Fedya

And here I thought your post was a reference to this:

Wednesday, June 22, 2016: The Millionaire (8:15 AM). George Arliss plays an industrialist forced into retirement who decides to buy a half share of a service station, and then decides surreptitiously to use his bankroll to help his business partner (David Manners) beat another businessman. Arliss is wonderful as always, dominating the proceedings and looking like he's having a blast. The only time he doesn't dominate is one early scene in which he's trying to buy life insurance. The insurance agent is played by a young James Cagney, who as you can imagine is one of the few stars who can keep up with Arliss.

Chad Hanna has Henry Fonda in the circus in ~1840s western New York.

The Big Cube (1969). Lana Turner plays Adriana, a stage actress who retires to marry wealthy widower financier Charles (Dan O'Herlihy). Charles has an adult daughter Lisa (Karin Mossberg) who resents this and takes up with the hippie types. One of those, med student Johnny (George Chakiris), finds out that Lisa is rich, and takes Lisa for his girlfriend. Then Daddy dies, leaving Adriana as executrix of the will. There's a clause about her having control over disbursement of the estate and her approval of any husband for Lisa (at least before she turns 25), and when Adriana doesn't approve of Lisa and Johnny getting married, Johnny comes up with a devious plan to drive Adriana crazy by spiking her sleeping pills with LSD! The basic plot, that of a parent not approving of a child's marriage, and the two young lovers deciding to do something about it, isn't a bad one. With the right script, as in Pretty Poison, it can be quite good. Unfortunately, The Big Cube doesn't have the right script. And it certainly doesn't have the right acting. Mossberg is wooden; O'Herlihy is wasted in a bit part; Adriana's playwright Lansdale (Richard Egan) plays the guy who just knows he knows more than all the doctors; and then there's Lana, who has to play bad acid trip scenes. Oh my. There are also the other hippies, and the Travilla-designed gowns Lana has to wear. Parts of the movie wind up in "so bad it's good" territory, but too much of it winds up in the realm of tediousness. Many of the smaller roles, and the director, are handled by people with Spanish-language surnames, which is because this was filmed in Mexico. 5/10

Ditto the "reconstruction" of Greed.

But his hair isn't Harlow gold.

The first 40 minutes or so of Dark Passage has forced perspective. And then the main character gets plastic surgery so that he can look amazingly like Humphrey Bogart.

Nobody likes a fat man except his grocer and his tailor.

Rita Hayworth?

Following The Blue Dahlia is the short From the Four Corners, which is highly worth watching if you haven't seen it before. Leslie Howard meets three real soldiers from various parts of the Empire in London, and basically shows them what they're fighting for -- and what the Americans will be fighting for when they finally get their tuchuses off the couch and get involved in the war too.

The movie is also daring in casting a white guy as Hamilton.

To me, the accuracy of this is borne out by watching Mr. Arkadin, which is an absolute mess. (Then again, I heard a documentary about the Jaglom interviews and Welles' jabs at Hitchcock only hardened my relatively low opinion of Welles' bloated ego.) There was a good two-hour movie to be made from the book behind Greed, but Erich von Stroheim wouldn't let the studio put it out by making a nine-hour monstrosity instead and forcing the studio to edit it down.

It's FXM Retro and not TCM, but tomorrow (June 12) at 3:00 AM and 1:10 PM is The Day the Fish Came Out, a really bizarre little movie. Unfortunately, the last time FXM showed it, it was a pan-and-scan print, so you may all get the heebie-jeebies watching this one.

Drug dogs are notoriously inaccurate, what with wanting to please their handlers who want to find drugs.

LHF: Did you like the backless, sideless top Rogers wore in Rafter Romance? And then there's the depiction of telemarketing.

Louis Jourdan terrorizes her in Julie.

I thought Ben was quite good with the two special effects guys who did the spotlight on A. Arnold Gillespie. Of course, that was probably easier since Ben just had to get out of the way and let them explain what the effects guys were doing.

She just sat there and watched him drown.

We already covered this; you can see my opinion.

They were actors back then. They didn't need no stinkin' special effects.

Margaret O'Brian's recitation of the Gettysburg Address is particularly creepy.

Or they could give the money back to the people they robbed it from, like Gregory Peck in Yellow Sky, who even gets Anne Baxter at the end. And if they're going to melt down the gold, they should make miniature Eiffel Towers with it.

Arms Around Babes (er, Babes in Arms) (1939). Mickey Rooney plays the son of vaudevillean parents, most of whom have decamped to Long Island. Vaudeville is dead now that it's 1939, but Mickey has performing in his blood, even selling the song "Good Morning" which is original to this movie. (Arthur Freed, who wrote the lyrics, would later reuse it in Singin' in the Rain.) When Mickey finds out that Margaret Hamilton is going to evict the underemployed vaudevilleans and send their kids off to work schools, he vows to put on a show to bring in the money. He does with with the help of Judy Garland and June Preisser among others (watch for a young Johnny Sheffield). Some of the musical numbers are interesting, such as one with all the young folks marching through town and starting a bonfire. And then there's the blackface number that's the bulk of the show Mickey writes. It's almost as nuts as the one Joan Crawford does in Torch Song, except that the later movie is in Technicolor and gets to show off Crawford's hair. There's also the finale, that has Mickey and Judy doing their impressions of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt respectively. Mickey also gets to do an impression of Lionel Barrymore (not too successfully), and Clark Gable (absolutely hilarious). Mickey is determined and almost manic, to the point I half expected him to exclaim, "As God is my witness, I'll never go hungry again!" 9/10 for Mickey Rooney, 5/10 for Judy Garland (sorry, I don't like her singing, especially that number she does on the train), 8/10 for everybody else.

I know there's lust in that last movie, but I can't remember whether there's anything incestuous.

Spoiler: Rich and Strange may not be for cat fanciers.