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"What sets the festival apart is the inclusion of several of the early films Tracy made at Fox before he went to MGM and superstardom in 1935." —Los Angeles Times
It is all too easy to take Spencer Tracy for granted. A respected and extraordinarily popular fixture of Hollywood’s classic era, Tracy appeared in more than 70 features over four decades, garnering two Academy Awards, and the essential attribute of a true star: to be recognized and valued as something greater than the roles he played. Preceding Tracy, “important” acting announced its importance: witness the florid, externalized manner of George Arliss and Lionel Barrymore. Following this, and preceding the intellectual and formal innovations of “method” acting, Tracy fused classical training that emphasized surrender to character over “technique” with a complex and conflicted inner life (famously battling alcoholism and maintaining a decades-long extra-marital relationship with actress Katharine Hepburn). He brought an attenuated, internalized quality to a surprisingly wide array of characterizations—disgruntled patriarchs, jaded tycoons, cold-blooded avengers, modernized priests, feminized husbands—that his wife, Louise Tracy, aptly dubbed “that natural thing.” Tracy’s screen style in many ways led to a reassessment of acting as an admirable and populist art. This survey of highlights and rarities from Tracy’s career demonstrates the evolution of his talent, from his early career playing mostly convicts, thugs and lovable “mugs,” to the years when, established as a major talent, his personality attracted stories and parts fitted to the frame of an embattled man with a palpable, if understated, moral dimension.
This series coincides with the publication of Spencer Tracy: A Biography by James Curtis. Curtis will sign copies of his book on the occasion of the series’ opening on Saturday, January 7.
