Spencer Tracy won two consecutive Academy Awards and made it look like he was doing nothing on camera. That apparent effortlessness was the invention. Before Tracy, film actors performed. After Tracy, the best ones simply existed in front of the lens. Off screen, he drank destructively, carried enormous guilt over his deaf son, and conducted a twenty-six-year affair with Katharine Hepburn.

This episode traces Tracy from his difficult Milwaukee childhood through his stage career, his Hollywood dominance, and the private suffering that fueled his naturalistic style.

• He won back-to-back Best Actor Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys Town
• His affair with Katharine Hepburn lasted twenty-six years but was kept from the public
• He carried lifelong guilt over his son John’s deafness, which he blamed on himself
• He died just seventeen days after completing his final film, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner