De beste acteurs in de geschiedenis van de film (Mei 2024)
Spencer Tracy, voluit Spencer Bonaventure Tracy, (geboren op 5 april 1900, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, VS - overleden op 10 juni 1967, Beverly Hills, Californië), ruw uitgehouwen Amerikaanse filmster die een van de grootste mannelijke hoofdrollen van Hollywood was en de eerste acteur krijgt twee opeenvolgende Academy Awards voor beste acteur.
Quiz
Filmschool: feit of fictie?
Bij het maken van films is de sleutelgreep verantwoordelijk voor de verlichting.
In zijn jeugd verveelde Tracy zich door schoolwerk en trad hij op 17-jarige leeftijd in dienst bij de Amerikaanse marine. Ondanks zijn afkeer van academici werd hij uiteindelijk een premed student aan het Ripon College in Wisconsin. Terwijl hij daar was, deed hij auditie voor en won hij een rol in het aanvangsspel en ontdekte dat acteren hem meer beviel dan medicijnen. In 1922 ging hij naar New York City, waar hij en zijn vriend Pat O'Brien zich inschreven aan de American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Datzelfde jaar maakten beide mannen hun gezamenlijke Broadway-debuut en speelden bitrollen als robots in Karel Čapek's RUR. hij werd gecast als ter dood veroordeelde gevangene Killer Mears in de Broadway-hit The Last Mile uit 1930. Vervolgens verscheen hij in twee korte onderwerpen van Vitaphone,maar hij was niet blij met zichzelf en pessimistisch over zijn kansen op het sterrendom op het scherm.
Nevertheless, director John Ford hired Tracy to star in the 1930 feature film Up the River, which resulted in a five-year stay at Fox Studios in Hollywood. Although few of his Fox films were memorable—excepting perhaps Me and My Gal (1932), 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), and The Power and the Glory (1933)—his tenure at the studio enabled him to develop his uncanny ability to act without ever appearing to be acting. His friend Humphrey Bogart once attempted to describe the elusive Tracy technique: “[You] don’t see the mechanism working, the wheels turning. He covers up. He never overacts or is hammy. He makes you believe what he is playing.” For his part, Tracy always denied that he had come up with any sort of magic formula. Whenever he was asked the secret of great acting, he usually snapped, “Learn your lines!”
In 1935 he was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he would do some of his best work, beginning with his harrowing performance as a lynch-mob survivor in Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936). He received his first of nine Oscar nominations for San Francisco (1936) and became the first actor to win two consecutive Academy Awards, for his performance as the Portuguese fisherman Manuel in Captains Courageous (1937) and for his role as the priest who founded the eponymous facility in Boys Town (1938). In the course of his two decades at MGM he settled gracefully into character leads, conveying everything from paternal bemusement in Father of the Bride (1950) to grim determination in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). In later years his health was eroded by respiratory ailments and a lifelong struggle with alcoholism, but Tracy worked into the early 1960s, delivering exceptionally powerful performances in producer-director Stanley Kramer’s Inherit the Wind (1960) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).
Married since 1923 to former actress Louise Treadwell, Tracy lived apart from his wife throughout most of their marriage, though as a strict Roman Catholic he refused to consider divorce. From 1942 onward, he maintained a warm, intimate relationship with actress Katharine Hepburn. Tracy and Hepburn were also memorably teamed in nine films, including Woman of the Year (1942), Adam’s Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), Desk Set (1957), and Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), which was completed three weeks before Tracy’s death.
