MovieChat Forums > The Power and the Glory (1933) Discussion > Why Spencer Tracy Is Great...

Why Spencer Tracy Is Great...

posted 12 years ago by xerses13
4 replies | jump to latest

Just watching this film indicates how superior SPENCER TRACY was over his contemporaries and would be a force today. In this early FOX film, like his efforts at WARNER BROTHERS (W.B.) he dominates every scene, except when COLLEEN MOORE is with him. There he has a equal, more then KATHERINE HEPBURN was.

These early FOX and W.B. films show a harder edge then Mr. Tracy showed for the most part at M.G.M. Most likely it was the style of the respective studios and that they were 'pre-code'. M.G.M. being more of the 'white sliced bread' compared too the 'whole wheat' of some of their competitors.

[–] monsieurzy 10 years ago

Tracy was one of the best, no argument. And I agree Colleen Moore is right up there with him in this film..I always dismissed her silent work as a 3rd rate, lightweight, less threatening version of Louise Brooks, but she shows here she's got the goods for drama and delivers.

[–] xerses13 10 years ago

monsieurzy: I disagree about the merits of Colleen Moore's silent films, they were not 3rd rate. Maybe you have not seen enough of them in a restored state or even remastered. Most of those that have survived are second rate copies if they exist at all. Universal, Paramount and the Museum of Modern Art in which She entrusted her film library failed her and posterity. Letting them decay through neglect or just plain incompetence.

Brooks and Moore were friends in their time in Silent Pictures. There was one (1) primary difference. Moore knew how to handle her money. So when her time ran out on the 'silver screen' she did not have to live of the charity of others. Unlike Ms. Brooks, that counts a lot with us.

[–] monsieurzy 10 years ago

I suppose I should see more of her work then....what would you recommend that could match LB's performances in Pandora's Box or Diary Of A Lost Girl

[–] xerses13 10 years ago

monsierurzy: Have seen both of them already. Fine performances, to bad She torpedoed her own career.