<<I've never heard this one, and it looks like no-one
else can figure it
out. Spencer Tracy usually played scrappy little tough good
guys,
unlike Cagney's scrappy little tough bad guys. What someone
could
make of his movies to turn into a slang phrase, I couldn't
say. Would
a little more context help us?>>
Count me among the puzzled. What is baffling is that Tracy
was not a
film star when _Mistral_ was written - nor, I think, well
known enough
to be the object of a saying like Whitfield's. Perhaps
Whitfield is
referring to a sucessful theater production with Tracy in it,
or (long
shot) to *another* Spencer Tracy. Needless to say, my mind
draws a blank
regarding this putative namesake.
This sort of thing is maddening, the kind that makes you cop
an irate
hinge at the nature of language, bend the puss in a grimace
of
desperation, and perhaps even froth at the yap. In any case,
I'll keep
my peepers open.
Regards,
Mario Taboada
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