TRACY & HEPBURN

"Well, we just got used to working together. She butts in, and I don't mind, and I pick it up where she leaves off. We just got used to working together, that's all."

"Spencer Tracy is a star of real quality. He is an actor's star. He is a people's star. His quality is clear and direct. Ask a question - get an answer. No pause - no fancy thinking - a simple answer. He speaks. He listens. He is not wordy. He is not overemotional. He is simple and totally honest. He makes you believe what he is saying."

"LOVE has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and you cannot help giving. If you are very lucky, you may be loved back. That is delicious but it does not necessarily happen. It really implies total devotion. And total is all-encompassing - the good of you, the bad of you. I am aware that I must include the bad. I loved Spencer Tracy. He and his interests and his demands came first. This was not easy for me because I was definitely a me me me person. It was a unique feeling that I had for S.T. I would have done anything for him. My feelings - how can you describe them? - the door between us was always open. There were no reservations of any kind."

"If her nova was never as popular with the public as it should have been, it was in part because the spartan incandescence she emanated was athletic and therefore drastically altered the alchemy of screen sexuality - which took some getting used to. Opposite Tracy, however, this energy was transformed into a perfect pas de deux, an ideal relationship celebrating the most happily integrated emancipated woman of the era."

"They came together at a time when their careers were foundering; misfits in the Hollywood mold, they were not in any way typical romantic leads. Hepburn had grown older, the face that once blushed in gracious concession to femininity now betrayed in no uncertain terms the recalcitrant New England spirit. And Tracy, too short and dumpy for conventional leading roles, hadn't found the woman who could lure him from the rugged, masculine world he inhabited. Out of their complementary incongruities, they created one of the most romantic couples the cinema has ever known. His virility acts as a buffer to her intelligence; she is tempered by him just as he is sharpened by her, and their self-confidence is increased, rather than eroded, by their need for each other."

"From the start, it was clear that despite the surface snap between them, they had a mellowing effect on one another. Whatever went on between them offscreen, on-screen they had an unspoken agreement about being grown-up, above and beyond it. She aged, perhaps to match him, and became a shade motherly where once she had been as emotionally aflame as Rosalind. Most of the comedies with Tracy are marvelous, tender, and warm, but those with Grant had been more penetrating and dangerous."