The Spencer Tracy Legacy: The Television Documentary

THE SPENCER TRACY LEGACY

Spencer Tracy had been dead almost twenty years when The Spencer Tracy Legacy premiered. Hosted by his long-term mistress and nine-time costar Katharine Hepburn, The Spencer Tracy Legacy is meant to make the case for his importance in film. Using film clips, interviews and personal reminiscences, The Spencer Tracy Legacy is an affection portrait of the man.

"For Spencer Tracy, acting was one thing. Living was another," Hepburn says early in the special. The rest of The Spencer Tracy Legacy makes that case. We see that Tracy's greatest skill when acting was to be natural. Tracy was a firm believer that you convince an audience by not drawing attention to yourself. 

If Tracy had an acting mantra, it would be "act natural". There was nothing showy, theatrical or grandiose to his acting. Instead, it was simple and direct. This is why, Hepburn muses, that his paring with Clark Gable worked so well. Gable was by no means hammy. He too would be natural. However, Gable was more a romantic lead. Tracy was the everyman, the person audiences, particularly male audiences, could better relate to.

Tracy worked hard and achieved stardom with San Francisco. In this film, with its climatic earthquake scene, was the film that finally made him a star. Hepburn reads from Tracy's journals, one of The Spencer Tracy Legacy's highlights. Tracy expresses great pride in Captains Courageous, the film that won him the first of his two consecutive Best Actor Oscars. He returned to the sea in a roundabout way in The Old Man and the Sea. There was something that he related to with these stories of simple men facing off against the elements.

No mention was made on how this Irishman playing a Portuguese and/or Cuban fisherman might now count as cultural appropriation. 

Tracy would venture into various genres with varying degrees of success. His work on Northwest Passage led to a lifetime loathing of location shooting. In both Edison, the Man and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he did rare makeup work. He was not fond of those films. 

He was, however, fonder of Libeled Lady. That was another atypical type of film for Tracy. Libeled Lady was a screwball comedy. He was also fond of his Libeled Lady costar Jean Harlow. There was no suggestion of romance. Instead, it was more a general appreciation for Harlow's vivacious personality. On her death at the shockingly young age of 26, we see Tracy's simple journal entry. "Jean Harlow died. Grand girl," is all he wrote. 

At last, came Woman of the Year. Katharine Hepburn had long admired Spencer Tracy and wanted to work with him. Her first effort to get him to costar with her in The Philadelphia Story failed. With the Woman of the Year script, however, she would not be denied. Hepburn takes us to the spot where she finally met Spencer Tracy. She remembers that on meeting him, she was slightly taller than he was. Apologizing, she remarked that she would be more careful when they worked together. Woman of the Year producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who was with her and was a friend of Tracy's, put her at ease. "Don't worry Kate", he said. "He'll cut you down to his size". 

Hepburn speculates that what made their teaming successful was that they represented the typical American couple. Over the course of their nine films, Tracy & Hepburn would become intertwined cinematically. They would also become intertwined romantically. Tracy never divorced his wife, Louise. He also carried great guilt over his son John's deafness. While the John Tracy Clinic did great work for the deaf, Spencer never could reconcile himself to his official family.

Hepburn ends The Spencer Tracy Legacy by reading a letter that she wrote to her paramour long after his death. At five minutes, we see the great Katharine Hepburn at her most vulnerable. She speaks of her confusion at who this man was. She speaks of how he lived to act but could not live. By the end of her reading, it takes every ounce of strength within her to keep the tears clearly swelling in her eyes from not bursting out.

In San Francisco, Tracy played a priest. He returned to the priesthood in terms of roles in Boys Town, which won him that second consecutive Oscar. The role of priest was also something that he related to. Tracy was a Catholic but not a regular churchgoer. He was also a deeply troubled man who found no refuge in faith. His refuges were acting and alcohol. In The Spencer Tracy Legacy, Hepburn holds to the idea that Spencer found life bearable through acting. He could not live it any other way. 

The Spencer Tracy Legacy is the first time that Hepburn spoke publicly about their long-term affair. She waited until Louise Tracy's death which occurred three years earlier in 1983 before speaking on her decades-long liaison with Mrs. Tracy's husband. It might surprise viewers to see that Spencer and Louise's daughter Susie was friends with Hepburn. I think though that it bears noting that Spencer and Louise had been separated for a long time before Hepburn came into the picture. 

Katharine Hepburn had great respect and admiration for Spencer Tracy, the actor. She speaks with great reverence of his various cinematic successes. As for Spencer Tracy, the man, he is still opaque, a mystery to her. Hepburn loved him, deeply and wholly. Yet, she also did not fully understand him.

Such, I suppose, is the mystery of love. The Spencer Tracy Legacy ends with a five-minute monologue of sorts from Katharine Hepburn. She tells us that she can express herself better by reading aloud a letter that she wrote shortly before filming this tribute to her costar and love. The letter begins almost jolly, a touch humorous. I think she writes about having her cup of coffee while writing.  

As she continues reading what she wrote, we see that she is attempting to work out a lifetime's sense of confusion and emotion about the man she devoted her heart to. "Living wasn't easy for you", she says. "You couldn't enter your own life, but you could be someone else. You weren't you. You were safe". Katharine Hepburn, knowns as this towering figure of strength, reveals the woman within. She allows a great vulnerability to come through. Unfiltered, uncensored, this summation is not about Spencer Tracy's legacy in terms of cinema. It is a summation about Spencer Tracy's legacy in terms of her own heart. 

It is hard to not be moved by Katharine Hepburn in The Spencer Tracy Legacy. Hepburn kept a solid veil around her, where few if any could see the private, even vulnerable figure behind the formidable Yankee exterior. Here, we see Katharine Hepburn as one rarely saw her: deeply hurt, deeply pained, deeply lost. 

Curiously, her story of her first meeting with Tracy would be reused for her own documentary about her life and career, Katharine Hepburn: All About Me. I do not know the reason why the clip was recycled from The Spencer Tracy Legacy to All About Me, made seven years later. 

I confess to not being the biggest Spencer Tracy fan. That being said, I find The Spencer Tracy Legacy a good primer into his life and career. It is colored by Katharine Hepburn's continued devotion to him and his memory. However, I think there is much one can learn about this gifted but troubled man in The Spencer Tracy Legacy. 

7/10