Film actor, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. After World War 1 service in the navy, he played the lead in a college play and then enrolled in drama school, making his Broadway debut in a small part in 1922. His feature film debut was in Up the River (1930). He first played gangster roles, graduated to priests and friends of the hero, and ended up playing gruff, humorous men with integrity. He won an Oscar for Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938). In 1942 he began an intimate relationship with Katharine Hepburn that would remain a well-known secret until his death, but as a devout Catholic he would not divorce his wife of some 20 years.
| Spencer Tracy | |
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Spencer Tracy (left) in 1960's Inherit the Wind with Fredric March. |
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| Birth name | Spencer Bonaventure Tracy |
| Born |
April 5, 1900 Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
| Died |
June 10, 1967, age 67 Beverly Hills, California |
Spencer Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10, 1967) was a two-time Academy Award-winning American film actor who appeared in 74 films from 1930 to 1967.
Career
He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the second son of John Edward Tracy, an Irish American Catholic truck salesman, and Caroline Brown, a Protestant turned Christian Scientist, and was christened Spencer Bonaventure Tracy.
Tracy's paternal grandparents, John Tracy and Mary Guhin, were born in Ireland. Tracy attended six high schools, starting with Wauwatosa High School (1915-1916), and St. John's Cathedral School for boys in Milwaukee (autumn 1916). The Tracy family then moved to Kansas City, where Spencer was enrolled at St. Mary's Academy, a boarding school near Topeka, Kansas, then transferred to Rockhurst, a Jesuit academy in Kansas City, Missouri. Afterwards, Tracy continued his high school education at Northwestern Military and Naval Academy in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, but finished his studies at Milwaukee's West Division High School (now Milwaukee High School of the Arts) in February 1921.
He was also nominated for San Francisco (1936), Father of the Bride (1950), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Old Man and the Sea (1958), Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).
In 1941, Tracy began a relationship with Katharine Hepburn, whose agile mind and New England brogue complemented Tracy's easy working-class machismo very well.
Almost forty years after his death, Tracy is still widely considered one of the most skillful actors of his time.
Tracy was one of Hollywood's earliest "realistic" actors; Actors have noted that Tracy's work in 1930s films sometimes looks like a modern actor interacting with the more stylized and dated performances of everyone around him.
A new full length biography of Spencer Tracy is currently being written by James Curtis, author of the acclaimed 2003 biography of W.C.
In 1988, the University of California, Los Angeles' Campus Events Commission and Susie Tracy created the UCLA Spencer Tracy Award.
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