Love Stories: Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy’s 27-year affair – 9Honey

They co-starred in nine films and had a love affair that spanned decades, many calling it the worst-kept secret in Hollywood, but Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn didn’t even like each other when they first met.
Introduced while filming Woman of the Year in 1942, a then-34-year-old Hepburn remarked to her leading man: “I fear I may be too tall for you, Mr. Tracy.”
Someone else on set assured the actress 41-year-old Tracy would “cut her down to size”.
Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in MGM’s Woman of the Year, 1942. (Corbis via Getty Images)
A divorcee with a liberal background and no-nonsense attitude, Hepburn didn’t much impress the more conservative and religious Tracy when they first met, but as soon as they got in front of a camera their chemistry was palpable.
Their witty banter and lingering looks were Hollywood gold, and the pair would go on to star in eight more films together, much to the delight of studio executives and fans.
“On screen, Spencer and I are the perfect American couple,” Hepburn once said. It was a different story off-screen.
Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Woman Of The Year. (Fairfax Media)
The pair were drawn to one another, but Tracy was already married and his Catholic upbringing meant divorce was never an option.
Hepburn, who had already been married once herself, didn’t seem to mind and never pushed for Tracy to leave his wife for her, content to take second place in Tracy’s life.
Hepburn later wrote of Tracy in her autobiography Me: Stories of My Life: “It was a unique feeling I had for him I would have done anything for him.”
They began an affair that would carry on for almost 30 years, hidden from the press and public by careful planning and studio interference.
Dubbed one of the worst-kept secrets in Hollywood history, the couple never publicly acknowledged their romance and went to great lengths to keep it hidden.
Spencer Tracy and his wife Louise Tracy at an Academy Awards Dinner in 1939. (Bettmann Archive)
Tracy quietly separated from his wife, then reconciled, but spent decades living apart from her, both to protect her from his affair and to keep it hidden from the public.
But the rest of Hollywood and certainly anyone who ever worked with Hepburn or Tracy knew what was really going on.
“Everybody left them alone in their little private world.”
Lauren Bacall, who along with husband Humphrey Bogart was close with both Hepburn and Tracy, once wrote that her fellow actress was “blindingly” in love with Tracy.
Having lived a Hollywood romance of her own albeit, a very different one Bacall recognised how deeply Hepburn had fallen for Tracy, and how deeply she would remain in love with him until his death.
Meanwhile, Hollywood icon Gene Kelly recalled: “At lunchtime they’d just meet and sit on a bench on the lot. They’d hold hands and talkand everybody left them alone in their little private world.”
Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn take time out between scenes of a film in 1952. (Fairfax Media)
But Hepburn and Tracy’s affair wasn’t without challenges, both from the nature of the relationship and the stars’ own personal demons.
Tracy reportedly struggled with alcohol and infidelity, periodically checking out of his relationship with Hepburn to grapple with his own issues.
Other times, those issues bled into the affair, Berg recounting an incident he claims Hepburn told him about.
READ MORE:How Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall fell in love on the silver screen
“While Kate was trying to put Tracy to bed, he smacked the back of his hand across her face,” the biographer said in his book Kate Remembered.
“She said he was so drunk she believed he neither knew that he’d done it, nor that he’d remember.”
When asked if she ever considered ending the affair either because of Tracy’s struggles or because she knew he would never leave his wife – Hepburn was candid.
Tracy and Hepburn during their Hollywood acting careers. (Fairfax Media)
“What would be the point? I mean, I loved him. And I wanted to be with him. If I had left, we would both have been miserable,” she reportedly told biographer A. Scott Berg.
So she stayed, and the pair carried on their affair for decades, often spending long stretches of time apart while one or both of them were filming.
It’s possible they would have continued on that way for the rest of their lives, if they’d had the chance, but in 1967 their affair was cut short by Tracy’s death from a heart attack.
“I wanted to be with him. If I had left, we would both have been miserable.”
He had almost died in 1965 from heart disease and only survived by a “miracle” but suffered poor health in the years that followed.
The actor spent his final two years living a quiet life with Hepburn, who looked after him until he woke in the early morning on 10 June 1967 and went to make himself a cup of tea.
“Just as I was about to give

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