A elevate attachment as complicated as it was devoted, the incorporation together surrounded by screen greats Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy stretched across three decades and nine films including Woman of the Year and Guess Whos Coming to Dinner. But their offscreen bond would remain publicly unacknowledged throughout Tracys life as the couple maintained sever residences and never wed.
It was a unique feeling I had for [Tracy], Hepburn wrote in her autobiography Me: Stories of My Life. I loved [him]. I would have done everything for him. Lauren Bacall, who subsequent to her husband Humphrey Bogart were close connections once the couple, back than wrote Hepburn was blindingly in praise when Tracy.
Hepburn immediately found Tracy ‘irresistible’
Katharine Hepburn was the daughter of a recognized Hartford, Connecticut surgeon and suffragist mom. An encouraged scholar and fiercely independent forgive-thinker from an before age, one childhood summer she scrape her hair rapid and insisted after that reference to being called Jimmy. Tracy was born into a devout Catholic associates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, his father a truck salesman. A mercurial child gone tiny glamor in formal education, he found manage away in the form of leisure doings pictures.
They first met approaching the set of the comedy-the stage Woman of the Year (1942), playing two journalists who slip in adulation and attempt to parable their personal lives taking into account their commitment to their careers. Tracy was 41-years-earliest, Hepburn was 34 and said of the meeting she knew right away that [she] found him irresistible.
Onscreen their chemistry was undeniable, and audiences flocked to their films to witness the staccato, sudden-witted bantering and long, meaningful looks that spoke beyond any lines of dialogue could represent. Such ease together in stomach of the camera often had fans assuming Hepburn and Tracy were clearly playing themselves. Their chemistry would be captured in eight more films including Keeper of the Flame (1942), Adams Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), Desk Set (1957) and their obtain tune together in Guess Whos Coming to Dinner (1967).
Performer Gene Kelly as soon as recalled Hepburn and Tracy getting together at lunchtimes at the studio, where theyd just meet and sit taking into account mention to a bench in collective to the order of the lot. Theyd money hands and chat and everybody left them alone in their tiny private world.
Tracy was a devout Catholic, so divorcing his wife was not an option
Though an gate unsigned in and regarding Hollywood, the association was kept below wraps by the studio system. Hepburn had been married in front to Pennsylvania businessman Ludlow Ogden Smith but had divorced in 1934. Tracy married actress Louise Treadwell in 1923 and the honoring produced two children, a son John (b. 1924), and a daughter Susie (b. 1932). John was diagnosed deaf as an infant and Tracy felt highly developed guilt later than again his sons hearing impairment, believing it was a punishment for his own sins and began isolation himself from his relatives.
A strict Catholic, divorce was not and would never be an irregular for Tracy, who remained married to his wife throughout his cartoon. An before estrangement would defer in reconciliation, but Tracy would continue to living much of his cartoon in hotels and rented residences away from his wife and associates.
Tracy would never publicly admit or articulate his feelings for Hepburn, a approach that would without help fuel the myths that would flourish vis–vis their attachment. They were rarely seen in public together, their sever homes helping to ensure Tracys wife would be protected, along in the melody of the interests of gossip-adverse studio heads terrified of audience backlash beyond the apparent infidelity that was in breach of the morality clauses omnipotent stars of the era were aggravated to sign.
Hepburn described Tracy as ‘tortured’
Alongside attempts at keeping his association when Hepburn out of the media, Tracy was with battling inner demons. Burdened by Catholic guilt more than his associates circumstances, he suffered regular bouts of disturbance, depression and insomnia, and tried to overcome alcoholism throughout much of his adult liveliness.
Hepburn, who considering described Tracy as distressed, said that all she wanted was for him to be glad, safe, satisfying. I liked to wait in the region of him, hear to him, feed him, involve on for him. I tried not to involve him I was glad to appear in this.
Though devoted to Tracy, Hepburn continued to court suit, choosing roles that energetic her more than fare guaranteed to be box office hits. Often away upon location, she helped in the by now the idea that they were not a couple and lived deeply remove lives. When Tracys health began to deteriorate in the late sixties, Hepburn took period away from her career to care for him, maxim she just wanted to be there as a result that he wouldnt problem or be and no-one else.
Photo: Columbia Pictures/Getty Images
Some believe Katharine Hepburn and Tracy were covering up their true sexual orientations
Rumors about Hepburns and Tracys sexual orientation would make public during their lives and continue to fuel media reports long after their deaths. A forthright girl in Hollywood who appeared to require nothing from men, Hepburn was often labeled a lesbian; though Tracys alleged yet hidden homosexuality was presented as strange factor contributing to his depression and alcoholism.
They were merely partners. They were not in the bed department at altogether, according to Scotty Bowers, an ex-hustler and male madam to the stars of dated Hollywood. In the 2018 documentary Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, Bowers claims to have slept following Tracy and procured female sex intimates for Hepburn incorporation era.
Whether the connection was a cover to hide what was along with considered improper or one of the greatest indulgent unions upon and off the big screen, the affection in the middle of Tracy and Hepburn existed until their deaths. Hepburn was along along along along with Tracy taking into account passed away in 1967, even though she did not attend the funeral out of adulation for his relatives and never publicly spoke of their connection until after the death of Tracys wife Louise in 1983.
Katharine Hepburn was with asked why she stayed following Tracy for for that excuse long below the circumstances. I honestly dont know, she replied. I can unaided proclaim that I could never have left him. [We] just passed 27 years together in what was to me resolved bliss.