Oscar Winner Spencer Tracy on Acting:
“I’ve never known what acting is. Who can honestly say what it is? … I wonder what actors are supposed to be, if not themselves … I’ve finally narrowed it down to where, when I begin a part, I say to myself, this is Spencer Tracy as a judge, or this is Spencer Tracy as a priest or as a lawyer, and let it go at that. Look, the only thing an actor has to offer a director and finally an audience is his instinct. That’s all. (Deschner, Films of S. Tracy, p. 23).
Tracy was known for his impatience with agents, photographers, journalists, publicity people, and sometimes even directors, if “they talked too much or rehearsed too much.”
Stanley Karmer, who directed Tracy in four movies (during the last decade of his career) recalled: “Spence had no patience with the antics of young actors, whose schooling or approach showed. He would say: “When a young actor or actress would demand motivation for coming in a door, I tell them, ‘You come in the goddamn door because there’s no other way to come in the goddman door.'”
When asked by the press what advice he ad for young aspiring thespians, he would say, “just learn your lines.”
Richard Widmark called him “the greatest movie actor there ever was” and said that he had “learned more about acting from watching Tracy than in any other way.”Tracy was respected for his naturalism onscreen. Hume Cronyn, who worked with him on The Seventh Cross: “His method appeared to be as simple as it is difficult to achieve. He appeared to do nothing. He listened, he felt, he said the words without forcing anything.”
Joan Crawford expressed admiration for Tracy’s seemingly effortless performances: “his is such simplicity of performance, such naturalness and humor … he walks through a scene [and] makes it seem so easy.”
His four-time co-star Joan Bennett said she “never had the feeling he was ‘acting’ in a scene, but the truth of the situation was actually happening, spontaneously, at the moment he spoke his lines.”
James Cagney noted that Tracy was not the target of impressionists because “you can’t mimic reserve and control very well…there’s nothing to imitate except his genius and that can’t be mimicked.”
Tracy was praised for his listening and reacting skills. Barry Nelson said that he “brought the art of reacting to a new height,” while Stanley Kramer declared that he “thought and listened better than anyone in the history of motion pictures.” Millard Kaufman noted that Tracy “listened with every fiber of his entire body.”
In his memoir, Burt Reynolds noted Tracy’s emphasis on naturalism when, as a rookie actor, he observed Tracy on the set of Inherit the Wind. When Reynolds introduced himself, Tracy said, “An actor, huh? Just remember not to ever let anyone catch you at it.”
Tracy’s carefully prepared for each role in private. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who lived with him during Test Pilot, recalled that Tracy would lock himself in his bedroom “working extremely hard” each night.
Many co-workers commented on his work ethic and professionalism. However, he did not like to rehearse and would quickly lose his “effectiveness” after shooting two or three takes of the same scene. Kanin described him as “an instinctive player, who trusted the moment of creation.”
Tracy’s friend Chester Erskine said his acting style as one of “selection,” stating that he strove to give as little as was needed to be effective and reached “a minimum to make the maximum”.
Tracy disliked talking about his technique or give advice to others. He often belittled the profession of acting, saying to Kanin, “Why do actors think they’re so goddamn important? They’re not. Acting is not an important job in the scheme of things. Plumbing is.”
He was also humble about his abilities: “It’s just that I try no tricks. No profile. No ‘great lover’ act … I just project myself as I am—plain, trying to be honest.”
He enjoyed the quip once made by Alfred Lunt, “The art of acting is: learn your lines and don’t bump into the furniture!”
Hepburn, in interview after Tracy’s death, said that Tracy wished he had held a different profession.
