Spencer Tracy, i sin helhet Spencer Bonaventure Tracy, (født 5. april 1900, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA - døde 10. juni 1967, Beverly Hills, California), grov hugget amerikansk filmstjerne som var en av Hollywoods største mannlige hovedretter og den første skuespiller for å motta to påfølgende Academy Awards for beste skuespiller.
quiz
Filmskolen: fakta eller fiksjon?
Ved filmfremstilling er nøkkelgrepet ansvarlig for belysningen.
Som ungdom ble Tracy lei av skolearbeid og begynte i den amerikanske marinen i en alder av 17. Til tross for at han var utilfreds med akademikere, ble han til slutt en forhåndsstudent ved Wisconsin's Ripon College. Mens han var der, var han på audition for og vant en rolle i begynnelsespelet og oppdaget å opptre å være mer til sin smak enn medisin. I 1922 dro han til New York City, der han og vennen Pat O'Brien meldte seg inn på American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Samme år gjorde begge mennene sin felles Broadway-debut, og spilte bitroller som roboter i Karel Čapeks RUR. I løpet av de neste åtte årene spratt Tracy mellom kjente deler i kortvarige Broadway-skuespill og ledende roller i regionale aksjeselskaper, og endelig oppnådde stjernestatus når han ble kastet som dødsrekke-innsatt Killer Mears i Broadway-hit The Last Mile fra 1930. Deretter dukket han opp i to korte Vitaphone-emnermen han var misfornøyd med seg selv og pessimistisk om sjansene hans for stjernestatus.
Nevertheless, director John Ford hired Tracy to star in the 1930 feature film Up the River, which resulted in a five-year stay at Fox Studios in Hollywood. Although few of his Fox films were memorable—excepting perhaps Me and My Gal (1932), 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), and The Power and the Glory (1933)—his tenure at the studio enabled him to develop his uncanny ability to act without ever appearing to be acting. His friend Humphrey Bogart once attempted to describe the elusive Tracy technique: “[You] don’t see the mechanism working, the wheels turning. He covers up. He never overacts or is hammy. He makes you believe what he is playing.” For his part, Tracy always denied that he had come up with any sort of magic formula. Whenever he was asked the secret of great acting, he usually snapped, “Learn your lines!”
In 1935 he was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he would do some of his best work, beginning with his harrowing performance as a lynch-mob survivor in Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936). He received his first of nine Oscar nominations for San Francisco (1936) and became the first actor to win two consecutive Academy Awards, for his performance as the Portuguese fisherman Manuel in Captains Courageous (1937) and for his role as the priest who founded the eponymous facility in Boys Town (1938). In the course of his two decades at MGM he settled gracefully into character leads, conveying everything from paternal bemusement in Father of the Bride (1950) to grim determination in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). In later years his health was eroded by respiratory ailments and a lifelong struggle with alcoholism, but Tracy worked into the early 1960s, delivering exceptionally powerful performances in producer-director Stanley Kramer’s Inherit the Wind (1960) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).
Married since 1923 to former actress Louise Treadwell, Tracy lived apart from his wife throughout most of their marriage, though as a strict Roman Catholic he refused to consider divorce. From 1942 onward, he maintained a warm, intimate relationship with actress Katharine Hepburn. Tracy and Hepburn were also memorably teamed in nine films, including Woman of the Year (1942), Adam’s Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), Desk Set (1957), and Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), which was completed three weeks before Tracy’s death.
