Spencer Bonaventure Tracy 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. 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 theater, working in a succession of stock companies and intermittently on Broadway. 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. None of them were hits, although his performance in The Power and the Glory (1933) was highly praised at the time.
In 1935, Tracy joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Hollywood's most prestigious studio at the time. His career flourished after his fifth MGM film, Fury (1936), and in 1937 and 1938 he won consecutive Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. Tracy teamed with Clark Gable, MGM's most prominent leading man, for three major box office successes, and by the early 1940s, he 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 that 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. Tracy and his wife Louise became estranged in the 1930s, but the couple never divorced. His 25-year relationship with Katharine Hepburn was an open secret. Towards the end of his life, Tracy worked almost exclusively for director Stanley Kramer. Tracy made his last film with Kramer, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), with filming completed just 17 days before he died.
