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Category Archives: Irish History


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Birth of Actress Valerie Hobson

valerie-hobson

Valerie Hobson, Irish-born actress who appears in a number of films during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, is born Babette Valerie Louise Hobson in Larne, County Antrim, Northern Ireland on April 14, 1917. Her second husband is John Profumo, 5th Baron Profumo, a government minister who becomes the subject of a sensational sex scandal in 1963.

In 1935, still in her teens, Hobson appears as Baroness Frankenstein in Bride of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff and Colin Clive. She plays opposite Henry Hull that same year in Werewolf of London, the first Hollywood werewolf film. The latter half of the 1940s sees Hobson in perhaps her two most memorable roles: as the adult Estella in David Lean‘s adaptation of Great Expectations (1946), and as the refined and virtuous Edith D’Ascoyne in the black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949).

In 1952 she divorces her first husband, film producer Sir Anthony Havelock-Allan. In 1954, she marries Brigadier John, 5th Baron Profumo, an MP, giving up acting shortly afterwards. Baron Profumo is a prominent politician of Italian descent. Hobson’s last starring role is in the original London production of Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s musical play The King and I, which opens at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on October 8, 1953. She plays Mrs. Anna Leonowens opposite Herbert Lom‘s King. The show runs for 926 performances.

After Profumo’s ministerial career ends in disgrace in 1963, following revelations he had lied to the House of Commons about his affair with Christine Keeler, Hobson stands by him. They worked together for charity for the remainder of her life, though she does miss their more public personas.

Hobson’s eldest son, Simon Anthony Clerveaux Havelock-Allan, is born in May 1944 with Down syndrome. Her middle child, Mark Havelock-Allan, is born on April 4, 1951, and becomes a judge. Her youngest child is the author David Profumo, who writes Bringing the House Down: A Family Memoir (2006) about the scandal. In it, he writes his parents told him nothing of the scandal and that he learned of it from another boy at school.

Valerie Hobson dies on November 13, 1998, at the age of 81 at a Westminster, London Hospital following a heart attack. After her death, her body is cremated in accordance with her wishes. Half her ashes are interred in the family vault in Hersham. The rest are scattered on January 1, 1999, by her sons David Profumo and Mark Havelock-Allan, near the family’s farm in Scotland.

Hobson is portrayed by Deborah Grant in the film Scandal (1989), and by Joanna Riding in Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s stage musical Stephen Ward, which opens at the Aldwych Theatre on December 19, 2013.


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Birth of Poet Seamus Heaney

seamus-heaney

Seamus Justin Heaney, Irish poet, playwright and translator, is born in the townland of Tamniaran between Castledawson and Toomebridge, Northern Ireland on April 13, 1939. He is the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Heaney’s family moves to nearby Bellaghy when he is a boy. He attends Queen’s University Belfast and begins to publish poetry. In the early 1960s he becomes a lecturer at St. Joseph’s College in Belfast. He lives in Sandymount, Dublin from 1976 until his death. He also lives part-time in the United States from 1981 to 2006. He is recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry during his lifetime.

Heaney is a professor at Harvard University from 1981 to 1997, and its Poet in Residence from 1988 to 2006. From 1989 to 1994, he is also the Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. In 1996, he is made a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Other awards that he receives include the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (1968), the E. M. Forster Award (1975), the PEN Translation Prize (1985), the Golden Wreath of Poetry (2001), the T. S. Eliot Prize (2006) and two Whitbread Book Awards (1996 and 1999). In 2011, he is awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize and in 2012 he receives a Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust. His literary papers are held by the National Library of Ireland.

American poet Robert Lowell describes Heaney as “the most important Irish poet since Yeats,” and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he is “the greatest poet of our age.” Robert Pinsky states that “with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the storyteller.” Upon his death in 2013, The Independent describes him as “probably the best-known poet in the world.” One of his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966.

Seamus Heaney dies in Blackrock, Dublin on August 30, 2013, while hospitalized following a fall a few days earlier. He is buried at the Cemetery of St. Mary’s Church, Bellaghy, Northern Ireland. The headstone bears the epitaph “Walk on air against your better judgement,” from one of his poems, The Gravel Walks.

