Spencer Tracy, a Life in Pictures:: Rare, Candid, and Original Photos of the Hollywood Legend, His Family, and Career

By New England Vintage Film Society Inc.

Spencer Tracy simply was every character he played on the silver screen. He was known as the actors-actor, a master of his craft. As members of the Tracy Family, we arte grateful to Brenda Loew for putting together this amazing photo book of Spencer Tracy for all the world to enjoy. His memory and legacy live on in this intimate portrait of a man and a life that was fully lived. - Cyndi Tracy & the Spencer Tracy Family

The minute you see Spencer Tracy on the screen you are immediately transfi xed on his humanity. Whether he plays a poor man, a wise-cracking sportswriter, the father of the bride, or the defender of a great cause, in the end, Spencer Tracy truly is the heroic Santiago from Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, courageously battling the sharks that would tear apart his dignity and life's work. No other actor had his gift. - Upton Bell, New England radio and television talk show host whose mother, Broadway actress and comedienne Frances Bell, starred with Eddie Cantor in Whoopee! and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1928, in the early talkie Night Work, and in one of the first experimental television broadcasts in New York City with Gertrude Lawrence and Lionel Atwill. She was a great admirer of Tracy when he was on the New York stage.

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Spencer Tracy, A Life in Pictures: Rare, Candid and Original Photos of the Hollywood Legend, His Family, and Career presents a unique and compelling portrait of the man, his career, and family, including rare imagesof his marriage to actress Louise Treadwell and their two children: John, who was born deaf, and Susie. More than 300 rare, candid and original images in this edition illustrate how Spencer Tracy's life, family and career touched people in every corner of the world.

Combining a unique mixture of original news service photographs, celebrity stills, and rare, candid, and unique snapshots, this dazzling collection of over three hundred images, Spencer Tracy, A Life in Pictures: Rare, Candid and Original Photos of the Hollywood Legend, His Family and Career captures the life and legacy of a Golden Age Hollywood legend, onscreen and off. One of the most versatile and popular movie stars of the twentieth century, Spencer Tracy's life and career spanned sixty-seven tumultuous years of twentieth-century American history, including two world wars, the Great Depression, technological advances, the emergence of the nuclear age, the cold war, and the rise of the women's and civil rights movements.

Behind the scenes, two-time Academy Award-winner Spencer Tracy faced personal and professional challenges without parallel or precedent. Books and articles are still being written today in an attempt to explain the mystique surrounding the Spencer Tracy legend. His story is an inspiring legacy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477144039

New England Vintage Film Society Inc.

Brenda Loew, a former tenured public school speech therapist, is President, New England Vintage Film Society, Inc. (www.nevintagefilm.org). Brenda carries on an historical connection to show business as the great-niece of the late entertainment mogul E. M. Loew. Brenda’s recently endorsed books are Spencer Tracy, Fox Film Actor: the Pre-Code Legacy of a Hollywood Legend; Playbills to Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies; and Spencer Tracy, A Life in Pictures: Rare, Candid and Original Photos of the Hollywood Legend, His Family, and Career. Brenda is also the author of Sophia’s Ghost Alarm!, a children’s picture book for ages 2 - 4+ that tells a bedtime story to help very young children feel safe in their new, “grown-up” beds; Spaulding Sparrow’s Extraordinary Adventure, written for children ages 3 - 6, about a fledgling male sparrow who unexpectedly falls out of the nest and survives to eventually return home and tell his mother and baby sister all about his extraordinary adventure and Nana, Bananas, and Max, for ages 3-5, about fussy eater Max who won’t eat at his grandparents’ house. His nana and papa take Max to the market where he makes a nutritious food choice and can’t wait to eat! Brenda Loew’s books are sold on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Xlibris.com.

Book preview

New England Vintage Film Society, Inc.

Brenda Loew, Editor

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Spencer Tracy

A Life in Pictures

Rare, Candid,

and Original Photos of the Hollywood Legend,

His Family, and Career

Copyright © 2012 by New England Vintage Film Society, Inc..

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations.

