“The best goddamned actor I’ve ever seen!”—George M. Cohan
His full name was Spencer Bonaventure Tracy. He was called “The
Gray Fox” by Frank Sinatra; other actors called him the “The
Pope.”
Spencer Tracy’s image on-screen was that of a self-reliant man
whose sense of rectitude toward others was matched by his sense
of humor toward himself. Whether he was her Flanagan of Boys
Town, Clarence Darrow of Inherit the Wind, or the crippled war
veteran in Bad Day at Black Rock, Tracy was forever seen as a
pillar of strength.
In his several comedy roles site Katharine Hepburn (Woman of
the Year and Adam’s Rib among them) or in her of the Bride
with Elizabeth Taylor, Tracy was the sort of regular American guy
one could depend on.
Now James Curtis, accled biographer of Preston Sturges
(“Definitive” —Variety), James Whale, and W. C. Fields (“By far
the fullest, fairest, and most touching account . . . we have yet
had. Or are likely to have” —Richard Schickel, The New York Times
Book Review, cover review), gives us the life of one of the most
revered screen actors of his generation.
Curtis writes of Tracy’s distinguished career, his deep
Catholicism, his devoted relationship to his wife, his drinking
that got him into so much trouble, and his twenty-six-year-long
bond with his partner on-screen and off, Katharine Hepburn.
Drawing on Tracy’s personal papers and writing with the full
cooperation of Tracy’s daughter, Curtis tells the rich story of
the brilliant but haunted man at the heart of the legend.
We see him from his boyhood in Milwaukee; given over to Dominican
nuns (“They drill that religion in you”); his years struggling in
regional shows and stock (Tracy had a photographic memory and an
instinct for inhabiting a character from within); acting site
his future wife, Louise Treadwell; marrying and having two
children, their son, John, born deaf.
We see Tracy’s success on Broadway, his turning out mostly
forgettable programmers with the Fox Film Corporation, and going
to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and getting the kinds of roles that had
eluded him in the past—a streetwise priest site Clark Gable
in San Francisco; a screwball comedy, Libeled Lady; Kipling’s
classic of the sea, Captains Courageous. Three years after
arriving at MGM, Tracy became America’s top male star.
We see how Tracy embarked on a series of affairs with his costars
. . . making Northwest Passage and and Mr. Hyde, which
brought Ingrid Bergman into his life. By the time the unhappy
shoot was over, Tracy, looking to do a comedy, made Woman of the
Year. Its unlikely costar: Katharine Hepburn.
We see Hepburn making Tracy her life’s project—protecting and
sustaining him in the difficult job of being a top-tier movie
star.
And we see Tracy’s wife, Louise, devoting herself to studying how
deaf children could be taught to communicate orally with the
hearing and speaking world.
Curtis writes that Tracy was ready to retire when
producer-director Stanley Kramer recruited him for Inherit the
Wind—a collaboration that led to Judgment at Nuremberg, It’s a
Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and Tracy’s final picture, Guess Who’s
Coming to Dinner . . .
A rich, vibrant portrait—the most and telling yet of
this complex man considered by many to be the actor’s actor.