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Spencer Tracy (1900–1967) was an American actor. His film career began in 1930 with Up the River (directed by John Ford and co-starring Humphrey Bogart), and ended in 1967 with Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (alongside Sidney Poitier and his longtime screen partner, Katharine Hepburn). Within his 37-year career, Tracy starred in 75 feature films and several short films.
He earned nine Academy Award for Best Actor nominations (tied for the most in that category with Laurence Olivier) throughout his career, and was the first male actor to win two consecutively, for Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938) (directed by Victor Fleming and Norman Taurog, respectively). He set this record just one year after Luise Rainer became the first female, and actress in general, to win "bookend Oscars".
The other seven films he was nominated for Academy Awards were San Francisco (1936) (directed by W. S. Van Dyke); Father of the Bride (1950) (directed by Vincente Minnelli); Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) and The Old Man and the Sea (1958) (both directed by John Sturges); Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and posthumously for his final film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). (The second actor in this category to be nominated posthumously after James Dean's two consecutive posthumous nominations one decade earlier.) The latter three films were all directed by Stanley Kramer, with whom Tracy had developed a partnership.
Other films which earned Tracy accolades include The Actress (1953) (directed by George Cukor—for which he won his only Golden Globe Award); The Mountain (1956) (directed by Edward Dmytryk); and The Last Hurrah (1958) (also directed by Ford). One of Tracy's biggest box office hits was his penultimate film (and the third of four working with Kramer), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). He received the Cannes Best Actor award for Bad Day at Black Rock and a posthumous BAFTA for "Dinner".
Hepburn & Tracy also became a legendary screen team. Their first pairing was in the film Woman of the Year (1942) (directed by George Stevens), which earned Hepburn her third Oscar nom. Subsequent Hepburn/Tracy films included Keeper of the Flame (1942) (once again, directed by Cukor), Without Love (1945) (directed by Harold S. Bucquet), Sea of Grass (1947) (directed by Elia Kazan), State of the Union (1948) (directed by Frank Capra); Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952) (both also directed by Cukor); Desk Set (1957) (directed by Walter Lang); and finally culminating with the aforementioned "Dinner", prior to Tracy's fatal heart attack in 1967 at the age of 67.