Lee Tracy
Biography: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. William Lee Tracy (April 14, 1898 – October 18, 1968) was an American actor. He was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the 1964 film The Best Man. In 1929, Tracy arrived in Hollywood, where he played the role of newspapermen in several films. He, for example, played a Walter Winchell-type gossip columnist in Blessed Event (1932). Tracy also starred as the columnist in Advice to the Lovelorn (1933), very loosely based on the novel Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West; and he played a conscience-stricken editor in the 1943 drama The Power of the Press, based on a story by former newspaperman Samuel Fuller. Tracy played "The Buzzard," the criminal who leads Liliom (Charles Farrell) into a fatal robbery, in the film version of Liliom (1930). He also played Lupe Vélez's frenetic manager in Gregory LaCava's The Half-Naked Truth (1932) and portrayed John Barrymore's agent in Dinner at Eight (1933), directed by George Cukor. Lee Tracy's flourishing film career was temporarily disrupted on 19 November 1933, while he was on location in Mexico filming the Wallace Beery vehicle Viva Villa! According to the actor and producer Desi Arnaz, in his published autobiography The Book (1976), Tracy stood on a balcony in Mexico City and urinated down onto a passing military parade. Elsewhere in his autobiography, Arnaz claims that from then on, if one watched other crowds of spectators, they would visibly disperse any time an American stepped out onto a balcony. However, other crew members there at the time disputed this story, giving a sharply different account of events. In his autobiography, Charles G. Clarke, the cinematographer on the picture, said that he was standing outside the hotel during the parade and the incident never happened. Tracy, he said, was standing on the balcony observing the parade when a Mexican in the street below made an obscene gesture at him. Tracy replied in kind; and the next day a local newspaper printed a story that, in effect, Tracy had insulted Mexico, Mexicans in general, and their national flag in particular. The story caused an uproar in Mexico, and MGM decided to sacrifice Tracy in order to be allowed to continue filming there. The young actor Stuart Erwin replaced Tracy. The film's original director, Howard Hawks, was also fired for his refusal to testify against Tracy. Jack Conway replaced him. During World War II, Tracy returned to military service. Later, he had two television series in the 1950s. One was Martin Kane: Private Eye, in which he was one of four actors to play the title role. The others were William Gargan, Lloyd Nolan, and Mark Stevens. In 1958, he returned to a newspaper reporter role in the syndicated New York Confidential. After World War II, his screen career was largely relegated to television, but he portrayed the former President of the United States, Art Hockstader, a character loosely based on Harry Truman, in both the stage and film versions of The Best Man (1964), written by Gore Vidal. The movie version featured Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson. Tracy received his only Academy Award nomination, as Best Supporting Actor, for his performance in the film. Description above from the Wikipedia article Lee Tracy, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Place of Birth: Not available
Birthday: April 13, 1898
Deathday: October 18, 1968
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Known For
Doctor X
1932-08-03
Doctor X
Overview: A wisecracking New York reporter intrudes on a research scientist's quest to unmask The Moon Killer.
Genres: Horror Thriller Mystery Science Fiction
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-08-03
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She Got What She Wanted
1930-11-09
She Got What She Wanted
Overview: Mahyna, a dissatisfied Russian peasant girl, marries Boris and comes to New York in search of "the soul of love," only to become a drudge in their cheap flat. Meanwhile, Boris, a bookshop keeper, dreams of a prosperous future from the book he is writing. Their boarder, Dave, a partner in a gambling establishment, makes a play for Mahyna; she is tempted to leave with him when Eddie, a former admirer, arrives on the scene, and the two get into constant arguments over her.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1930-11-09
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The Best Man
1964-04-05
The Best Man
Overview: The other party is in disarray. Five men vie for the party nomination for president. No one has a majority as the first ballot closes and the front-runners begin to decide how badly they want the job.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1964-04-05
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Blessed Event
1932-09-10
Blessed Event
Overview: A New York gossip columnist feuds with a singer and enjoys the power of the press.