President Michael D. Higgins, himself a poet, praises Heaney’s “contribution to the republics of letters, conscience and humanity.” Taoiseach Enda Kenny says that Heaney’s death has brought “great sorrow to Ireland, to language and to literature.”


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Birth of Patrick McGilligan, Fine Gael Politician

patrick-mcgilligan

Patrick Joseph McGilligan, lawyer and Cumann na nGaedheal and Fine Gael politician, is born in Hanover Place, Coleraine, County Londonderry on April 12, 1889. He serves as the 14th Attorney General of Ireland from 1954 to 1957, Minister for Finance from 1948 to 1951, Minister for External Affairs from 1927 to 1932 and Minister for Industry and Commerce from 1924 to 1932. He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1923 to 1965.

McGilligan is the son of Patrick McGilligan, a draper, who serves as Member of Parliament (MP) for South Fermanagh from 1892 to 1895 for the Irish Parliamentary Party, and Catherine O’Farrell. He is educated at St. Columb’s College in Derry, Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare and University College Dublin. He joins Sinn Féin but is unsuccessful in his attempt to be elected as a MP at the 1918 general election. He is called to the bar in 1921.

McGilligan is elected as a Cumann na nGaedheal TD for the National University of Ireland at a by-election held on November 3, 1923. Between 1924 and 1932 he serves as Minister for Industry and Commerce, notably pushing through the Shannon hydroelectric scheme, then the largest hydroelectricity project in the world. In 1927 he sets up the Electricity Supply Board (ESB), and also the Agricultural Credit Corporation.

Also, in 1927 McGilligan takes over the External Affairs portfolio following the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins by the anti-Treaty elements of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), in revenge for O’Higgins’ support for the execution of Republican prisoners during the Irish Civil War. In this position he is hugely influential at the Committee on the Operation of Dominion Legislation and at the Imperial Conference in 1930 jointly with representatives of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The Statute of Westminster that emerges from these meetings gives greater power to dominions in the Commonwealth like the Irish Free State.

During McGilligan’s period in opposition from 1932 to 1948 he builds up a law practice and becomes professor of constitutional and international law at University College, Dublin. When the National University of Ireland representation is transferred to Seanad Éireann in 1937, he is elected as TD for the Dublin North-West constituency.

In 1948 McGilligan is appointed Minister for Finance in the first Inter-Party Government. As Minister he undertakes some major reforms. He instigates a new approach where Government invests radically in capital projects. Colleagues however complain of his frequent absence from the Cabinet table and the difficulty of contacting him at the Department of Finance. Between 1954 and 1957 he serves as Attorney General. He retires from Dáil Éireann at the 1965 general election, having served for over 40 years.

Patrick McGilligan dies in Dublin on November 15, 1979. Despite his well-known fondness for predicting that he would die young, he reaches the age of ninety. A later Attorney General, John M. Kelly, in the preface to his definitive text, The Irish Constitution (1980), notes the remarkable number of senior judges who are former students of McGilligan and suggests that, given his own firm belief in the value of judicial review, he deserves much of the credit for the remarkable development of Irish law in this field since the early 1960s.


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Catherine Nevin Found Guilty of Murder

catherine-nevin

On April 11, 2000, Catherine Nevin (née Scully), in a dramatic end to the two-month trial, is found guilty by a jury at the Central Criminal Court of all four charges against her arising out of the 1996 shooting death of her husband, Tom Nevin, at Jack White’s Inn, a pub owned by the couple in County Wicklow. The jury also finds her guilty on three charges of soliciting others to kill him after five days of deliberation, then the longest period of deliberation in the history of the Republic of Ireland. She is subsequentlty dubbed the “Black Widow” by the press. She is the subject of significant coverage by the tabloid press and Justice Mella Carroll orders a ban on the press commenting on Nevin’s appearance or demeanour during the trial.

Catherine Scully meets Tom Nevin in Dublin in 1970 and they are married in Rome in 1976. Within ten years, they own two houses and manage a pub in Finglas, Dublin. In 1986 they open Jack White’s Inn near Brittas Bay in County Wicklow.

