy returned to 20th Century-Fox for Stanley and Livingstone (1939) an established superstar whose work brought critical praise and meant big returns at the box office.
Three films in 1940, Northwest Passage, Edison, the Man, and Boom Town, his third and final film with Clark Gable, placed Tracy among the top five Hollywood money-makers. Although Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) and Tortilla Flat (1942) did not match his earlier successes, Woman of the Year (1942), his first teaming with Katharine Hepburn, was a critical and box office bonanza and made Tracy the most popular actor in Hollywood. A Guy Named Joe(1943), his fifth film with Fleming, and Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944) continued a ten-year pattern of classic performances.
Tracy's reluctant return to the stage in the unsuccessful The Rugged Path (1946) and his work in a series of undistinguished films during the late 1940s failed to tarnish his reputation. Adam's Rib (1949), his sixth pairing with Hepburn, and Father of the Bride (1950) showed his comfortable transition to middle age.Pat and Mike (1952), another Ruth Gordon-Garson Kanin gem with Tracy and Hepburn, and The Actress (1953) were performances of a professional finally at the height of his powers. During this period Louise founded the John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles to help the hearing impaired. Spencer, though estranged from Louise, participated fully in the clinic's fundraising.
Tracy's final film at MGM, Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), was a major success and won him his fifth Oscar nomination. It coincided, however, with the collapse of the Hollywood studio system following a court decision to strip the studios of their profitable theater chains. As a result, studios could no longer afford to keep their stars under contract. Superstars like Tracy were left to their own devices in picking scripts and directors. Tracy, now graying and showing his age, seemed uncertain about his role as an independent. His next film, The Mountain (Paramount, 1956), flopped, and Desk Set (20th Century-Fox, 1957), with Hepburn, seemed a script beneath their abilities. The Old Man and the Sea (Warner Bros., 1958) drew a mixed critical reaction, and The Last Hurrah(Columbia, 1958), directed by John Ford, drew critical raves but small audiences.
Tracy had every reason to wonder after the financial flop of Inherit the Wind (United Artists, 1960), his first film with director Stanley Kramer, whether he had aged beyond his audience. Critics were certain he had something left, but it took the all-star Judgment at Nuremberg (United Artists, 1961), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (United Artists, 1963), and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (Columbia, 1967) to confirm Tracy's superstar status in warmly received films across four decades.
Tracy died in Beverly Hills. The years since his death have focused on his 25-year romance with frequent costar Katharine Hepburn and his long struggle with alcoholism. Nearly lost among these topics has been the greatness of his career as a film actor. Contemporaries considered Tracy the greatest film actor America had yet produced, and during his lifetime none was more honored. Two Academy Awards, nine Oscar nominations, two best-acting awards from the National Board of Review, the Golden Globe Award for best actor, the best actor award from the Cannes Film Festival, and the best actor award from the British Academy testify to Tracy's unique and remarkable gifts. Four years after his death 200 filmmakers polled by Daily Variety chose Tracy as the best actor of the sound era. Costars were often in awe of his capacities before the camera and frequently fought for the opportunity to work with him.
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