Genres: Drama Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-09-10
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Advice to the Lovelorn
1933-12-01
Advice to the Lovelorn
Overview: Los Angeles newspaper reporter Toby Prentiss is continually in trouble with his editor. He is demoted to running the paper's "Miss Lonelyhearts" advice column because he missed the scoop on a major earthquake whilst out on the town. Determined to be fired from the column he starts to give crazy advice to the readers, but this only makes him even more popular.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-12-01
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Bombshell
1933-10-13
Bombshell
Overview: A glamorous film star rebels against the studio, her pushy press agent and a family of hangers-on.
Genres: Comedy Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-10-13
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Betrayal from the East
1945-04-24
Betrayal from the East
Overview: A carnival showman tries to keep Japanese spies from sabotaging the Panama Canal.
Genres: Thriller Action Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1945-04-24
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High Tide
1947-09-13
High Tide
Overview: A car accident traps two men inside a car near the water. With the tide coming in, they discuss the circumstances that led up to the accident.
Genres: Mystery Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1947-09-13
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Dinner at Eight
1933-12-22
Dinner at Eight
Overview: An ambitious New York socialite plans an extravagant dinner party as her businessman husband, Oliver, contends with financial woes, causing a lot of tension between the couple. Meanwhile, their high-society friends and associates, including the gruff Dan Packard and his sultry spouse, Kitty, contend with their own entanglements, leading to revelations at the much-anticipated dinner.
Genres: Comedy Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-12-22
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Love Is a Racket
1932-06-18
Love Is a Racket
Overview: A gossip columnist helps a Broadway ingenue who's beholden to a penthouse gangster.
Genres: Crime Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-06-18
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Power of the Press
1943-01-29
Power of the Press
Overview: During WWII, the publisher of the isolationist New York Gazette is murdered just as he was about to change the paper's policy and support the US war effort. His friend, a small town patriotic editor, is brought in to find the culprits.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1943-01-29
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The Half-Naked Truth
1932-12-16
The Half-Naked Truth
Overview: A carnival pitchman (Tracy) finagles his girlfriend, a fiery hoochie dancer (Vélez), into a major Broadway revue under the auspices of an impresario (Morgan).
Genres: Comedy Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-12-16
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The Payoff
1942-11-24
The Payoff
Overview: The city's District Attorney is murdered, and a newspaper reporter investigates. He starts finding out that everything wasn't quite as cut and dried as it appeared to be.
Genres: Action Thriller Crime Mystery
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1942-11-24
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Turn Back the Clock
1933-08-25
Turn Back the Clock
Overview: While recuperating in a hospital after he's hit by an automobile, a struggling shopowner dreams what his life might have been like if he'd made different choices twenty years earlier.
Genres: Comedy Drama Fantasy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-08-25
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Liliom
1930-09-27
Liliom
Overview: A carousel barker falls in love with a young woman. Both are fired from their jobs, and when the young woman becomes pregnant, the carousel barker tries to help pull off a robbery, which goes wrong. Because of the robbery, he dies, and after spending time in hell, is sent back to earth for one day to try to make amends. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1930-09-27
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Salute
1929-09-01
Salute
Overview: A comedy-romance about rival brothers attending a military academy.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1929-09-01
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The Nuisance
1933-06-03
The Nuisance
Overview: Fast-talker extraordinaire Tracy gives one of his quintessential wiseguy performances as a conniving ambulance chaser who falls in love with Evans, unaware she's a special investigator for a streetcar company he's repeatedly victimized.
Genres: Comedy Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-06-03
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Cinema Circus
1937-01-27
Cinema Circus
Overview: Actor Lee Tracy presides as ringmaster over a show that combines the best elements of cinema with the circus, what he calls a Cinema Circus. Tracy introduces a number of professional circus acts, plus a cavalcade of movie stars who have side shows under the open air big tent. There is as much action in the audience as Tracy identifies a number of movie stars watching the proceedings incognito, having their own fun in the stands, and sometimes interacting with the circus acts.
