SPENCER TRACY

There`s nobody in the business who can touch him, and you`re a fool to try. And he knows it, so don`t fall for that humble stuff!”- Clark Gable about

Hollywood’s Golden Boy - SPENCER TRACY.

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy is widely considered to be the most versatile and greatest film actor of the 20th century. Perhaps even the greatest actor of all time.

Tracy during his big break on stage in 1930, while playing a convicted killer in ‘The Last Mile’ on opening night, received a standing ovation which lasted 14 curtain calls. Tracy ended up performing ‘The Last Mile’ 289 times.

The first actor-of only two-to ever receive back-to-back, consecutive Best Actor Oscars.

When Tracy won the Best Actor Oscar in 1938 for his role in Boy’s Town, instead of “Spencer Tracy,” the award read “Dick Tracy.”

He never liked to read or rehearse or shoot a scene more than once and in most cases he didn’t have to.

Tracy was offered the role of The Penguin in the TV series Batman (1966). His only condition was that he’ll accept the role if he was allowed to kill Batman.

One of the few truly famous actors who never made an appearance acting on a television program.

He suffered from severe insomnia his entire life.

He gave to charity so impulsively that it became more cost effective to hire a personal assistant to make charitable donations for him. Tracy met a young man when he first came to Hollywood; when the young man expressed an interest in becoming a doctor, Tracy paid his way through med school.

When his friend Humphrey Bogart was dying , Tracy sat at his bedside every night, trying to keep his spirits up. When the time came for Bogart’s funeral, Lauren Bacall asked Tracy if he would read the eulogy. Tracy declined: he was overwhelmed with grief and didn’t think he would be able to finish.

Tracy’s last film was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. He was posthumously nominated for the Best Actor award at the 1968 Academy Awards. Katharine Hepburn later claimed that she could never bring herself to see the movie because it would be so painful for her to watch him in the film.

Katharine Hepburn on Tracy: "He's like an old oak tree, or the summer, or the wind. He belongs to an era when men were men".

Harold Clurman on Tracy: "He was the universal American: honest, calm, considerate, free of all phoniness. There was in him no petty motive or concealed malice. He was a man".