Spencer Tracy

Spencer Tracy (1900-1967), American actor, noted for the naturalness and understatement of his many moving and varied characterizations. Admired by audiences and critics alike, he was also well respected by his peers.

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he attended a Jesuit preparatory school but left to join the United States Navy in 1917. After a brief period of service near the end of World War I (1914-1918), he entered Northwest Military Academy and later Ripon College, in Wisconsin. A success in a college play at Ripon encouraged Tracy to become an actor. He then went to New York City to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, but he had to struggle for several years to make a living in the theatre. In 1930 he was cast in the lead of a Broadway production, The Last Mile, as a convicted murderer, and it was this performance that brought him to the attention of the motion-picture industry. Director John Ford secured Tracy a contract at Fox Film Corporation and starred him in another prison drama, Up the River (1930), with Humphrey Bogart.

In 1935 Irving Thalberg, production chief at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), who saw talent and potential in Tracy, signed him to a long-term contract. Tracy thrived at MGM, delivering a succession of notable performances in such films as Fury (1936), San Francisco (1936), Libelled Lady (1936), Captains Courageous (1937), Boys Town (1938), Stanley and Livingstone (1939; as Henry Stanley), Boom Town (1940), Northwest Passage (1940), and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941; title roles). In 1942 he began a long collaboration with actor Katharine Hepburn, who became his closest companion for the next 25 years and with whom he made many films. Notable among these is the string of comedies that matched the wits of the two actors: Woman of the Year (1942), State of the Union (1948), Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Desk Set (1957).

Other important Tracy films of the 1950s and 1960s include Father of the Bride (1950) and its sequel, Father's Little Dividend (1951), the dark suspense thriller Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Old Man and the Sea (1958), the political drama The Last Hurrah (1958), Inherit the Wind (1960; as Clarence Darrow), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and his last film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967; with Hepburn).

Tracy was the first performer to receive the Academy Award for best actor two years in a row—in 1937 for his moving portrayal of a Portuguese fisherman in Captains Courageous, and the following year for his performance as Father Flanagan in Boys Town. He was nominated for the award for a number of other performances, the last time posthumously for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.