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Spencer Tracy

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Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy
Birthday
BirthplaceMilwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
Died
NationalityAmerican
Occupation
Actor

Tracy, Spencer

(1900–67) movie actor; born in Milwaukee, Wis. After World War I service in the Navy, he played the lead in a college play and then enrolled in drama school, making his Broadway debut in a bit 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.
The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Tracy, Spencer

 

Born Apr. 5, 1900, in Milwaukee, Wis.; died June 10, 1967, in Beverly Hills, Calif. American film actor.

Tracy graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Art and made his theatrical debut in 1922. He first appeared in motion pictures in 1930 in Up the River. He created profoundly individual and human characters in his portrayal of the flight mechanic Gunner in Test Pilot (1938), Father Flanagan in Boys’ Town (1938), and Edison in Edison the Man (1940). Tracy’s greatest creative achievements came in films that raised important social issues and in which he generally played characters struggling for justice in difficult and dramatic circumstances. Such roles as Colonel Drummond in Inherit the Wind (1960) and Judge Hayward in Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), both directed by S. Kramer, established Tracy as one of the finest actors in the American cinema.

Tracy also starred in Fury (1936), Captains Courageous (1937), Stanley and Livingstone (1939), The Seventh Cross (1944), The Old Man and the Sea (1958), and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

REFERENCE

Kartseva, E. N. Spencer Tresi. Moscow, 1970.

N. P. ABRAMOV

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive
Spencer Tracy, star of the original 1950 classic, will be turning in his grave at the crassness of the humour.
Spencer Tracy, in "Father of the Bride," sadly watching his newly married daughter drive away, murmuring, "didn't have a chance to say goodbye." Frederic March, in "The Best Years of Our Lives," wisely counseling his daughter about her star-crossed love affair.
His book serves as a vivid and useful reminder of the great evolution of movie comedy, from Chaplin and slapstick to the innocently-fun social commentary in It Happened One Night (1934), the romantic comedies of the 1940's, those great films teaming Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy; the marital satires and farces of the 1950's and again in the 1980's, etc.
1900: Spencer Tracy, American actor who won Oscars two years in succession (1937 and 1938), was born.
1.00 FILM Father of the Bride (1950) (U) Comedy, starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor.
7 THE MOUNTAIN (1956) ROBERT Wagner stars as greedy Christopher Teller who persuades his brother (Spencer Tracy) to climb to the site of a plane crash in the Alps to loot the bodies.
Spencer Tracy starred in the Oscar-winning Boys Town 2.
LAST TANGO IN HALIFAX BBC1 9pm Sarah Lancashire (above, right) describes co-stars Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi as "our Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy".
One-armed veteran Spencer Tracy faces hostility from townsfolk with something to hide.
Katharine Hepburn won a Best Actress Oscar, accepting it for herself and Spencer Tracy, who died during the filming.
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