Tracy's five years with Fox featured one acting tour de force after another that were usually ignored at the box office, and he remained largely unknown to movie audiences after 25 films, nearly all of them starring him as the leading man.

Tracy left MGM in 1955 and continued to work regularly as a freelance star, despite several health issues and an increasing weariness and irritability as he aged.

At Marquette Academy, he began attending plays with lifelong friend and fellow actor Pat O'Brien, awakening his interest in the theater.

[41] Other roles followed, but it was the lead in Dread, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Owen Davis that gave Tracy high hopes for success.

[47] Tracy was cast in two Vitaphone shorts (Taxi Talks and The Hard Guy), but he had not considered becoming a film actor: "I had no ambition in that direction and I was perfectly happy on the stage", he later explained in an interview.

[51] Knowing that he needed the money for his family, with his young son deaf and recovering from polio, Tracy signed with Fox and moved to California.

[59] He continued to appear in unpopular films, with Me and My Gal (1932) setting an all-time low attendance record for the Roxy Theatre in New York City.

The story of a man's rise to prosperity had a screenplay by Preston Sturges and Tracy's performance as railroad tycoon Tom Garner received uniformly strong reviews.

[75] Producer Irving Thalberg was nevertheless enthusiastic about working with the actor, telling journalist Louella Parsons: "Spencer Tracy will become one of MGM's most valuable stars.

[81] Directed by Fritz Lang, Tracy played an innocent man who swears revenge after narrowly escaping death by a lynch mob.

[citation needed] Donald Deschner, in his book on Tracy, credits Fury and San Francisco as the "two films that changed his career and gave him the status of a major star".

According to Curtis, "Powell, Harlow and Loy were among the biggest draws in the industry, and equal billing in such a powerhouse company could only serve to advance Tracy's standing".

He was uncomfortable feigning a foreign accent,[91] and resented having his hair curled,[92] but the role was a hit with audiences and Tracy won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune was not charmed by the story, but wrote that Tracy, "by sheer persuasion of his acting", made the film worthy.

[105] Boom Town was the third and final Gable-Tracy picture, also starring Claudette Colbert and Hedy Lamarr, making it one of the most anticipated films of the year.

Contrary to popular belief, the contract did not include a clause that he receive top billing, but from this point onward, every film Tracy appeared in featured his name first.

[113] Tracy was set to star in a film version of The Yearling for 1942, but several on-set difficulties and bad weather on location forced MGM to shelve the production.

On the strength of these three releases, the annual Quigley poll revealed Tracy was MGM's biggest money-making star of 1944,[123] His only film the following year was his third with Hepburn, Without Love (1945), a light romantic comedy that performed well at the box office despite muted enthusiasm from critics.

[138] Film critic Bosley Crowther wrote, "Mr. Tracy and Miss Hepburn are the stellar performers in this show and their perfect compatibility in comic capers is delightful to see.

[142] Tracy portrayed a lawyer in The People Against O'Hara (1951) and re-teamed with Hepburn for the sports comedy Pat and Mike (1952), the second feature written expressly for them by Kanin and Gordon.

[147] Instead, Tracy appeared as a one-armed protagonist who faces the hostility of a small desert town in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), a film directed by John Sturges.

He began production on Tribute to a Bad Man in the summer of 1955, but pulled out when he claimed that the shooting location in the Colorado mountains gave him altitude sickness.

In June 1955, he was one of the two remaining stars of the studio's peak years (the other being Robert Taylor), but with his contract up for renewal, Tracy opted to freelance for the first time in his movie career.

[162] Tracy did not appear on the screen again until the release of Inherit the Wind (1960), a film based on the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" which debated the right to teach evolution in schools.

[173] Tracy turned down roles in Long Day's Journey into Night (1962) and The Leopard (1963),[174] and had to pull out of MGM's all-star How the West Was Won (1962) when it clashed with Judgment at Nuremberg.

Tracy appeared happy to be working again, but he told journalists visiting the set that the movie would be his last for he would permanently retire after filming due to his health problems.

[212][213] The MGM moguls were careful to protect their stars from controversy,[214] and Tracy wished to conceal his relationship with Hepburn from his wife,[215] so it was hidden from the public.

[251] On June 10, 1967, 17 days after completing what was his last film role in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Tracy awakened at 3:00 am to make himself a cup of tea in his Beverly Hills apartment.

[264] He was referred to as the greatest actor of his generation by Clark Gable,[265] James Cagney,[266] Humphrey Bogart,[267] John Ford,[160] Garson Kanin,[268] and Katharine Hepburn.

[282] Tracy's close friend Chester Erskine pinpointed his acting style as one of "selection", stating that he strove to give as little as was needed to be effective and reached "a minimum to make the maximum".