Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy both of strong and opposite character, 9 films and 26 years of a forbidden relationship until his death turned his love story into one of the most mythical in the history of cinema.
She, from a well-off family, progressive and feminist, when she met Tracy in 1942 she was 34 years old, she had already divorced from a youthful marriage, won an Oscar, rumors spread that she was a l---ian and was included in the list of 'non-actresses'. profitable' in Hollywood after several failures at the box office.
He was 41, and in the early 40s he was considered one of the best actors of the day. He had problems with alcohol, two children from a marriage of almost 20 years with her young love and with whom he no longer shared a residence, but without formalizing the divorce. Legend has it that when they met before filming their first film together (the feminist 'Woman of the Year', George Stevens, 1942), Hepburn said to him: “I think, Mr. Tracy, you are too short for me.” ”. The film's producer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, in charge of introducing them, anticipated Tracy's response: "Don't worry, Kate, Spencer will humiliate you until you're down to his level."
They did not separate again, united, says her biographer, by her passion for dark chocolate. They were lovers for more than a quarter of a century. A secret that everyone in Hollywood knew, but that was not officially made public until the death of Tracy's widow in 1983, when Hepburn herself told it in her memoirs. And Tracy never separated from his wife and, according to legend, Hepburn never asked him to and enjoyed that great love without having to give up her independence, which strengthened her image as a strong and modern of it.
Despite everything, Katharine Hepburn stopped working momentarily to take care of him during his years of illness, she endured his problems with alcohol and even his professional ups and downs and his strong character (in her memoirs, Hepburn says that one night when she was trying to After putting him to bed drunk, he slapped him and added: "If I had let him, we would both have been miserable.") They never shared a residence, and although they adored each other, they were never able to start a family because he did not want to abandon the wife and children with whom he rarely met. A complicated man, a secret relationship since they were rarely seen together, but whose chemistry was inevitable when they met on screen. And they did it 9 times.
From their first film together, 'Woman of the Year' (1942), where she played a strong woman director of a newspaper and he played his employee, passing through the wonderful 'Adam's Rib' (George Cukor, 1949) or 'His Other Wife' (Walter Lang, 1957), until the last one, 'Guess Who's Coming Tonight' (Stanley Kramer, 1967), did nothing more than build the legend of their relationship thanks to those stories about the struggle of the s-xes. full of quick dialogues, fights and passionate reconciliations.
It is precisely in 'Guess Who's Coming Tonight', a messy movie in which a couple must accept the marriage of their daughter to a black man, where the intensity of the relationship is truly appreciated. Spencer Tracy's health is very weak and in the film he offers a beautiful monologue about love without barriers and against racism before the very emotional gaze of Katherine Hepburn. Tracy would die 17 days after filming wrapped and Hepburn would win an Oscar for her role in the film. Per Tracy's family, Hepburn was unable to attend Tracy's funeral, and legend has it that she never visited her grave.
