Spencer Tracy

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10, 1967) was an American actor.

He was known for his natural performing style and versatility.

One of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, Tracy was the first actor to win two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor, from nine nominations.

During his career, he appeared in 75 films and developed a reputation among his peers as one of the screen's greatest actors.

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was born in Milwaukee on April 5, 1900, the second son of Caroline (Brown; 1874–1942) and truck salesman John Edward Tracy (1873–1928).

His mother was from a wealthy Presbyterian Midwestern family, while his father was of Irish Catholic descent.

He had a brother Carroll, who was four years older.

Tracy was a difficult and hyperactive child  with poor school attendance.

Raised Catholic, he was placed in the care of Dominican Order nuns at the age of nine in an attempt to transform his behavior.

Later in life, he remarked that he "never would have gone back to school if there had been any other way of learning to read the subtitles in the movies".

He became fascinated with movies, watching the same ones repeatedly and later re-enacting scenes to his friends and neighbors.

He attended several Jesuit academies in his teenage years, which he claimed took the "badness" out of him and helped him improve his grades.

At Marquette Academy, he began attending plays with lifelong friend and fellow actor Pat O'Brien, awakening his interest in the theatre.

With little care for their studies and "itching for a chance to go and see some excitement", Tracy and O'Brien enlisted in the Navy together when Tracy turned 18.

They were sent to the Naval Training Station in northern Illinois, where they were still students when World War I came to an end.

Tracy achieved the rank of seaman second class, but never went to sea and was discharged in February 1919.

His father's desire to see one of his sons gain a college degree drove Tracy back to high school to finish his diploma.

Studies at two more institutions, plus the additional allowance of "war credits", won Tracy a place at Ripon College.

He entered in February 1921, declaring his intention to major in medicine.

Tracy was a popular student at Ripon, where he served as president of his hall and was involved in a number of college activities.

He made his stage debut in June 1921, playing the male lead in The Truth.

He was very well received in the role and quickly developed a passion for the stage; he was reportedly "obsessive about acting to the degree that he talked about little else".

He and some friends formed an acting company called the Campus Players, which they took on tour.

His breakthrough came in 1930, when his lead performance in The Last Mile caught the attention of Hollywood.

After a successful film debut in John Ford's Up the River (in which he starred with Humphrey Bogart), he was signed to a contract with Fox Film Corporation.

Tracy's five years with Fox featured one acting tour de force after another that were usually ignored at the box office, and he remained largely unknown to movie audiences after 25 films, nearly all of them starring him as the leading man.

Tracy and his wife Louise became estranged in the 1930s, but the couple never divorced; his 25-year long relationship with Katharine Hepburn was an open secret.

Towards the end of his life, Tracy worked almost exclusively for director Stanley Kramer.

None of them were hits, although his performance in The Power and the Glory (1933) was highly praised at the time.

In 1935, he joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), at the time Hollywood's most prestigious studio.

His career flourished from his fifth MGM film Fury (1936) onwards, and in 1937 and 1938 he won consecutive Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys Town.

He teamed with Clark Gable, the studio's most prominent leading man for three major box office successes, so that by the early 1940s Tracy was one of MGM's top stars.

In 1942, he appeared with Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, beginning a professional and personal partnership, which led to nine films over 25 years.

In 1955, Tracy won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film Bad Day at Black Rock.

Tracy left MGM in 1955, and continued to work regularly as a freelance star, despite several health issues and an increasing weariness and irritability as he aged.

His personal life was troubled, with a lifelong struggle against severe alcoholism and guilt over his son's deafness.

It was for Kramer that he made his last film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), completed just 17 days before he died.

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Tracy as the 9th greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

Tracy first discovered his talent for acting while attending Ripon College, and he later received a scholarship for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

He spent seven years in the theatre, working in a succession of stock companies and intermittently on Broadway.