On March 19, 1996, Tom Nevin is killed with a shot from a nine pellet shotgun while counting the day’s takings in Jack White’s Inn. According to Catherine Nevin, she is awakened by someone pressing her face into a pillow. She claims it was a man shouting profanities and holding a knife in his left hand. IR£13,000 is taken from the pub, and the Nevins’ car is stolen. It is later found abandoned in Dublin.

After her conviction, Nevin serves her sentence at the Dóchas Centre, Dublin. She loses an appeal in 2003 and, in 2010, also loses an application to have her conviction declared a miscarriage of justice.

Catherine Nevin is diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2016 and given only months to live by doctors at Dublin’s Mater Private Hospital. She receives compassionate release in late 2017 and dies on February 19, 2018. She denies any involvement in her husband’s murder to the very end.


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RMS Titanic Departs Southampton, England

titanic-departing-southampton-dock

The RMS Titanic leaves port in Southampton, England for her first and only voyage on April 10, 1912. Built by the Belfast shipbuilders Harland & Wolff, the RMS Titanic is the second of the three Olympic-class ocean liners — the first being the RMS Olympic and the third being the HMHS Britannic.

Following the embarkation of the crew the passengers begin arriving at 9:30 AM, when the London and South Western Railway‘s boat train from London Waterloo station reaches Southampton Terminus railway station on the quayside, alongside RMS Titanic‘s berth. In all, 923 passengers board RMS Titanic at Southampton, 179 First Class, 247 Second Class and 494 Third Class. The large number of Third Class passengers means they are the first to board, with First and Second Class passengers following up to an hour before departure. Stewards show them to their cabins, and First Class passengers are personally greeted by Captain Edward Smith upon boarding. Third Class passengers are inspected for ailments and physical impairments that might lead to their being refused entry to the United States, a prospect the White Star Line wishes to avoid, as it would have to carry anyone who fails the examination back across the Atlantic. A total of 922 passengers are recorded as embarking on RMS Titanic at Southampton. Additional passengers are to be picked up at Cherbourg, France and Queenstown.

The maiden voyage begins on time, at noon. An accident is narrowly averted only a few minutes later as RMS Titanic passes the moored liners SS City of New York of the American Line and what would have been her running mate on the service from Southampton, White Star’s RMS Oceanic. Her huge displacement causes both of the smaller ships to be lifted by a bulge of water and then dropped into a trough. SS City of New York‘s mooring cables cannot take the sudden strain and snap, swinging her around stern-first towards RMS Titanic. A nearby tugboat, Vulcan, comes to the rescue by taking SS City of New York under tow, and Captain Smith orders RMS Titanic‘s engines to be put “full astern.” The two ships avoid a collision by a matter of about 4 feet. The incident delays RMS Titanic‘s departure for about an hour, while the drifting SS City of New York is brought under control.

After making it safely through the complex tides and channels of Southampton Water and the Solent, RMS Titanic heads out into the English Channel. She heads for the French port of Cherbourg, a journey of 77 nautical miles. The weather is windy, very fine but cold and overcast. Four hours after RMS Titanic leaves Southampton, she arrives at Cherbourg and is met by the tenders SS Traffic and the SS Nomadic which have to be used to transfer passengers from shore to ship because Cherbourg lacks docking facilities for a ship the size of RMS Titanic. An additional 274 passengers are taken aboard. Twenty-four passengers who have booked passage only cross-channel from Southampton leave aboard the tenders to be conveyed to shore. The process is completed in about 90 minutes. At 8:00 PM RMS Titanic weighs anchor and departs for Queenstown on the south coast of Ireland with arrival scheduled late the following morning.

(Pictured: RMS Titanic departing the Southampton docks on April 10, 1912)


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Birth of Surgeon Edward Hallaran Bennett

edward-hallaran-bennett

Edward Hallaran Bennett, surgeon, is born at Charlotte Quay, Cork, County Cork on April 9, 1837, the son of a barrister. He is best remembered for describing Bennett’s fracture.

