Lee Tracy

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 Winchelltype 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 consciencestricken 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 Vélezs frenetic manager in Gregory LaCavas The HalfNaked Truth 1932 and portrayed John Barrymores agent in Dinner at Eight 1933 directed by George Cukor Lee Tracys 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 films 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 CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia