To most modern movie stars, putting out 75 films in only 37 years would be quite a remarkable task. For Spencer Tracy, whose acting career lasted from 1930 to 1967, it wasn’t.
In remembrance of this oft-overlooked star, the UCLA Film and Television Archive has been screening some of Spencer Tracy’s films in a series titled “Spencer Tracy: That Natural Thing.”
The series features some of Spencer Tracy’s more memorable roles, such as Matt Drayton in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” and the title role in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” as well as some of his more obscure films, including some restorations only available through the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
“Almost his entire body of work is available for viewing in this format, and I think that (the Archive) has done a wonderful job of making some difficult choices and putting together a series that’s really quite representative of his work,” said Spencer Tracy biographer James Curtis.
Curtis, who recently released “Spencer Tracy: A Biography,” said that his personal favorite film of Tracy’s is “Inherit the Wind,” so getting to talk in front of an audience and see the film on a big screen for the first time was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“The opening night, “˜Inherit the Wind,’ is a film that’s been seen quite a lot on television, so I wanted to talk a bit about the differences one might perceive seeing it on the big screen,” said Curtis.
Tracy’s career in Hollywood began at Fox Studios, and it was there that he made some of his films which are now the hardest to find. Some of these films can only be seen through this current film series.
He went on to become a rather big star in Hollywood, starring in major feature films such as “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and “Adam’s Rib.” Tracy’s stardom makes him a bit of an outlier in the world of Hollywood, according to Jan-Christopher Horak, the director of the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
“Tracy … is a very interesting actor because, in Hollywood, he was about as close as you can come to a kind of everyman. He wasn’t really good-looking, he didn’t really match that glamour image of Hollywood for male stars, and yet somehow he stayed a star for more than 30 years. He was this character that normal people could identify with,” said Horak.
According to Curtis, after Tracy’s death in 1967 he became known simply as Katharine Hepburn’s foil in a series of films the two starred in together, rather than remembered for his own merits.
This film screening series, however, aims to put Tracy back in the spotlight, and seems to be bringing attention to the mostly forgotten star.
“I wasn’t aware that this was happening, but I think I will try to go to the screening of “˜Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ in particular. Though, admittedly, I’m not very familiar with Tracy’s films,” said fourth-year art student Latoya Raveneau.
The archive hopes to attract both those who are familiar with Spencer Tracy’s work as well as those who aren’t. This series is one of the only places to see many of these films as they were meant to be sceen.
“It’s like boarding a time machine,” said Curtis. “Going back and sitting there and watching a film from 1933 ““ in a way, you’re back in 1933. I think it’s fascinating to see … what was considered to be mass entertainment back then.”