Spencer Tracy: A Biography

The best goddamned actor Ive 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 Tracys 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 Father 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 opposite Katharine Hepburn (Woman of the Year and Adams Rib among them) or in Father of the Bride with Elizabeth Taylor, Tracy was the sort of regular American guy one could depend on.

Now James Curtis, acclaimed 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 Tracys 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 Tracys personal papers and writing with the full cooperation of Tracys 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 opposite his future wife, Louise Treadwell; marrying and having two children, their son, John, born deaf.

We see Tracys 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 pasta streetwise priest opposite Clark Gable in San Francisco; a screwball comedy, Libeled Lady; Kiplings classic of the sea, Captains Courageous. Three years after arriving at MGM, Tracy became Americas top male star.

We see how Tracy embarked on a series of affairs with his costars . . . making Northwest Passage and Dr. Jekyll 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 lifes projectprotecting and sustaining him in the difficult job of being a top-tier movie star.

And we see Tracys 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 Winda collaboration that led to Judgment at Nuremberg, Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and Tracys final picture, Guess Whos Coming to Dinner . . .

A rich, vibrant portraitthe most intimate and telling yet of this complex man considered by many to be the actors actor.