SPENCER TRACY - Documentary (Pode 2024)
Spencer Tracy, na íntegra Spencer Bonaventure Tracy, (nascido em 5 de abril de 1900, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, EUA - faleceu em 10 de junho de 1967, Beverly Hills, Califórnia), estrela de cinema americana malcriada que foi uma das maiores protagonistas masculinas de Hollywood e a primeira ator para receber dois Oscar consecutivos de melhor ator.
Questionário
Escola de Cinema: Fato ou Ficção?
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Quando jovem, Tracy ficou entediado com os trabalhos escolares e ingressou na Marinha dos EUA aos 17 anos. Apesar de seu desgosto pelos acadêmicos, ele acabou se tornando um aluno premiado no Ripon College, em Wisconsin. Enquanto estava lá, ele fez um teste e ganhou um papel na peça de iniciação e descobriu que a atuação é mais do seu agrado do que a medicina. Em 1922, ele foi para a cidade de Nova York, onde ele e seu amigo Pat O'Brien se matricularam na Academia Americana de Artes Dramáticas. Naquele mesmo ano, os dois fizeram sua estréia conjunta na Broadway, atuando como robôs no RUR de Karel Čapek. Nos oito anos seguintes, Tracy saltou entre partes destacadas de peças de teatro de curta duração da Broadway e papéis principais em companhias de ações regionais, finalmente alcançando o estrelato quando ele foi escalado como prisioneiro do corredor da morte Killer Mears no musical da Broadway de 1930, The Last Mile. Posteriormente, ele apareceu em dois assuntos curtos do Vitaphone,mas ele estava descontente consigo mesmo e pessimista sobre suas chances de estrelato na tela.
Nevertheless, director John Ford hired Tracy to star in the 1930 feature film Up the River, which resulted in a five-year stay at Fox Studios in Hollywood. Although few of his Fox films were memorable—excepting perhaps Me and My Gal (1932), 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), and The Power and the Glory (1933)—his tenure at the studio enabled him to develop his uncanny ability to act without ever appearing to be acting. His friend Humphrey Bogart once attempted to describe the elusive Tracy technique: “[You] don’t see the mechanism working, the wheels turning. He covers up. He never overacts or is hammy. He makes you believe what he is playing.” For his part, Tracy always denied that he had come up with any sort of magic formula. Whenever he was asked the secret of great acting, he usually snapped, “Learn your lines!”
In 1935 he was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he would do some of his best work, beginning with his harrowing performance as a lynch-mob survivor in Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936). He received his first of nine Oscar nominations for San Francisco (1936) and became the first actor to win two consecutive Academy Awards, for his performance as the Portuguese fisherman Manuel in Captains Courageous (1937) and for his role as the priest who founded the eponymous facility in Boys Town (1938). In the course of his two decades at MGM he settled gracefully into character leads, conveying everything from paternal bemusement in Father of the Bride (1950) to grim determination in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). In later years his health was eroded by respiratory ailments and a lifelong struggle with alcoholism, but Tracy worked into the early 1960s, delivering exceptionally powerful performances in producer-director Stanley Kramer’s Inherit the Wind (1960) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).
Married since 1923 to former actress Louise Treadwell, Tracy lived apart from his wife throughout most of their marriage, though as a strict Roman Catholic he refused to consider divorce. From 1942 onward, he maintained a warm, intimate relationship with actress Katharine Hepburn. Tracy and Hepburn were also memorably teamed in nine films, including Woman of the Year (1942), Adam’s Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), Desk Set (1957), and Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), which was completed three weeks before Tracy’s death.