This book is published in accordance with the stated mission of New England Vintage Film Society, Inc. Every effort has been made to make the contents of this book as accurate as possible. It is sold with the understanding that it is not the purpose of this book to include all the information that is available on the subject matter or lives and careers of the individuals named. New England Vintage Film Society, Inc. has neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information contained in this book.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

102247

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Spencer Tracy: The Man, His Family, and Career

Early Life, Stock Theatre, and Broadway Years

The Talkies Create a New Breed of Actor Overview of Tracy’s Career in Motion Pictures (1930-1967)

Spencer Tracy Filmography

Spencer Tracy’s Pre-Code Career at Fox (1930-1935)

Becoming a Top-Ranked, Popular Star: A Prestigious Career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1935-1955)

Transformation to Independent Actor and Living Legend (1955-1967)

Death and Legacy: 1967 and beyond

Appendix A Spencer Tracy

Appendix B Louise Tracy

Appendix C John Tracy’s Inspiring Life

Appendix D The Spencer Tracy We Knew

Reference List And Further Reading

For Cyndi Tracy,

mother of Sean and Shane Tracy,

Spencer Tracy’s great-grandsons.

I can tell you the memories are still there—clear, intact, indestructible, and they’ll be there if I live to be 110.

Excerpt from the speech about love given by Spencer Tracy’s character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

Cover Photo. Spencer Tracy. 1932.

Spencer Tracy appearing in Fox Pictures. Photo by Frank Powolny.¹

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Spencer Tracy. This is an original 1938 lithograph of a drawing by Henry Major, with a caption by humorist Bugs Baer, of legendary stage and film actor Spencer Tracy (1900-1967).

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SPENCER TRACY

Twice as tough as the Metro lion—and twenty times as smart.

Foreword

Like many of the Boomer Generation I first became cognizant of Spencer Tracy in the late stages of his career: Inherit the Wind; It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. In my case, a true appreciation of the depth and breadth of his talent and career did not come until video tapes and DVDs made the total of his films accessible for home screening. When I became the executive director of the Stephenson County Museum, which is located in Freeport, Illinois, I began to examine his entire film career in greater depth.

Freeport is rich in Tracy lore. Even in 2012, when we held the first Freeport Film Festival: A Weekend with Spencer Tracy, there were numerous individuals who came forward to recall stories of his visits to the city or their family connections to the film icon. While Freeport cannot claim to have been the city of his birth, it was for both of his parents and much of his extended family.

Those looking for a compilation of such stories should see Looking Back, vol. I, by Harriett Gustason [Freeport, Illinois: Stephenson County Historical Society, 1995]. A long time reporter for the Freeport Journal Standard, Ms. Gustason has written a weekly column on local history. Her columns of the same title are based on the personal reminiscences of her faithful readers. For the 2012 festival Ms. Gustason’s column stitched together many of the local stories she had previously reported.

When Spencer Tracy was born in Milwaukee in 1900, the hometown of his parents was an industrial center, but its single largest employer was the Illinois Central Railroad. The IC, as it was usually called, had major repair facilities in Freeport, in addition to a large switching yard. The crossroads for other railroads, Freeport was something of a transportation hub in those days.

John Donnelly Tracy, grandfather of the yet-to-be-discovered star, was one of the town’s important residents. Working at the management level for the IC, his family lived in a comfortable, well maintained home near the city centre and the IC facilities. But the Tracy’s were Roman Catholic, and in the Freeport of that day a person’s religion and ethnic heritage were often the sole measure by which most people judged. The fact that so many of the workers for the IC were both Catholic and Irish led many people in Freeport to think that IC actually stood for Irish Catholic.

The marriage of Spencer’s parents proved to be one of those early instances where that divide between Protestant and Catholic Freeport was bridged. While the circumstances of their meeting are not clearly known, at some point John Edward Tracy, son of John D., began paying attention to Miss Caroline Brown. Considered by some to be the most eligible young lady in town, Carrie, as she was commonly known, was the daughter of a prosperous businessman who was a staunch Presbyterian raising his family in the city’s wealthy west side. Both fathers tried to intervene in the budding romance, but neither was successful.