Bennett attends Hamblin and Porter’s School in Cork, and the Academic Institute in Hardcourt Street. He enrolls in medical school at Trinity College, Dublin in 1854 at the age of 17. At college he studies under professor Robert Smith, under whom he develops an interest in bone fractures. He gains the degrees of BA and MB before graduating with a M.Ch. in 1859 and MD in 1864. He is conferred with a fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in 1863.

Following a period as an anatomy demonstrator Bennett is appointed as Surgeon to Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital in 1864. He succeeds Robert Smith as Professor of Surgery in 1873 following his death. He studies fractures, joint dislocations and bone diseases, recording them at the Pathology Museum at Trinity College. He describes his eponymous fracture at the British Medical Association meeting in Cork in 1880 and today he is best remembered for the fracture he describes which still bears his name. Perhaps more importantly, however, he is accredited with having introduced antiseptic techniques to Dublin hospitals. Bennett also serves as President of the RCSI.

Edward Hallaran Bennett dies in Dublin on June 21, 1907.


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Birth of Actor Edward Mulhare

edward-mulhare

Edward Mulhare, Irish actor whose career spans five decades, is born in Cork, County Cork on April 8, 1923. He is best known for his starring roles in two television series, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir and Knight Rider.

Mulhare, one of three brothers, is born at 22 Quaker Road, Cork, County Cork, in what is then known as the Irish Free State, to John and Catherine Mulhare. As a child, he receives his education at St. Nessan’s Christian Brothers School, and later North Monastery. As a young adult, he begins schooling at the National University of Ireland in medicine, but eventually decides upon a career in theatre. After acting in various Irish venues including the Gate Theatre in Dublin, he moves to London, where he works with Orson Welles and John Gielgud.

His best-known stage role is as Professor Higgins in the original Broadway production of My Fair Lady, having taken over the role from Rex Harrison in 1957.

Mulhare’s first television appearance is in 1956 in a production of The Adventures of Robin Hood. He is a guest panelist in 1958 on the CBS television game show What’s My Line? By 1965, he is back in Hollywood appearing in films and television shows. He earns a role in the films Von Ryan’s Express in 1965, Our Man Flint in 1966, and Caprice in 1967. He guest-stars in television programs, including the Twelve O’Clock High episode “Siren Voices” as Luftwaffe Colonel Kurt Halland. He also guest-stars in “Experiment In Terra,” an episode of the original Battlestar Galactica series. In The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, a supernatural sitcom that runs from 1968 to 1970, he stars as Captain Daniel Gregg, and again is something of a successor to Rex Harrison, who had originated the role of “The Ghost” in the original 1947 film. In the mid-1980s, Mulhare hosts the television series Secrets & Mysteries, also called Secrets of the Unknown, a magazine show that examines historical mysteries and the paranormal. His most famous role is probably as Devon Miles in the Knight Rider series.

Mulhare stars in a number of films in his career including Megaforce and Out to Sea. His final role is on Baywatch Nights alongside former Knight Rider co-star David Hasselhoff in 1997.

Edward Mulhare dies of lung cancer on May 24, 1997, age 74, at his home in Van Nuys, California. He had been battling the cancer for five months prior to his death. He is buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery, Tory Top Road, Cork. Team Knight Rider dedicates an episode titled “K.R.O.” to Mulhare’s memory which is broadcast on October 27, 1997.


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Birth of James White, Science Fiction Writer

james-whiteJames White, author of science fiction novellas, short stories and novels, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on April 7, 1928.

White is educated in Belfast at St. John’s Primary School and St. Joseph’s Technical Secondary School. As a teenager he lives with foster parents. He wants to study medicine but financial circumstances prevented this. Between 1943 and 1965 he works for several Belfast tailoring firms and then as assistant manager of a Co-op department store. He marries Margaret “Peggy” Sarah Martin, another science fiction fan, in 1955 and the couple has three children. He later works for the aeroplane builders Short Brothers as a technical clerk, publicity assistant and publicity officer.

