Spencer Tracy Net Worth

About Spencer Tracy

Upon being signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1935, Spencer Tracy immediately gave one of the most chilling performances of his career as a lynch mob survivor in Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936). For his roles as the Portuguese fisherman Manuel in Captains Courageous (1937) and the priest who created the titular school in Boys Town (1938), he became the first actor to win two consecutive Academy Awards. He won his first of nine nominations for San Francisco (1936).

On April 5, 1900, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Spencer Tracy was born to truck salesman John Edward Tracy and Caroline Brown Tracy. He was their second son. His Irish Catholic mother’s family was wealthy, and he was born into a wealthy Presbyterian family in the Midwest. He was four years younger than his older brother Carroll. His classmate at Marquette Academy, Pat O’Brien, and he enlisted in the Navy at the outbreak of World War I, so he dropped out and joined him. When World War II finally ended, Tracy was still stationed in Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia. After starring in Ripon College’s production of “The Truth” he began to consider a career in acting.

After finishing college, Tracy went to work for a White Plains, New York stock company, but he was only assigned minor duties there. He eventually left for a corporation in Cincinnati, but his efforts there were as fruitless. He had his first Broadway job in the farce A Royal Fandango, starring Ethel Barrymore, in November of 1923. The show received negative reviews and was cancelled after only 25 performances, prompting Tracy to reflect, “My ego took an awful beating.” When Tracy accepted a job with a failing New Jersey business, he was given a meager $35 per week. He made his debut as a leading man in a Winnipeg production in January 1924, but the company didn’t last long before folding.

By the middle of 1932, after nine films, Tracy was still largely unknown. When his contract with Fox came due for renewal, he was on the verge of leaving until he received a raise to $1,500 per week, which was enough to make him stay. He kept showing up in films that no one wanted to see, like Me and My Gal (1932), which broke the attendance record for the Roxy Theatre in New York.

He appeared in the Warner Bros. prison drama 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) alongside Bette Davis because he was on loan from the studio. Despite positive critical reception, Tracy’s hopes that this would be his breakout role ultimately were dashed.

Through his time at Fox, Tracy had a reputation as a heavy drinker. In June of 1934, he was found nearly unconscious in his hotel room following a two-week binge and had missed reporting for production on Marie Galante.

While Tracy was recovering in the hospital, he was fired from Fox’s payroll and later sued the company for $125,000 due to the delays in filming caused by his illness. To the studio’s dismay, he only finished two more films with them. Tracy’s first independent hit was Fury (1936), which he starred in and produced entirely on his own.

Tracy, under Fritz Lang’s direction, played a guy who narrowly escaped being lynched and swore revenge. Both the movie and the performance were praised highly. Worldwide, it turned over $1,3 million in profit.

Due to the success he experienced in San Francisco, MGM decided to cast Spencer Tracy as a priest once again in Boys Town (also 1938). Tracy took his job as Father Edward J. Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town in Nebraska, very seriously. Tracy’s performance was praised, and the film made over $4 million at the box office.

In April of 1941, Tracy signed a new contract with MGM that would pay him $5,000 per week but restrict him to to three films per year (Tracy had previously expressed a need to reduce his workload).

Within the same year, Men of Boys Town 2 was released, and Tracy reprised his role as Father Flanagan (1941). The next year, in 1941, Tracy made his sole foray into the horror genre with an adaption of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which he co-starred with Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner. Unhappy with the film and the extensive make-up required to play Hyde, Tracy ultimately decided to boycott the production. The film had a mixed reception from critics. As Theodore Strauss of The New York Times put it, “Mr. Tracy’s portrait of Hyde is not so much evil incarnate as it is the ham rampant.” On the other hand, the picture was commercially successful, grossing over $2 million.

For his performance as Stanley Banks in Father of the Bride, Tracy garnered his first Oscar nod in 12 years (1950). In this comedic film, Banks tries to organize his daughter’s approaching wedding (Elizabeth Taylor). Earning over $6 million globally, it was Tracy’s most financially successful film to date. Even though Tracy had doubts, he agreed to make a sequel since MGM insisted on it. Ten months later, in 1951, came the successful release of Father’s Little Dividend. In the wake of the success of these two films, Tracy was once again ranked as one of America’s most popular actors.

He co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in the 1952 film Pat and Mike, which was scripted by Kanin and Gordon. The movie Pat and Mike was a huge hit and received high marks from critics. Later that year, in 1952, Spencer Tracy starred alongside Gene Tierney in Plymouth Adventure, a historical drama centered on the Mayflower. A total of $1.8 million was lost by MGM as a result of the film’s bad reception both critically and at the box office.

During his two decades at MGM, he naturally transitioned into character roles, whether it was conveying fatherly bemusement in Father of the Bride (1950) or grim determination in Bad Day at Black Rock (1962). Despite declining health due to respiratory problems and a prolonged battle with drinking, Tracy continued to act into the early 1960s, giving memorable performances in films like Inherit the Wind (1960) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1962), both directed by producer-director Stanley Kramer (1961).

Aside from his brief fling with Loretta Young in the 1930s, Tracy was also romantically linked to Katharine Hepburn beginning in 1942, when the two were cast together in Woman of the Year by George Stevens. Though they rarely saw each other, Tracy and Louise could not divorce due to his strong Roman Catholic convictions. Due to his serious drinking and diabetes (which began in the late 1940s), Tracy turned down several roles that were specifically written for him in films that went on to be huge successes starring other actors. Spencer Tracy’s death from a heart attack came just two weeks after he finished filming Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), in which he had been sick with lung congestion.