Genres: Comedy Family
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1937-01-27
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The Strange Love of Molly Louvain
1932-05-28
The Strange Love of Molly Louvain
Overview: A fast-talking reporter befriends a young woman and her male companion who are wanted for a policeman's shooting.
Genres: Drama Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-05-28
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Fixer Dugan
1939-04-21
Fixer Dugan
Overview: Charlie Dugan is a quick-thinking boss of a traveling circus playing small towns in Missouri and Kansas.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1939-04-21
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Crashing Hollywood
1938-01-07
Crashing Hollywood
Overview: A true-to-life gangster movie stirs up an all out mob assault on Hollywood.
Genres: Crime Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1938-01-07
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Clear All Wires!
1933-02-24
Clear All Wires!
Overview: Buckley is an unethical reporter who manipulates the news for his own benefit as much as he reports it. When he is in Paris to get a medal for being rescued from his alleged kidnappers, he finds that his boss, Stevens, at the Chicago Globe is going with his old gal Dolly. When Stevens learns that Dolly is staying with Buckley in Moscow, he fires Buckley. To get his job back, Buckley and Lefty stage a great news story about the shooting of the last Romanoff, but the plan backfires and they are now in line to be shot by the Commissar.
Genres: Comedy Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-02-24
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Two-Fisted
1935-10-03
Two-Fisted
Overview: A fast-talking boxing manager and the somewhat hapless fighter he manages happen to run into a young man who was a good prizefighter in his day but is now out of the sport and has a drinking problem. They decide to train him for a big match, and in the process find themselves involved in romance, shady characters and a possible kidnapping.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-10-03
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Behind The Headlines
1937-05-14
Behind The Headlines
Overview: A radio reporter sets out to rescue his ex-girlfriend when she is kidnapped by gangsters.
Genres: Action Adventure Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1937-05-14
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You Belong to Me
1934-09-08
You Belong to Me
Overview: When vaudeville performer Florette Faxon is left penniless with her six-year-old son Jimmy, she relies on the friendship of fellow performer Bud Hannigan to help her get a job. Bud is reluctant to become her partner, as he has proven to himself to be unreliable in relationships, but he tells her to call him whenever she needs help. While working in a beer garden, Florette meets Hap Stanley, an avaricious performer who marries her to get the rights to perform her show routine. Hap dislikes Jimmy and eventually convinces Florette to send him away to school. Both Jimmy and Florette are broken-up over being apart, but Jimmy pretends it is what he wants so Florette can be happy with Hap.
Genres: Drama Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-09-08
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Criminal Lawyer
1937-01-29
Criminal Lawyer
Overview: Barry Brandon, a criminal lawyer, visits the night club of Denny Larkin, his primary client, with Betty Walker, a spoiled society girl. The police raid the club and Brandon pleads that the whole group is guilty, just to get even with Larkin for a rebuke. On the same night in court, Madge Carter is on trial for disorderly conduct, and Brandon volunteers to defend her, and proves the case against her if a frame-up. Finding that she is penniless, Brandon hires her as his secretary, and falls in love with her. Brandon is appointed district attorney and has ambitions of becoming the state governor. Having dinner at Betty's home, she maneuvers him, while he is drunk, into marrying her. Later, Madge is a witness when Larkin shoots down a fellow gangster. By threatening Brandon's life, he forces her to commit perjury at his trial, and say he fired in self-defense. Brandon, the prosecuting attorney (who has had his marriage to Betty annulled) knows she is lying but doesn't know why.
