SPENCER B. TRACY, THE NATURAL PERFORMING STYLE

Today, The Grandma has been watching some films interpreted by Spencer Tracy, the American actor who was born on a day like today in 1900.

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (April 5, 1900-June 10, 1967) was an American actor, 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 Award for Best Actor from nine nominations.

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 theatre, 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, in which he starred with Humphrey Bogart, 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 (1933) was highly praised at the time.

In 1935, he joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, at the time Hollywood's most prestigious studio. His career flourished from his fifth MGM film Fury (1936) onwards, and in 1937 and 1938 he won consecutive Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys Town.

He teamed with Clark Gable, the studio's most prominent leading man for three major box office successes, so that by the early 1940s Tracy 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, which 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.

More information: The Mercury News

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 long affair with Katharine Hepburn was an open secret. Towards the end of his life, Tracy worked almost exclusively for director Stanley Kramer. It was for Kramer that he made his last film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), completed just 17 days before he died.

During his career, Tracy 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 9th greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on April 5, 1900, the second son of Caroline and truck salesman John Edward Tracy (1873-1928). 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.

While making Woman of the Year in September 1941, Tracy began what was to become a lifelong relationship with Katharine Hepburn. The actress became devoted to him, and their relationship lasted until his death 26 years later. Tracy never returned to live in the family home, although he visited regularly.

The MGM moguls were careful to protect their stars from controversy, and Tracy wished to conceal his relationship with Hepburn from his wife, so it was hidden from the public. The couple did not live together until the final years of Tracy's life, when they shared a cottage on George Cukor's estate in Beverly Hills.

Tracy spent most of the next two years at home with Hepburn, living what she described as a quiet life: reading, painting, and listening to music.

On June 10, 1967, 17 days after completing what was his last film role in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Tracy awakened at 3:00 am to make himself a cup of tea in his apartment in Beverly Hills, California. 

Hepburn described in her autobiography how she followed him to the kitchen: Just as I was about to give [the door] a push, there was a sound of a cup smashing to the floor -then clump- a loud clump. She entered the room to find Tracy lying dead from a heart attack. He was 67.

Hepburn recalled, He looked so happy to be done with living, which for all his accomplishments had been a frightful burden for him.

MGM publicist Howard Strickling told the media that Tracy had been alone when he died and was found by his housekeeper.

Tracy had a solid reputation among his peers and received considerable praise from the film industry. After his death, MGM head Dore Schary said that there can be no question that [Tracy] was the best and most protean actor of our screen.

More information: Far Out

 Acting is not an important job in the scheme of things.
Plumbing is.

Spencer Tracy