Warm doco on the legendary actor hosted by Kate Hepburn who sounds a bit shaky here but gives this enormous subtext, especially in scenes where she’s talking to his daughter and at the end when she reads a letter she wrote to Tracy after his death (actually that’s not subtext – that’s text!) In her introductory spiel to the film she compares Tracey’s acting to potato bake: solid, delicious and filling. It’s as good a description as any I guess. She also walks around the places where he used to play polo, old studios (including MGM - which then had the "Sylvester Stallone Building").
There were some terrific old photos and vision (Tracey playing polo with Will Rogers), great exclusives (extracts from Tracey’s old journal), and a dazzling array of interviewees (how could you refuse Kate Hepburn I guess): Sidney Poitier, Joe Mankiewicz (confirming the story of how Tracey and Hepburn met and the comment "don't worry he'll soon knock you down to size"), Garson Kanin (I thought Hepburn never forgave him for his book on their relationship but there you go), Stanley Kramer, Robert Wagner, Frank Sinatra (in a scene from The Devil at Six O’Clock he takes his shirt off – no star of today would allow themselves to seem to weak), Burt Reynolds, Joan Bennett, Angela Lansbury, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Widmark, Lee Marvin, Mickey Rooney. Wagner and Kramer remark how Tracey was like a father to him – no such comment from his own daughter.
Watching the clips I was struck by how many times Hepburn had to stand on the sidelines misty-eyed as Tracy made a speech. And how when they talk about Tracey-Hepburn films they only mean half of them (no one seems to care about Keeper of the Flame, Without Love, Sea of Grass or Desk Set). Fascinating.
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