Spencer Tracy Award presented to Lemmon
By Daily Bruin Staff
Nov. 28, 2000 9:00 p.m.
 JORDAN ROSS Jack Lemmon receives a
Spencer Tracy Award in Royce Hall on Nov. 28.
By Aphrodite Manousos
Daily Bruin Contributor
With his usual comedic grace and anecdotal style, Jack Lemmon
accepted the Spencer Tracy Award at Royce Hall yesterday, making
him the 12th recipient of the honor.
Awards are no foreign concept to Lemmon; besides his two Oscar
wins and eight nominations, he received the American Film Institute
Life Achievement Award, various international awards and even a
Golden Globe.
His films, such as “Some Like it Hot,” “The
Odd Couple,” “Out of Towners” and “Grumpy
Old Men,” are all comedic masterpieces that have withstood
the test of time.
The award was appropriate, Lemmon noted, as Spencer Tracy was an
actor who especially inspired him. When Tracy’s film
“Captain Courageous” came out in 1937, a then-pre-teen
Lemmon remembered how awestruck he was by Tracy and the film.
“(Tracy) was the finest actor I’d ever seen,”
he said. “He listened phenomenally with his eyes, face and
body movements. He was trying to glean the meaning within the
person.”
While filming in a neighboring studio, Lemmon finally got to
meet his idol during Tracy’s filming of “The Last
Hurrah.”
When asked why Lemmon chose acting, a perilous and crazy
profession, he stated that the most important quality in work is
passion, without which one cannot truly succeed.
With that in mind, Lemmon related a personal story: When he
first graduated from Harvard, he asked his father, a baker, for a
$300 loan in order to move to New York and get an agent. Lemmon
realized that he would never know if he could make it in show
business if he didn’t try.
When he assured his father that he loved the craft of acting,
his father responded, “Good, because the day I don’t
find romance in a loaf of bread, I’m going to
quit.”
Lemmon also gave the audience some insight into the inner
workings of film, television and theater. Lemmon feels that stage
training is the best way to learn acting.
Although Lemmon recognized the importance of both film and
television, Lemmon saw the theater as the most satisfying and
sustained performance because it gives an actor the chance to use
their entire body.
“It is the only place to learn acting,” Lemmon
said.
He is still heralded by many of his peers as an extraordinary
talent. He expressed his deep appreciation to Ving Rhames, who gave
his Golden Globe to Lemmon, and also to Kevin Spacey, who dedicated
his Oscar win to the veteran actor.
“If they feel about me that way, then I have
succeeded,” Lemmon said.
Spacey and Lemmon worked together on Broadway.
“He’s a terrific kid, who is extremely talented and
very versatile,” Lemmon said of Spacey.
Lemmon advised the next generation of actors to try to find work
doing anything in the theater when they are starting out. He said
he believes that going after small parts in films is a mistake.
Getting in a good theater group and keeping occupied in theater is
the best way to rapidly develop one’s skills and remain in
the field.
Of today’s movie industry, Lemmon said that he is quite
astounded by the high level of writing, directing and acting. He
believes that most of this talent is born out of training in
college acting classes, such as those offered at UCLA.
“The biggest change (in the industry), not that I have
felt it personally, is that the fun has gone out of the
business,” Lemmon said, reminiscing on the Hollywood of
yesteryear.
“Projects have just become too important and too
big,” he continued. “They become like a black cloud
overhead.”
According to Lemmon, the classic Hollywood era in which he
started out, had more of a family atmosphere and there was a lot
more work to go around. In Lemmon’s opinion, there was a
stronger feeling of camaraderie than there is today.
Lemmon said he realizes the changes in Hollywood are also due to
the sophistication of present day audiences. Films have become more
sophisticated to accommodate audiences, he said, and that is
sometimes abused by Hollywood when gratuitous sex and violence
pervades films.
“Violence bothers me more than gratuitous sex,” he
said. There is just no need for it.”
He also noted how technology has changed the film industry,
using films like “Gladiator” as examples. But he also
sees a departure from real substance in films.
“The pendulum has swung so far that there are no more
films about people and relations of people within a given
situation, especially in comedy,” Lemmon said.”They
just throw things in as if it were a joke and not a
script.”
