Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (1900-1967) was an outstanding and versatile actor whose career spanned over 30 years and brought him nine Academy Award nominations and two Oscars.

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on April 5, 1900. He was the younger of two sons of John and Caroline (Brown) Tracy. He grew up in a comfortable, Catholic environment. On America's entry into World War I in 1917, while in his third year of high school, he joined the Navy, spending most of his enlistment at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia. After graduating from Northwestern Military Academy he spent two years at Ripon College, leaving in 1921 to pursue a theatrical career (the college awarded him an honorary degree in 1940).

After some training at the Sargent School in New York City, Tracy made his Broadway debut in a non-speaking role as a robot in the 1923 Theatre Guild production of Karel Capek's R...