Married Spencer Tracy And Katharine Hepburn Reportedly Hid Their Love During Nearly 30-Year Affair

Nov 26, 2021 by apost team

If there’s just one actress that history will remember from the golden age of cinema, it won’t be a surprise if it’s Katharine Hepburn. Across her record-breaking, award-winning career, Hepburn acted in more than 40 films and in dozens of stage and television productions between the late 1920s to the mid-1990s. She was immortalized in Hollywood hits such as "Little Women," "The African Queen" and "The Lion in Winter,” and she also made an indelible mark on Broadway as a stage actress.

Hepburn, who was born into a wealthy family in Connecticut on May 12, 1907, began her acting career in college at Bryn Mawr, where she studied acting alongside history. After graduating from the women’s college, Hepburn traveled to New York City, where she spent her early 20s acting on- and off-Broadway. But it wasn’t until her appearance in “The Warrior Husband” in 1932 that the young actress began to gain some recognition. Not only did the play run for three months and receive positive reviews, but it also caught the eye of Leland Hayward, a Hollywood talent scout and agent. Hayward had the up-and-coming actress audition for “A Bill of Divorcement,” which would become Hepburn’s big break into Hollywood acting.

Her performance in the 1932 film and the picture's success at the box office led to a contract with RKO Radio Pictures to star in films for the studio. From then on, Hepburn’s career took off. A year after signing the RKO contract, she won the first of four Academy Awards.

“A Bill of Divorcement” may have helped Hepburn become a star, but the 1942 film “Woman of the Year” led the actress to meet the love of her life: the charming actor Spencer Tracy. After starring alongside each other, the two stars fell in love, beginning a nearly three-decade-long affair.

When the two first met, it was on the set of “Woman of the Year,” in which the pair played journalists who fall in love together.

The on-screen chemistry between the two was so good that people often thought that Tracy and Hepburn were simply playing themselves. Audiences, it turns out, were on to something.

Hepburn reportedly said that she “knew right away that (she) found (Spencer) irresistible” when they first met — despite the fact that he was married.

“They’d just meet and sit on a bench on the lot. They’d hold hands and talk — and everybody left them alone in their little private world,” actor Gene Kelly said of the duo's relationship at the studio. 

Even though it was an open secret that Tracy and Hepburn were madly in love, the actor wouldn’t divorce his wife, as he was a devout catholic. Biography.com reports that while Tracy remained with his wife, the actress Louise Treadwell, he spent much of his time away from home in hotels and rented apartments.

Meanwhile, Hepburn and Tracy continued to star alongside each other, becoming one of Hollywood's most recognizable and beloved on-screen couples. In Hepburn’s obituary, Caryn James of The New York Times went so far as to call their unofficial union “one of the great romantic legends and brilliant movie pairings of their day.”

Tracy and Hepburn’s on-screen romance continued for nine films, including “Keeper of the Flame,” “Adam’s Rib,” “Pat and Mike” and “Desk Set.” And off-screen, they continued to nurture their forbidden romance despite the guilt that Tracy felt — Hepburn once described him as “tortured” — for the 27 years that they were together.

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According to Hepburn’s memoir, “Me,” Tracy’s wife said that she thought their relationship was “only a rumor” up until her husband’s death.

"I think she loved Spencer and it somehow suited her total self-sacrifice. I have great respect for her, and she certainly never made any difficulties at all for Spencer or for me. By the same token, I never went out in public with him in California, ever, and seldom here. So I think we were careful of each other's reputations,” Hepburn wrote of Treadwell in “Me.”

"I had everything I wanted,” Hepburn added.

Some have speculated that Tracy might have been hiding more than his affair with Hepburn up until his death in 1967.

According to Scotty Bowers, who was featured in “Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood,” Tracy used his relationship with Hepburn as a cover for his homosexuality. How would Bowers know? In his book and a documentary about his life, he claims that not only did he have a relationship with Tracy but also that he helped other stars evade the homophobic LAPD Hollywood vice squad that would work with the press to ruin celebrities’ reputations. 

“It was very difficult for people to have authentic lives,” said Matt Tyrnauer, the documentary’s director. “It was also very difficult for people to appear in public as anything other than heterosexual; this was a very different time and Scotty really served a purpose in the community.”

If what Bowers says is true, neither Hepburn nor Tracy ever admitted it. Up until the day she died in 2003, the actress continued to say that she had loved Tracy.

“(We) just passed 27 years together in what was to me absolute bliss.”

What do you think of Hepburn and Tracy’s secret relationship? Do you think it was a cover for the latter’s homosexuality, or were these two truly in love? Let us know — and be sure to pass this story on to others.