Spencer Tracy was a famous Hollywood actor known for his gracious and kind personality, animal welfare causes, and children’s charities. He started his career on Broadway and made 20 films with Fox Pictures in Hollywood. Tracy won back-to-back Academy Awards and was a major box office draw despite his lack of matinee idol characteristics. He was also a talented painter. Tracy had two affairs and was secretly diagnosed with diabetes, which likely led to his death in 1967.
Spencer Tracy (1900-1967) was a well-known Hollywood actor who starred in a large number of popular films from the 1930s to 1960s. Spencer Tracy is remembered as a gracious and kind protagonist who was also active in animal welfare causes and children’s charities. Spencer Tracy is consistently cited as one of the greatest actors of all time and his versatile and compelling performances still stand out in the films he has made.
Like many actors during the 1930s, Spencer Tracy got his start on Broadway, where he enjoyed a career as a well-respected actor, appearing in a variety of productions before undergoing screen tests for several studios. At first he was rejected, but in 1930 John Ford insisted on casting Spencer Tracy in Up the River. After this first film, Tracy signed a contract with Fox Pictures and moved to Hollywood, making an astonishing total of 20 films between 1930 and 1934.
Spencer Tracy was married to Louise Treadwell, with whom he has two children. He also had two affairs, one with Loretta Young in the 1930s and another with Katharine Hepburn, which began while the two were filming Woman of the Year in 1942. This relationship lasted until Tracy’s death in 1967, although he remained married with Louise Treadwell because her Catholic faith forbade divorce.
Spencer Tracy made a dizzying number of films, winning back-to-back Academy Awards for his work in Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938). Despite her initial rejection by Hollywood, Spencer Tracy went on to become a major box office draw. He has often criticized his appearance, feeling that he lacked the matinee idol characteristics that many leading men of his time had, but this was clearly no obstacle to his stellar film career.
In addition to being an outstanding actor, Spencer Tracy was a very talented painter, although most of his work is in private collections. He worked mainly in oils and painted in a very realistic yet nostalgic style. Many of his paintings have provided backstage glimpses of many Broadway productions, with young actresses in lacy costumes, dark sets, and crowded rooms of actors and actresses preparing to take the stage.
Spencer Tracy was secretly diagnosed with diabetes in the late 1940s, and complications from this disease likely led to his death just nine weeks after Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner wrapped filming in 1967. Tracy suffered of growing ill health in the 1960s, making fewer films than in his 1930s heyday, and his death was a great loss to Hollywood.
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