Throughout his childhood, Spencer came to Freeport often to visit or stay with family. At times Spencer and his parents lived in Freeport, sometimes with the Tracy in-laws and at others with the Brown in-laws. In both instances one or the other of the couple felt unwelcome. Spencer’s father suffered the ravages of alcoholism all of his married life, a fact that kept the family in financial straits until their second son began to achieve success on stage and screen. Hence the periods of living in Freeport with family.

During those times when Spencer came to Freeport he would have experienced a town that had more than its share of entrepreneurs looking to make a quick living from the new invention called moving pictures. There were several movie houses, though the city would not see a purpose built movie house until Spencer was well into his teen years. The city did boast a booming manufacturing base as firms like Stover Manufacturing, W. T. Rawleigh and Henney Buggy companies provided steady jobs. The city never became a destination for the waves of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe that helped fuel the industrial growth in many cities in the United States in the early 1900s. Nevertheless Freeport maintained a steady if slowly expanding manufacturing sector.

Once Spencer’s movie career began to meet with success, his visits to Freeport were less frequent than in his youth. However, there abound stories of those visits. As his stature in Hollywood increased, his ability to move about the city without drawing a crowd was more difficult. He came back for his father’s funeral in 1928 but at that time the actor’s presence did not arouse much interest. When his mother died in 1942, Spencer’s presence at the funeral did attract considerable attention—winning two Academy Awards tends to generate a certain amount of notoriety. Both of his parents are interred in Freeport’s Calvary Cemetery, a Catholic burial ground, despite the fact that his mother never embraced the Catholic religion of her husband.

Defining what makes a film or an actor classic is a somewhat difficult and often quarrelsome task. For me, the quality that justifies the application of the word classic to Spencer Tracy was his ability to inhabit each role he acted to such an extent that he became more than the character. If Spencer Tracy had become a Catholic priest, he would have been Father Flanagan. If Spencer Tracy had been a Portuguese fisherman from New England, he would have been Manuel. If Spencer Tracy had been an attorney, he would have been Clarence Darrow. He had that rare quality in an actor which brings the audience into his world on his terms, allowing the suspension of reality so that the viewer does not see Spencer Tracy on the screen instead one sees Sam Craig or Frank Skeffington.

As Alan Wenzel, Highland Community College Film Studies instructor, and I prepared for the Freeport Film Festival: A Weekend with Spencer Tracy, we had the unenviable task of trying to select four films that were representative of Spencer’s career. While we would have been hard pressed to have picked a poor film, trying to find those films that were defining events in his career was daunting. In the end, we went with Captains Courageous, Boys’ Town, Woman of the Year, and Inherit the Wind. The festival provided the opportunity to see these marvelous films as they were intended to be seen: on the big screen with a live audience. In doing so, we were able to provide the festival attendees with a truly memorable experience.

Freeport’s Lindo Theater, part of the Classic Cinemas chain, graciously accommodated the Spencer Tracy event. Even as the Tracy films were screened, it was done so in an auditorium next to The Avengers then in its opening weekend. We are certain that those of us watching our hometown guy were even more thrilled than those experiencing the action flick next door.

Edward F. Finch, D.A.

Stephenson County Museum

Freeport, IL

Edward Finch holds a doctorate in history education and taught high school for over thirty years. In his encore profession he became a museum director. While at Freeport High School he taught Film Studies, Advanced Placement English, British Literature, American Studies, Debate, and Speech.

Preface

Spencer Tracy, A Life in Pictures is the portrait of a man, his family, and career assembled from the careful compilation of rare, candid, and original visual representations, essays, articles, letters, and ephemera on loan from private collections, available in the public domain and used with permission or from online resources licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. All original captions and cited copyrights belong to their owners unless otherwise noted. Every effort has been made to present accurate information.

Spencer Tracy, A Life in Pictures is a photo gallery intended to educate, inform, and entertain. It cannot and is not intended to include every single image taken during the life and career of the actor and his family. It is not a definitive resource. That would be an unrealistic claim. Rather, Spencer Tracy, A Life in Pictures is a pictorial biography meant to serve as an inspirational supplement to complement and enlarge upon all the previously existing books, articles, photos, images, memorabilia, and stories—in print, online, etc.—about the man, his career, and family.

