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Spencer Tracy: A Biography by James Curtis (Repost)

Posted By: thingska
Spencer Tracy: A Biography by James Curtis (Repost)

Spencer Tracy: A Biography by James Curtis
English | Oct 18, 2011 | ISBN: 0307262898 | 1024 Pages | EPUB | 23,6 MB

This is the long awaited biography of Spencer Tracy by James Curtis and it is certainly worth the wait. James Curtis has written, by far, the best biography ever written about Tracy.

Tracy has had a dismal history with the genre of the celebrity biography. There are only two full length Tracy biographies written prior to this book; one the fine but too brief and occasionally inaccurate book by Larry Swindell (1969), and the really poor, extremely fictionalized account of Tracy's life by Bill Davidson (1988). However, there have been more than 30 biographies of Katharine Hepburn published over the years. Most of those are highly inaccurate with regard to Hepburn and even more so on the subject of Spencer Tracy. In the Hepburn books, the facts of Tracy's life have consistently been misstated, including a huge variety of inaccurate and often malicious stories about his alcoholism, family life and relationship with Hepburn.

So, I have been enthusiastically looking forward to James Curtis' book and he does not disappoint. Curtis has a track record of writing very fine film related books including the excellent 2003 W. C. Fields biography. Curtis spent more than five years researching and writing this book and has drawn on the considerable research of another writer, Selden West, who originally was going to write the book but eventually withdrew from the project. Most importantly Curtis had the complete cooperation of Tracy's daughter, Susie, and access to the journals Tracy maintained for much of his adult life as well as correspondence, medical and business records and the recollections of close family members in Freeport, IL and elsewhere. Curtis also, had access to interviews done with Katharine Hepburn by Selden West, an extensive narrative written by Louise Tracy about her life, as well as many interviews with people who worked with Tracy and others who knew him well including Katharine Houghton and the late TV executive William Self who was a friend of Tracy's from the late 1940s. Self, alone, is a fountain of information on Tracy since he was in the rare position of not only knowing Tracy and Hepburn together but Tracy's wife and children as well. As a result of all this new research, Curtis adds a huge amount of never before seen information to the life of Spencer Tracy.

In the process of writing this book, Curtis debunks many myths that surround Tracy among them one that surprised even me. It turns out that Tracy was not nearly the drinker that all the other books that touch on his life would lead us to believe. Tracy was a binge drinker who could abstain for years from any drinking; the most notable and surprising stretch of almost 10 years in the 1940s and 50s.

Curtis does an excellent job of describing Tracy's long road to success as an actor, through stage work, years of neglect at the old Fox studio and his eventual success at MGM and beyond. He provides insight on how Tracy approached acting and how his prodigious talent affected those who worked with him.

The book also brings Tracy's wife, Louise, more firmly into the story of his life than any prior Tracy (or Hepburn) book. This book tells, in detail, the experiences Louise had from the time she discovered that their son John was deaf and the travails she and Spencer went through with regard to his health issues and trying to figure out how to educate a deaf child. Louise eventually used all the knowledge she had gained from her experiences with John to found the John Tracy Clinic, a renowned resource for the education of deaf children in their early years. Her's is a fascinating story which needed to be included in this biography.

Finally, Curtis brings new insight into the relationship of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Considering all the ink that has been devoted to their relationship, one would think there is nothing left to say. Far from it. Curtis has expanded on the Tracy/Hepburn relationship to a greater extent than any other book. As Katharine Houghton (who should know) comments, Curtis tells their story with more detail and understanding than any other book about either of them.

As a caveat, I must say that occasionally I quibbled a bit with some of the conclusions that Curtis arrives at with regard to Tracy's motivations and of those around him in connection with certain of the events of his life. However, Tracy was a highly complex individual and I sympathize with the author's difficulty in making sense of some things that happened in Tracy's life. Katharine Hepburn stated more than once that she never really knew him and after reading Curtis' book I understand more fully what she meant. Curtis has done an impressive job of setting forth all the various influences on Tracy's life, the demands on him, personally, financially and emotionally, and to Curtis' credit he almost always lets us draw our own conclusions.

Before the book was published a friend said to me that instead of being one of the most misrepresented and maligned actors in the sorry field of celebrity biography, Spencer Tracy will probably have a book written about him that would be the envy of any of the subjects of the typical actor biography. It turns out she was right on target. This is not only a great book about Spencer Tracy, it is one of the best actor biographies I've ever read.