up for renewal, Tracy opted to freelance for the first time in his movie career. Independent player (1956–67) Tracy's first post-MGM appearance was in The Mountain (1956) with Robert Wagner, who played his much younger brother (Wagner had earlier played his son in Broken Lance). The location filming in the French Alps proved a difficult experience, and he threatened to leave the project. His performance earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Actor. Tracy and Hepburn then paired together for the eighth time in the office-based comedy Desk Set (1957). He again had to be convinced to stay with the film, one which met with a weak response. Tracy appeared in The Old Man and the Sea (1958), a project that had been in development for five years. An adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novella of the same title, Hemingway's agent, Leland Hayward, had previously written to the author: "Of all Hollywood people, the one that comes the closest to me in quality, in personality and voice, in personal dignity and ability, is Spencer Tracy." Tracy was delighted to be offered the role. He was told to lose some of his 210 pounds before filming began but failed to do so. Hemingway thus reported that Tracy was a "terrible liability to the picture", and had to be reassured that the star was being carefully photographed to disguise his weight problem. Appearing alone on screen for most of the film, Tracy considered The Old Man and the Sea the toughest part he ever played. In reviewing the performance, Jack Moffitt of The Hollywood Reporter said it was "so intimate and revealing of universal human experience that, to me, it almost transcended acting and became reality". Tracy received Oscar and BAFTA Award nominations for the work. After abandoning two projects, including a proposed remake of The Blue Angel with Marilyn Monroe, Tracy's next feature was The Last Hurrah (1958). It reunited him with his debut director, John Ford, after 28 years and his childhood friend Pat O'Brien. Tracy took a year to commit to the project, in which he played an Irish-American mayor seeking re-election. The movie was favorably reviewed, but not commercially successful. At the end of 1958, the National Board of Review named Tracy the year's Best Actor. He nevertheless began to ponder retirement, with Curtis writing that he was "chronically tired, unhappy, ill, and uninterested in work". Stanley Kramer partnership