While he was alive, Spencer Tracy’s life and career influenced, inspired, and touched the worlds of untold numbers of people. His impact on American entertainment history still continues as does Mrs. Tracy’s mission to educate deaf children.

I extend my greatest thanks to Cyndi Tracy, Mary Claire Kendall, James Fisher, Bob Edgers, Ed Finch and my student intern Audrey Marie Johnson for their wholehearted enthusiasm and continued support toward the publication of this photo legacy and to those individuals and organizations who provided their professional assistance: Lisa Marine, Wisconsin Historical Society; John Nondorf, Wisconsin Historical Society; Diann Henry, Bettman/CORBIS; Anne Porto, Bettman/CORBIS; Nancy Kaufffman, George Eastman House; Aimee Marshall, Condé Nast Publications; Leigh Montville, Condé Nast Publications; as well as all the authorities and primary sources, alive or deceased, who created original material documenting the unique essence and spirit of this truly gifted, iconic American actor—and his family.

Readers are urged to learn as much as possible about Spencer Tracy, the man, his family, and career, by seeking out his films and other available material listed throughout and at the end of this book. I recommend James Fisher’s Spencer Tracy, A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood, 1994); Spencer Tracy, A Biography by Larry Swindell (The New American Library, Inc., 1968); Spencer Tracy, Fox Film Actor: The Pre-Code Legacy of a Hollywood Legend (Xlibris, 2009); Ripon Magazine’s Silver Screen Heart Throb Spencer Tracy ‘24, Part of Golden Era of Movies, Winter 2004; David A. Y. O. Chang’s article Spencer Tracy’s Boyhood—Truth, Fiction, and Hollywood Dreams in Wisconsin Magazine of History, Autumn 2000; The Films of Spencer Tracy by Donald Deschner; Spencer Tracy by Alison King (1992); and Spencer Tracy: A Biography by James Curtis (Knopf, 2011)—the most authoritative, comprehensive, and well-researched of all Spencer Tracy written biographies.

Newton, Massachusetts

October 2012

Introduction

His voice was as famous as his face.

George M. Cohan

On behalf of the Spencer Tracy family, I am grateful to Brenda Loew for her great work on this exciting presentation of the life and times of Spencer Tracy.

The Golden Age of Hollywood was a special time in our American history. Few actors were as well-loved or skilled as this American-born actor from the Midwestern United States. He entertained on the Broadway stage in many great roles that led him to become an even greater movie star where the world would enjoy his portrayals of the famous and the infamous, earning him 9 Academy Award nominations. Spencer made cinema history, becoming the first actor to win 2 consecutive Academy Awards, a record he held for over 55 years.

Cohan called him the greatest actor of the times. Stanley Kramer directed Spencer in some of his last great motion pictures including Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and his last picture, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. I hope you, the reader, will enjoy this book as much as I have.

I am the mother of Sean and Shane Tracy, Spencer’s great-grandsons.

For us the legacy lives on.

Affectionately,

Cyndi Tracy

Spencer Tracy:

The Man, His Family, and Career

Early Life, Stock Theatre, and Broadway Years

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (April 5, 1900-June 10, 1967), one of the major stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, was a theatrical and film actor who appeared onstage, on radio, in public service announcements, and in seventy-five films between 1930 and 1967. A quintessential natural actor, Tracy was nominated for nine Academy Awards for Best Actor—winning two consecutively, in 1937 and 1938. Spencer Tracy is ranked by the American Film Institute as the ninth greatest male star in American cinema.

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Spencer Tracy, eight years old. 1908.

Raised a Roman Catholic, Spencer Tracy 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.² He had one older brother, Carroll. Tracy’s paternal grandparents, John Donnelly Tracy and Mary Guhin, were born in Ireland. His mother’s ancestry dates back to Thomas Stebbins, who emigrated from England in the late 1630s.

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Original caption: A STURDY OAK BUFFETED BY THE WIND. Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was born in Milwaukee, Wisc. on April 5, 1900. At 10, the little lad, shown here with his family, had freckles. His older brother, Carroll, who became his closest friend and advisor, is at left. UPI Photo.

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