Spencer Tracy: A Biography

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Spencer Tracy: A Biography

â€œThe best goddamned actor Iâ€™ve ever seen!â€â€”George M. Cohan

His full name was Spencer Bonaventure Tracy. He was called â€œThe Gray Foxâ€ by Frank Sinatra; other actors called him the â€œThe Pope.â€

Spencer Tracyâ€™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 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 Adamâ€™s 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 (â€œDefinitiveâ€ â€”Variety), James Whale, and W. C. Fields (â€œBy far the fullest, fairest, and most touching account . . . we have yet had. Or are likely to haveâ€ â€”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 Tracyâ€™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 Tracyâ€™s personal papers and writing with the full cooperation of Tracyâ€™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 (â€œThey drill that religion in youâ€); 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 Tracyâ€™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 pastâ€”a streetwise priest opposite Clark Gable in San Francisco; a screwball comedy, Libeled Lady; Kiplingâ€™s classic of the sea, Captains Courageous. Three years after arriving at MGM, Tracy became Americaâ€™s 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 lifeâ€™s projectâ€”protecting and sustaining him in the difficult job of being a top-tier movie star.

And we see Tracyâ€™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 Windâ€”a collaboration that led to Judgment at Nuremberg, Itâ€™s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and Tracyâ€™s final picture, Guess Whoâ€™s Coming to Dinner . . .

A rich, vibrant portraitâ€”the most intimate and telling yet of this complex man considered by many to be the actorâ€™s actor.
Country USA
Manufacturer Knopf
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2011-10-18
UnitCount 1
Format Deckle Edge
EANs 9780307262899

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Knopf
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2011-10-18
UnitCount	1
Format	Deckle Edge
EANs	9780307262899

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