10 Greatest Films of Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was born in 1900 in Wisconsin. After a stint in the military he moved to New York and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He began his acting career in theater and performed in several Broadway shows before catching the eye of director John Ford, whom cast him alongside Humphrey Bogart in 1930's Up the River.
Tracy received his first Oscar nomination in 1937 for San Francisco. He won back to back Oscars over the next two years for Captains Courageous and Boys Town (the only other actor to win back-to-back Best Actor Oscars is Tom Hanks) He received six more Best Actor nominations, the last, posthumously, for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
Tracy was a very natural actor. He once described his job as “Know your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.”
10. Captains Courageous (1937) — Adapted from a work by Rudyard Kipling, this is a coming of age story about a spoiled brat lost at sea and rescued by a fishing boat, commanded by Tracy. Over the film, Tracy acts as the boys guide, helping him to grow up.
“I gonna get nifty suit. You know, purple colored. Oh, very nifty suit, with shoes to match and big pearl buttons. Oh, and then I get new tie with big yellow flowers. Oh, then I walk up and down Duckett Street, and I say “Hey, girls, girls. Hey, look, look. Manuel is in town.” — Manuel
9. Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) — nominated for 11 Academy Awards, this film is a dramatization of one of the war crimes trials conducted after World War II. Tracy plays the presiding judge and Burt Lancaster one of the defendants. The film tries its best (as best as can be with Nazis as the defendants) to tell the story neutrally. It’s thoughtful if a tad overdone.
“Herr Janning, it “came to that” the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.” — Judge Haywood
8. A Guy Named Joe (1943) — Tracy plays a daring pilot that is killed during one of his missions. The man upstairs tasks him with being the guardian angel for new pilots, one of whom, played by Irene Dunne, he was in love with before his death.
If the story sounds familiar, it was remade in 1989 by Steven Spielberg, with Richard Dreyfuss in the Tracy role.
7. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967) — The ninth and final film that Spencer Tracy did with Katharine Hepburn was directed by Stanley Kramer and co-starred Sydney Poitier.
At the time, it was a daring and controversial film, examining the concept of interracial marriage. Tracy and Hepburn play a couple whose daughter brings home a black man.
“Now Mr. Prentice, clearly a most reasonable man, says he has no wish to offend me but wants to know if I’m some kind of a *nut*. And Mrs. Prentice says that like her husband I’m a burned-out old shell of a man who cannot even remember what it’s like to love a woman the way her son loves my daughter. And strange as it seems, that’s the first statement made to me all day with which I am prepared to take issue… cause I think you’re wrong, you’re as wrong as you can be.” — Matt Drayton
6. Boys Town (1938) — a telling of the true story of the Boys Town organization started by Father Edward Flanagan in 1917. Flanagan is noted as saying that “There are no bad boys. There is only bad environment, bad training, bad example, bad thinking.” The film was directed by Norman Taurog and costars Mickey Rooney.
Tracy won the Best Actor Oscar for this film and gave the award to the real Father Flanagan.
“There is no such thing as a bad boy.” — Father Flanagan
5. Woman of the Year (1942) — This film was a personal project of Katharine Hepburn. She commissioned the script and sold it to MGM. She also picked the director (George Stevens), and campaigned to get Spencer Tracy to co-star. Hepburn and Tracy made a total of nine films together and their onscreen chemistry continued offscreen. They maintained a 25 year relationship — from the making of this film until Tracy’s death.
The film is a romantic comedy. Tracy and Hepburn play feuding newspaper columnists that meet, fall in love, and marry and then struggle with their opposites attract relationship.
“Because you’re incapable of doing them, that’s why. You can’t expect Seabiscuit to stop in the middle of the stretch, drink a glass of water, and count to seven at the same time, you know. That takes training.” — Sam Craig
4. Inherit the Wind (1960) — Stanley Kramer directed Tracy in this film adaptation of the broadway play that itself was based on the 1925 Scopes Trial about a teacher that challenges a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution.
“Yes. The individual human mind. In a child’s power to master the multiplication table, there is more sanctity than in all your shouted “amens” and “holy holies” and “hosannas.” An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man’s knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters.” — Henry Drummond
3. Father of the Bride (1950) — Vincente Minelli directed Tracy, Joan Bennett, and a lovely Elizabeth Taylor in this charming and funny story narrated by a father preparing for his only daughter’s wedding. If it sounds familiar, it was remade in 1991 with Steve Martin in the Tracy role. As the movie proceeds, the wedding gets more and more expensive and Tracy’s character maintains less and less control. It’s a real classic.
“I would like to say a few words about weddings. I’ve just been through one. Not my own. My daughter’s. Someday in the far future I may be able to remember it with tender indulgence, but not now. I always used to think that marriages were a simple affair. Boy meets girl. Fall in love. They get married. Have babies. Eventually the babies grow up and meet other babies. They fall in love. Get married. Have babies. And so on and on and on. Looked at that way, it’s not only simple, it’s downright monotonous. But I was wrong. I figured without the wedding.” — Stanley Banks
2. Adam’s Rib (1949) — George Cukor directed this film, the best of the Hepburn-Tracy films. They play a married pair of lawyers that find themselves opposing each other in a murder case — he is the prosecuting attorney and she the defense attorney. The film is funny and smart, with sharp dialogue.
“Licorice. If there’s anything I’m a sucker for, it’s licorice.” — Adam Bonner
1. Fury (1936) — Director Fritz Lang’s first American film is an excellent lesson about the dangers of mob mentality. This film should be shown in every school. It is just as relevant today as it was almost 80 years ago. Tracy plays a man that is falsely accused of a crime and then believed killed by an angry mob. Although he survives, he doesn’t come forward because he wants the mob to get the greatest possible punishment.
“I’ll give them a chance that they didn’t give me. They will get a legal trial in a legal courtroom. They will have a legal judge and a legal defense. They will get a legal sentence and a legal death.” — Joe Wilson
Films that almost made this list include The Last Hurrah, Broken Lance, State of the Union, and BoomTown. What films would have made your list?