White becomes a science fiction fan in 1941, attracted particularly by the works of E. E. “Doc” Smith, which features good aliens as well as evil ones, and of Robert A. Heinlein, many of whose stories concern ordinary people. In 1947 he meets another Irish fan, Walt Willis, and the two help to produce the fan magazines Slant and Hyphen, which feature stories and articles by noted authors including John Brunner, A. Bertram Chandler and Bob Shaw. In 2004 both White and Willis are nominated for the retrospective Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer of 1953, although neither wins. White says that he started writing stories because the Slant team felt that Astounding Stories of Super-Science was too dominated by prophesies of nuclear doom, and his friends dared him to write the kind of story that they all liked to read. Getting published is fairly easy during the 1950s, as the World War II restrictions on paper are ended, and there are at least 12 science magazines in Britain and about 40 in the United States. His first published short story, Assisted Passage, a parody of 1950s Anglo-Australian emigration policies, appears in the January 1953 edition of the magazine New Worlds. Further stories appear in New Worlds during the next few years, but White’s attempt to access the more lucrative American market by submitting stories to Astounding Stories of Super-Science stall after the publication of The Scavengers. As a result, White’s work is little-known outside the UK until the 1960s.

In 1957, Ace Books publishes White’s first novel, The Secret Visitors, which includes locations in Northern Ireland. Ace Books’ science fiction editor, Donald A. Wollheim, thinks the original ending is too tame and suggests that White should insert an all-out space battle just after the climactic courtroom scene. In November of the same year New Worlds publishes White’s novella Sector General, and editor John Carnell requests more stories set in the same universe, founding the series for which White is known best. White gains a steady following for his scientifically accurate stories, which are examples of hard science fiction in New Worlds, despite the magazine’s promotion of literary New Wave science fiction during the 1960s.

White keeps his job with Short Brothers and writes in the evenings, as his stories do not make enough money for him to become a full-time author. In 1980 he teaches a literature course at a Belfast branch of the Workers’ Educational Association. When diabetes has severely impaired his eyesight, he takes early retirement in 1984 and relocates to the north County Antrim resort town of Portstewart, where he continues to write. For many years he is a Council Member of the British Science Fiction Association and, with Harry Harrison and Anne McCaffrey, a Patron of the Irish Science Fiction Association. He is also a strong pacifist.

James White dies of a stroke in Portstewart, Belfast, Northern Ireland on August 23, 1999, while his novels Double Contact and The First Protector are being prepared for publication.


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Death of Songwriter & Lyricist Jimmy Kennedy

jimmy-kennedy

James Kennedy, a Northern Irish songwriter and lyricist, dies in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England on April 6, 1984. In a career spanning more than fifty years, he writes some 2,000 songs, of which over 200 become worldwide hits and about 50 are all-time popular music classics. Until the duo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Kennedy has more hits in the United States than any other Irish or British songwriter.

Kennedy is born near Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. His father, Joseph Hamilton Kennedy, is a policeman in the Royal Irish Constabulary, which exists before the partition of Ireland. While growing up in Coagh, Kennedy writes several songs and poems. He is inspired by local surroundings such as the view of the Ballinderry river, the local Springhill house and the plentiful chestnut trees on his family’s property, as evidenced in his poem Chestnut Trees. Kennedy later moves to Portstewart, a seaside resort.

Kennedy graduates from Trinity College, Dublin, before teaching in England. He is accepted into the Colonial Service, as a civil servant, in 1927.

While awaiting a Colonial Service posting to the colony of Nigeria, Kennedy embarks on a career in songwriting. His first success comes in 1930 with The Barmaid’s Song, sung by Gracie Fields. Fellow lyricist Harry Castling introduces him to Bert Feldman, a music publisher based in London‘s “Tin Pan Alley,” for whom Kennedy starts to work. In the early 1930s he writes a number of successful songs, including Oh, Donna Clara (1930), My Song Goes Round the World (1931), and The Teddy Bears’ Picnic (1933), in which he provides new lyrics to John Walter Bratton‘s tune from 1907.

