Why Spencer Tracy’s son John was the key to his greatness

Spencer Tracy was considered by his peers the greatest actor ever to have graced the silver screen. 

Sometimes he also behaved like the greatest sinner, tormented by demons, filled with nervous energy, wracked by guilt — never living up to his father’s expectation for him to become a priest. But he did not have the soul of a priest. "Spence" was born to be an actor, channeling all that energy into making each scene seem like a moment in time. “Well, don’t let them catch you acting,” he counseled Burt Reynolds.

It all seemed so natural and effortless. But it was the fruit of much work and, but for the birth of his son 100 years ago today, he might not have achieved those heights.

On June 26, 1924, nine months and two weeks after his parents, Louise and Spence, tied the knot, John Ten Broek Tracy was born.  Ten months later, as John lay napping, the screen door accidentally slammed behind Louise. Such a loud noise would normally awaken a baby followed by loud crying. John, however, kept slumbering on.

Louise knew immediately — instinctively — that John was deaf, and she dug right in to find out the source. The diagnosis came back: nerve damage of unknown origin. Unbeknownst to his parents, he had Usher syndrome, which also causes gradual blindness due to retinitis pigmentosa — starting at birth.

Spence’s reaction upon learning, in April 1925, that his baby boy was deaf was far different from Louise’s. He dug in, too -- but right into the bottle. What ensued, Pat O’Brien said, was the first “big drunk” of Spencer’s life. They found him several days later holed up at the St. George in Brooklyn, stone cold drunk.

Once again, Tracy was wracked with guilt, erroneously believing that his infidelity had, in some way, been the cause of his son's disability.

Yet, in God’s providence, John’s travails also motivated Spencer Tracy, who according to fellow actor Lynne Overman was prone to laziness. Now he had to work that much harder to provide his son the necessary financial means to help him face his disability.

It was a father-son bond, forged for life.

John's parents refused to institutionalize their son, and worked with him so he could learn to talk. As Spence uttered his dramatic lines on Broadway, Louise “kept repeating the word ‘talk’… a hundred… sometimes three hundred times” to John in twice or thrice daily “exercises,” said their friend, long-time Paramount producer A.C. Lyles. One day, Lyles said, when she had finished, John, then 3 or 4, leaned his head close to hers and said, “talk” — his very first word.

Louise read everything she could get her hands on and became a pioneer in the field, founding the John Tracy Clinic for children similarly affected, so that they learn to navigate the hearing, speaking world, all of which Spence funded thanks to his success in film.  

Of course, Spencer Tracy’s marriage was less than perfect. Louise had a gift for perceiving how to ease John’s disability but was unable to understand her husband’s disability — his alcoholism, which admittedly was not well understood at that time.

And, truth be told, Spencer Tracy was like a hermit dedicated to his craft. He first holed himself near a polo club in Riverside so he could ride in the morning. He just loved horses. They made him feel better about the world. Spence was also drinking, which he found easier to do away from home, and prepping for his next role.

Later, after his family decamped to Riverside, he retreated to the Beverly Wilshire hotel, then to the Beverly Hills Hotel; then to a little bungalow on George Cukor’s estate after Katharine Hepburn, who understood his alcoholism better, came into his life. 

As his health began to fail, Spencer Tracy reconnected with Monsignor John O’Donnell, who had been the “technical adviser” on Boys Town some 25 years earlier. “Spencer was a true believer, accepted in all faith the doctrine of the Church, went to Mass and to confession...,” said Garson Kanin.

“Spence was reading a lot of books on Catholic theology in his little house,” Cukor told Bill Davidson.  “‘I remember I heard him playing a recording of Brahms’ ‘Shicksalslied’ one day and I went down to chat. He and Kate were listening to the music. Both were reading. Kate’s book was a collection of Eugene O’Neill’s plays. Spence’s book was a well-worn copy of what he said was All Things in Christ, about Pope Pius X, who had died in 1914 and later was made a saint, I think. Kate just looked up and said, ‘Snappy reading.’”

In the fall of 1965, Fr. Eugene Kennedy from Loyola University in Chicago visited him, shortly after a near-death experience. “His eyes glistened as he reached for a wooden Madonna he had found in Chamoix,” wrote James Curtis. “‘This is something I truly love,’ he said, barely above a whisper. ‘It’s so simple.’”

Shortly before his death, he told Katharine Houghton (Hepburn's niece) that he felt like the only good he had done was the John Tracy Clinic. That would have been enough. But more than the clinic was the son into whom he and Louise had poured so much love and who was such a gift to the family and others. As John Tracy’s then daughter-in-law Cyndi Tracy said about him: “He just always had an uncanny ability to accept God’s love and always knew (his suffering) was going to be for a greater good.” It was never “Why me?” or “Poor me.”

God, he felt certain, had a plan. Indeed, he did.

On June 10, 1967, shortly after he finished filming Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner (1967), co-starring Hepburn and Houghton, Spencer Tracy breathed his last. Amazingly, his son John died 40 years later, almost to the day, on June 15, 2007, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Editor's note: Oasis: The Souls Behind the Billboard, which will be published on July 16, 2024, tells the story of Spencer Tracy and his family, excerpts from which are included in the article.