Genres: Action Romance Drama Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1937-01-29
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The Night Mayor
1932-08-18
The Night Mayor
Overview: Opportunistic film seeking to capitalize on a scandal in New York mayor Jimmy Walker's office before his name was out of the newspapers. Tracy plays a mayor who has a penchant for the night life, sports, the theater, and an actress, Knapp. When scandal rocks his administration, Tracy has his girl friend marry Dillaway, a writer friend, so that the press will leave him alone.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-08-18
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Sutter's Gold
1936-03-01
Sutter's Gold
Overview: Story of the gold strike on an immigrant's property that started the 1849 California Gold Rush.
Genres: Western
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1936-03-01
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Wanted: Jane Turner
1936-12-04
Wanted: Jane Turner
Overview: Investigators set out to capture a gang of thieves transporting stolen cash through the U.S. mail.
Genres: Adventure Action
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1936-12-04
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Washington Merry-Go-Round
1932-10-15
Washington Merry-Go-Round
Overview: Button Gwinett Brown is a freshman congressman on a mission to rid Washington of corruption. He quickly runs afoul of the powerful Senator Norton...
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1932-10-15
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Born Reckless
1930-05-11
Born Reckless
Overview: In order to use the publicity to get re-elected, a judge sentences a notorious gangster to fight in the war.
Genres: Crime Comedy Drama War Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1930-05-11
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The Spellbinder
1939-07-28
The Spellbinder
Overview: Jed Marlowe is a brilliant, scheming, unscrupulous criminal lawyer whose specialty is defending criminal he knows is guilty but gets them off through loop-holes or bribery. Then his daughter, misled by her father’s courtroom performance, but unaware of his back-room tactics, marries the killer her father has just unjustly save from the electric chair. What’s a poor father to do?
Genres: Crime Romance Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1939-07-28
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Millionaires in Prison
1940-07-12
Millionaires in Prison
Overview: A crop of millionaire inmates struggle to get accustomed to prison life, while inmate Nick Burton watches out for everyone's interests on the inside.
Genres: Crime Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1940-07-12
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I'll Tell the World
1934-04-20
I'll Tell the World
Overview: Lee Tracy once again plays a Winchellesque newspaper reporter in Universal's I'll Tell the World. More interested in his sex life than his career, news hawk Brown nonetheless agrees to cover the activities of a European archduke on behalf of his wire service.
Genres: Romance Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-04-20
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I'll Tell the World
1945-06-08
I'll Tell the World
Overview: A PR man saves a struggling radio station from ruin.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1945-06-08
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Carnival
1935-02-15
Carnival
Overview: "Chick" Thompson is a puppet-master in a traveling carnival whose wife dies in childbirth and leaves him with an infant son he names "Poochy." His father-in-law and the baby's grandfather sues him for custody of the baby and Chick takes his son and hides out for a couple of years. He joins his former assistants, Daisy and "Fingers", in a circus act only to find that the persistent grandfather is still on his trail.
Genres: Romance Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-02-15
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Pirate Party on Catalina Isle
1935-11-20
Pirate Party on Catalina Isle
Overview: Various Hollywood performers put on a pirate-themed variety show on Catalina Island, with a number of amiable stars in the audience.
Genres: Family
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-11-20
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The Lemon Drop Kid
1934-09-27
The Lemon Drop Kid
Overview: The Lemon Drop Kid is a fast-talking racetrack bum who swindles $100 from an old, ailing man. He takes it on the lam with his sidekick, The Professor.
Genres: Drama Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-09-27
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Private Jones
1933-03-25
Private Jones
Overview: After America enters World War I, young William "Bill" Jones tries to avoid military service by telling the draft board that he is the sole supporter of his family and is employed by businessman Roger Winthrop, his sister Helen's boss.
Genres: War Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-03-25
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The Big Parade of Comedy
1964-09-02
The Big Parade of Comedy
Overview: Film clips highlight the funniest scenes and brightest comic stars in MGM's history.
Genres: Comedy Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1964-09-02
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Big Time
1929-09-07
Big Time
Overview: The relationship between a male dancer and his actress girlfriend is threatened by a scheming chorister.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1929-09-07
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