Re: RARA-AVIS: definitions

MT (matrxtech@sprintmail.com)
Wed, 02 Sep 1998 16:28:47 -0500 Bill Denton:

<<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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