In 1934, Feldman turns down Kennedy’s song Isle of Capri, but it becomes a major hit for a new publisher, Peter Maurice. He writes several more successful songs for Maurice, including Red Sails in the Sunset (1935), inspired by beautiful summer evenings in Portstewart, Northern Ireland, Harbor Lights (1937) and South of the Border (1939), inspired by a holiday picture postcard he receives from Tijuana, Mexico, and written with composer Michael Carr. Kennedy and Carr also collaborate on several West End theatre shows in the 1930s, including London Rhapsody (1937). My Prayer, with original music by Georges Boulanger, has English lyrics penned by Kennedy in 1939. It is originally written by Boulanger with the title Avant de Mourir in 1926.

During the early stages of World War II, while serving in the British Army‘s Royal Artillery, where he rises to the rank of Captain, Kennedy writes the wartime hit, We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line. His hits also include Cokey Cokey (1945), and the English lyrics to Lili Marlene. After the end of the war, his songs include Apple Blossom Wedding (1947), Istanbul (Not Constantinople) (1953), and Love Is Like a Violin (1960). In the 1960s he writes the song The Banks of the Erne, for recording by his friend from the war years, Theo Hyde, also known as Ray Warren.

Kennedy is a patron of the Castlebar International Song Contest from 1973 until his death in 1984 and his association with the event adds great prestige to the contest. He wins two Ivor Novello Awards for his contribution to music and receives an honorary degree from the New University of Ulster. He is awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1983.

Jimmy Kennedy dies in Cheltenham on April 6, 1984, at the age of 81, and was interred in Taunton, Somerset. In 1997 he is posthumously inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.


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Birth of Actor Spencer Tracy

spencer-tracy

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy, American actor noted for his natural style and versatility, is born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 5, 1900. One of the major stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Tracy wins two Academy Awards for Best Actor, from nine nominations, sharing the record for nominations in that category with Laurence Olivier.

Tracy is the second son of Caroline and John Edward Tracy, a truck salesman. His mother is a Presbyterian from a wealthy Midwestern family and his father is of Irish Catholic background.

Tracy first discovers his talent for acting while attending Ripon College, and he later receives a scholarship for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He spends seven years in the theatre, working in a succession of repertory theatres and intermittently on Broadway. His breakthrough comes in 1930, when his lead performance in The Last Mile catches the attention of Hollywood. After a successful film debut in Up the River, he is signed to a contract with Fox Film Corporation. His five years with Fox are unremarkable and he remains largely unknown to audiences after 25 films, most of them starring Tracy as the leading man. None of them are hits although The Power and the Glory (1933) features one of his most acclaimed performances.

In 1935, Tracy joins Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, at the time Hollywood’s most prestigious studio. His career flourishes with a series of hit films, and in 1937 and 1938 he wins consecutive Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. By the 1940s, Tracy is one of the studio’s top stars. In 1942, he appears with Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, beginning a popular partnership that produces nine movies over 25 years.

Tracy leaves MGM in 1955 and continues to work regularly as a freelance star, despite an increasing weariness as he ages. His personal life is troubled, with a lifelong struggle against alcoholism and guilt over his son’s deafness. He becomes estranged from his wife in the 1930s but never divorces, conducting a long-term relationship with Katharine Hepburn in private. Towards the end of his life, he works almost exclusively for director Stanley Kramer. It is for Kramer that he makes his last film, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in 1967, completed just 17 days before his death.

On June 10, 1967, Tracy awakens at 3:00 AM to make himself a cup of tea in his apartment in Beverly Hills, California that he shares with Hepburn. She hears a loud thump and finds Tracy lying dead on the kitchen floor from a heart attack.

A Requiem Mass is held for Tracy on June 12, 1967, at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in East Hollywood. Pallbearers included George Cukor, Stanley Kramer, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, and John Ford. Out of consideration for Tracy’s family, Hepburn does not attend the funeral. Tracy is interred at Glendale‘s Forest Lawn Memorial Park, near his wife, Louise, and son John.

During his career, Tracy appears in 75 films and develops a reputation among his peers as one of the screen’s greatest actors. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranks Tracy as the 9th greatest male star of Classical Hollywood Cinema.