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I'm about 400 pages in and it's really dragging. Did anyone else find this?
I'm not sure whether Tracy was just a pretty unexciting person or Curtis is just a boring writer.

I read it to the end with no problem, though I think the bio on DeMille is a bit more interesting.

I thought the Tracy bio could have used some judicious pruning. It was as if Curtis felt that he had to share every fact he unearthed about the actor down to the smallest detail. However, I was on the whole very impressed with the book and thought it a worthwhile read. Curtis captured Tracy's complex personality with more insight than any other biographer ever has before and puts a number of myths to rest about his alcoholism, his marriage and his relationship with Katharine Hepburn.

Midge wrote:I thought the Tracy bio could have used some judicious pruning. It was as if Curtis felt that he had to share every fact he unearthed about the actor down to the smallest detail.

Absolutely. Way too long.

I thought it was a great biography. I enjoyed it immensely, and I thought it was well written, besides. I found two editing errors, one of them a spelling error. I also noticed that he DID prune a lot of material. For example, Pat O'Brien and Tracy were extremely close friends from a very long way back. He certainly mentioned their friendship, but he could have detailed many other times of their meeting each other, both professionally and otherwise. A recent article in a film magazine did an outstanding job of doing that. Fleshed out the two, so to speak. The biography judiciously didn't add everything it could have added. The fact that it used Tracy's 'diary' probably makes it seem overly done at times to a few. I only wish more Hollywood biography books were as well done, well researched, and, frankly, as interesting. My only complaint would be that by the time I finished I found Tracy a downer. I knew he was an alcoholic, but his life was consumed by an old fashioned Catholicism (along with the alcohol) that made him seemingly a mess. The author made all of this very, very clear.

I'm curious, given the 'revelations' relating to Tracy in another recent 'memoir' (one I can't be bothered giving further publicity to), does the writer of this latest bio see the Tracy-Hepburn relationship as genuine or a publicity stunt? I really hope it's the former.

Definitely the former. Tracy's daughter contributed a great deal of info to the author, too.

I don't know what it is. It's the most laborious book of any kind I've read in years. The diary thing doesn't help as someone above pointed out.
I don't think that Tracy's private life was in any way remarkable in the first place, by all accounts. He seemed to just move from hotel to hotel, following Hepburn around in the later years, binge drinking occasionally. He comes across as a pretty boring individual.

R Michael Pyle wrote:Definitely the former. Tracy's daughter contributed a great deal of info to the author, too.

Good. I didn't realize Susan Tracy was still alive and I would take her testimony over that of others, especially as Hepburn was clear that they were friends in her own biography.

As for Tracy's own life, we know he was Catholic, that he had a deaf child, that he was an alcoholic, and that he was also a great actor. I'd say the last point overshadows the others which is perhaps why his personal life is a dull read - it was in the previous bio on him.

didi-5 wrote: and that he was also a great actor.

Without a doubt.

R Michael Pyle wrote: I knew he was an alcoholic, but his life was consumed by an old fashioned Catholicism (along with the alcohol) that made him seemingly a mess. The author made all of this very, very clear.

In our eyes today Catholicism seems old fashioned but it was a very prevalent force in our society for a very long time and it consumed many men and women with deep guilt who tried to live outside of the Church's very strict bylaws. John Ford suffered from it also. So did Leo McCarey....

It's a long list.

I've been left with the lingering feeling that his wife Louise did not deserve to be treated the way she was by Tracy and Hepburn. Life must've been so difficult for her. I really felt sorry for her by the end of the book, and have acquired a dislike for Hepburn, though I was never much of a fan to begin with.

I think that is the reaction you are supposed to have, but personally I found Louise fairly annoying by the time I finished the book. I did not find book to long at all by the way, and it was very well written, with a good balance of personal and work life. Tracy certainly did not have the most interesting life, but Curtis did a really good job with it.

I have always had respect for Spenser Tracy, though I can't say he was ever really a favorite actor of mine...not even my favorite actor named "Tracy" from the 1930's, as is probably obvious from my avatar. But I did find after reading this book that I was interested in re-screening a few of his films, both early and late.

Michael O'Regan wrote:I've been left with the lingering feeling that his wife Louise did not deserve to be treated the way she was by Tracy and Hepburn. Life must've been so difficult for her. I really felt sorry for her by the end of the book, and have acquired a dislike for Hepburn, though I was never much of a fan to begin with.

Empire of Dreams may be more interesting because it deals with the making of Hollywood and with De Mille's effects on that culture. With the Tracy biography, you're following the life of a working actor, which doesn't give the same compelling sense of history being made (or distorted). Curtis's book is really thorough, though, and dispels a lot of myths.

mbluth1 wrote:Empire of Dreams may be more interesting because it deals with the making of Hollywood and with De Mille's effects on that culture. With the Tracy biography, you're following the life of a working actor, which doesn't give the same compelling sense of history being made (or distorted). Curtis's book is really thorough, though, and dispels a lot of myths.

That could well be, but it's also possible that DeMille was just plain a more interesting guy than Tracy. I feel for the biographer who discovers that his subject was immensely talented, but duller than dishwater. The horror, oh the horror.

Frederica wrote:

mbluth1 wrote:Empire of Dreams may be more interesting because it deals with the making of Hollywood and with De Mille's effects on that culture. With the Tracy biography, you're following the life of a working actor, which doesn't give the same compelling sense of history being made (or distorted). Curtis's book is really thorough, though, and dispels a lot of myths.

That could well be, but it's also possible that DeMille was just plain a more interesting guy than Tracy.

Geez, he had to be!

With DeMille, there was always a compelling contrast between the tyrannical director we all love and the relatively gentle, erudite person he was at home. Tracy was a fine actor, but he sure was one hell of a drunken bastard at times, which sometimes tried my patience.

Frederica wrote:

mbluth1 wrote:Empire of Dreams may be more interesting because it deals with the making of Hollywood and with De Mille's effects on that culture. With the Tracy biography, you're following the life of a working actor, which doesn't give the same compelling sense of history being made (or distorted). Curtis's book is really thorough, though, and dispels a lot of myths.

That could well be, but it's also possible that DeMille was just plain a more interesting guy than Tracy. I feel for the biographer who discovers that his subject was immensely talented, but duller than dishwater. The horror, oh the horror.

Yes--and in the Tracy bio there's a lot of "he went here, and then he went there, and then he came back here"--worthy stuff, to be sure, but not what you'd call gripping narrative.

mbluth1 wrote:

Frederica wrote:

mbluth1 wrote:Empire of Dreams may be more interesting because it deals with the making of Hollywood and with De Mille's effects on that culture. With the Tracy biography, you're following the life of a working actor, which doesn't give the same compelling sense of history being made (or distorted). Curtis's book is really thorough, though, and dispels a lot of myths.

That could well be, but it's also possible that DeMille was just plain a more interesting guy than Tracy. I feel for the biographer who discovers that his subject was immensely talented, but duller than dishwater. The horror, oh the horror.

Yes--and in the Tracy bio there's a lot of "he went here, and then he went there, and then he came back here"--worthy stuff, to be sure, but not what you'd call gripping narrative.

Absolutely.
At least when he was being a "drunken bastard" he was showing some character