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Knopf
October 2011
On Sale: October 18, 2011
1024 pages
ISBN: 0307262898
EAN: 9780307262899
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
“The best goddamned actor I’ve ever seen!”—George M. Cohan His full name was Spencer Bonaventure Tracy. He was called
“The Gray Fox” by Frank Sinatra; other actors called him the
“The Pope.” Spencer Tracy’s image on-screen was that of a self-reliant
man whose sense of rectitude toward others was matched by
his sense of humor toward himself. Whether he was Father
Flanagan of Boys Town, Clarence Darrow of Inherit the Wind,
or the crippled war veteran in Bad Day at Black Rock, Tracy
was forever seen as a pillar of strength. In his several comedy roles opposite Katharine Hepburn
(Woman of the Year and Adam’s Rib among them) or in Father
of the Bride with Elizabeth Taylor, Tracy was the sort of
regular American guy one could depend on. Now James Curtis, acclaimed biographer of Preston Sturges
(“Definitive” —Variety), James Whale, and W. C. Fields (“By
far the fullest, fairest, and most touching account . . . we
have yet had. Or are likely to have” —Richard Schickel, The
New York Times Book Review, cover review), gives us the life
of one of the most revered screen actors of his generation. Curtis writes of Tracy’s distinguished career, his deep
Catholicism, his devoted relationship to his wife, his
drinking that got him into so much trouble, and his
twenty-six-year-long bond with his partner on-screen and
off, Katharine Hepburn. Drawing on Tracy’s personal papers
and writing with the full cooperation of Tracy’s daughter,
Curtis tells the rich story of the brilliant but haunted man
at the heart of the legend. We see him from his boyhood in Milwaukee; given over to
Dominican nuns (“They drill that religion in you”); his
years struggling in regional shows and stock (Tracy had a
photographic memory and an instinct for inhabiting a
character from within); acting opposite his future wife,
Louise Treadwell; marrying and having two children, their
son, John, born deaf. We see Tracy’s success on Broadway, his turning out mostly
forgettable programmers with the Fox Film Corporation, and
going to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and getting the kinds of roles
that had eluded him in the past—a streetwise priest opposite
Clark Gable in San Francisco; a screwball comedy, Libeled
Lady; Kipling’s classic of the sea, Captains Courageous.
Three years after arriving at MGM, Tracy became America’s
top male star. We see how Tracy embarked on a series of affairs with his
costars . . . making Northwest Passage and Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde, which brought Ingrid Bergman into his life. By the
time the unhappy shoot was over, Tracy, looking to do a
comedy, made Woman of the Year. Its unlikely costar:
Katharine Hepburn. We see Hepburn making Tracy her life’s project—protecting
and sustaining him in the difficult job of being a top-tier
movie star. And we see Tracy’s wife, Louise, devoting herself to
studying how deaf children could be taught to communicate
orally with the hearing and speaking world. Curtis writes that Tracy was ready to retire when
producer-director Stanley Kramer recruited him for Inherit
the Wind—a collaboration that led to Judgment at Nuremberg,
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and Tracy’s final picture,
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner . . . A rich, vibrant portrait—the most intimate and telling yet
of this complex man considered by many to be the actor’s actor.
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