Lee Tracy

Born in Atlanta , Georgia, April 14, 1898, he studied electrical engineering at Union College, and later served as an ensign in World War I. In the early 1920s he decided to work as an actor, becoming a star on Broadway with his leading role in George Kelly's 1924 play The Show-Off.

In 1929 he came to Hollywood, where he played a number of films as a journalist. On stage he had been the reporter Hildy Johnson in the original 1928 version of The Front Page, and was a columnist in the likeness of Walter Winchell in the 1932 film Blessed Event. Tracy was also a journalist in Advice to the Lovelorn (1933), loosely based on the novel Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West.

He played Buzzard, the criminal who leads Liliom (Charles Farrell) into a fatal robbery, in the 1930 version of Liliom. He also played Lupe Velez's frenetic manager in Gregory La Cava's The Half-Naked Truth (1932), and the following year he played John Barrymore's agent in George Cukor's Dinner at Eight.

His burgeoning career was temporarily interrupted in 1934 while he was filming Viva Villa! in Mexico City, in which Wallace Beery played Pancho Villa. Tracy urinated from a balcony in Mexico City as a military parade passed by. He was immediately fired from the production and replaced by Stuart Erwin.

During World War II Tracy returned to uniform, and in the 1950s he continued to work in film and television series, even taking on leading roles in some of them, such as New York Confidential, being one of the actors who played the role of detective Martin Kane on television. He also played the President of the United States in the stage and film versions of The Best Man (1964), written by Gore Vidal. For his role as President Art Hockstader in the film, Tracy received his only Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Tracy returned to military service. His career after the war focused increasingly on radio work and performing on the rapidly expanding medium of television. Between 1949 and 1954, he performed on both the radio and televised versions of the weekly series Martin Kane: Private Eye, in which he was one of four actors to play the title role. In 1958, he returned to the role of newspaper reporter in the syndicated series New York Confidential. Tracy did continue to return periodically to the big screen. In 1964, he portrayed the former President of the United States "Art Hockstader", a fictitious character loosely based on Harry Truman, in both the stage and film adaptations of Gore Vidal's novel The Best Man. 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.

Lee Tracy died in Santa Monica, California, of cancer on October 18, 1968. He was 70 years old. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Shavertown, Pennsylvania.