Spencer Tracy, i sin helhed Spencer Bonaventure Tracy, (født 5. april 1900, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA - døde 10. juni 1967, Beverly Hills, Californien), grov hugget amerikansk filmstjerne, der var en af Hollywoods største mandlige hovedretter og den første skuespiller til at modtage to på hinanden følgende Academy Awards for bedste skuespiller.
Quiz
Filmskole: Fakta eller fiktion?
Ved filmfremstilling er nøgleapparatet ansvaret for belysningen.
Som ung var Tracy keder af skolearbejde og tiltrådte den amerikanske flåde i en alder af 17. På trods af hans utilfredshed med akademikere blev han til sidst en studenter ved Wisconsin's Ripon College. Mens han var der, prøvede han på og vandt en rolle i begyndelsespelet og opdagede at optræde som mere til hans smag end medicin. I 1922 tog han til New York City, hvor han og hans ven Pat O'Brien tilmeldte sig det amerikanske akademi for dramatisk kunst. Samme år begav begge mænd deres fælles Broadway-debut, hvor de spillede bitroller som robotter i Karel Čapeks RUR. I de næste otte år sprang Tracy mellem fremhævede dele i kortvarige Broadway-skuespil og førende roller i regionale aktieselskaber og endelig opnå stjernestatus, når han blev kastet som dødsrække-indsat Killer Mears i Broadway-hit 1930 The Last Mile fra 1930. Efterfølgende optrådte han i to Vitaphone-korte emner,men han var utilfreds med sig selv og pessimistisk over hans chancer for skærmstjerne.
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.
