Spencer Tracy (1901 - 1967)
Spencer Tracy was Mr. Solid and
Dependable. He was a fine actor and a very good light comedian. Tracy
was also surprisingly good in period films and Westerns, he is well
cast in probably his best Action film Northwest Passage (1940), his
best purely serious film is probably Bad Day at Black Rock (1954) which
plays more like a thriller than a Western.
Tracy began his film career at Fox in the early days of Talkies, he can be seen with lifelong friend Humphrey Bogart in the otherwise forgettable Up the River (1930). It wasn't though until he moved to MGM that Tracy became a star, he appeared in two excellent but very different films in 1936 : Fritz Lang's Fury (the German director's first American film) and San Francisco (very good as Gable's best friend a priest, two roles he was to return to).
Tracy's stardom was confirmed by his two successive acting Oscars for Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys' Town (1938), both films have dated and Tracy's acting comes across as over-sentimental today.
The same could not be said about his series of films with Katharine Hepburn which began with Woman of the Year (1942) and included the excellent comedies Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952). Between these two Tracy delivered maybe his finst comedy performance in Father of the Bride (1950). After Bad Rock (1954) he left MGM and in his last years hooked up with producer Stanley Kramer for a series of films : Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgement at Nuremberg (1962), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and one final film with Hepburn Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967) completed just before his death.
Tracy began his film career at Fox in the early days of Talkies, he can be seen with lifelong friend Humphrey Bogart in the otherwise forgettable Up the River (1930). It wasn't though until he moved to MGM that Tracy became a star, he appeared in two excellent but very different films in 1936 : Fritz Lang's Fury (the German director's first American film) and San Francisco (very good as Gable's best friend a priest, two roles he was to return to).
Tracy's stardom was confirmed by his two successive acting Oscars for Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys' Town (1938), both films have dated and Tracy's acting comes across as over-sentimental today.
The same could not be said about his series of films with Katharine Hepburn which began with Woman of the Year (1942) and included the excellent comedies Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952). Between these two Tracy delivered maybe his finst comedy performance in Father of the Bride (1950). After Bad Rock (1954) he left MGM and in his last years hooked up with producer Stanley Kramer for a series of films : Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgement at Nuremberg (1962), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and one final film with Hepburn Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967) completed just before his death.
Written content copyright Derek McLellan,2005.
Copyright © The Fedora Chronicles
Spencer Tracy image from
http://www.thegoldenyears.org/tracy.html