Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952)

The premise of this one: Samuel (Charles Coburn) is getting older, and he regrets that the love of his life got away. Before he dies, he's interested in leaving his fortune to the family of that woman's children. But he first wants to vet them to make sure they're worthy of his money.

So he goes undercover as John Smith and manages to live with the family as a boarder. They seem like a nice enough bunch, but with two kids in college, a mortgage to pay, as well as drugstore business to run, they're broke. The $8 a week he's going to pay them as a boarder will go a long way...

Meanwhile, Samuel becomes closer to the family, and he decides to give them, anonymously, $100,000 -- just to see how they'll handle the money. Harriet (Lynn Bari), the mother, goes nuts. But everyone else in the family just goes along with it? They sell the drugstore, sell the house, buy a mansion, and somehow make $100,000 feel like a billion dollars... and everyone in town believes, rightly so, that they are multimillionaires.

Unfortunately, $100,000 only goes so far, and in addition to Harriet's nonstop spending, Howard (William Reynolds), the son, somehow racks up a big gambling debt, and then the stock market starts to go bust...

Samuel sees what havoc the $100,000 has caused, and when the family, including Harriet, decide just to return to their old way of life -- the way of life that actually made them "happy," as it turns out, Samuel simply says goodbye and never reveals himself.

I'm not sure what I think about the ending. Is Samuel just going back to the city to die? The family learns something about themselves, but I'm not sure what Samuel learns about himself, or what we're supposed to learn about the power of money. I guess the ending felt a little rushed and incomplete.

I also want to note that Lynn Bari played the mom, but she was only like 32 at the time, and her oldest daughter was supposed to be 18 (played by Piper Laurie who was 20 at the time). It continues to interest me that actors are cast into roles that don't always match the ages of the characters they're playing.

Rock Hudson is fine but just a supporting character here. James Dean is in the film, too, with an uncredited role, but it's fun to see him ask for a malt.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #4 -- The Federalist Radio Hour

I first heard of Sean Davis last week. He created an online magazine called The Federalist in 2011, and he currently has about 500,000 followers on X. It was about last week that he posted something amazing. He suggested if the Supreme Court doesn't rule the way they should, not only should Trump just ignore the ruling, if they keep obstructing the administration, he should just dissolve the Court altogether. And I thought, wow. This guy is saying outrageous stuff like that, and there's an audience for it. So, I decided I'd listen to an episode of The Federalist podcast: April 17, 2025 -- Deportation, Due Process, and Deference to the American People (40 minutes) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deportation-due-process-and-deference-to-the/id983782306?i=1000703904873 In the 40-minute conversation, the host and guest discussed why due process wasn't required for illegal immigrants. The case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was mentioned for a brief second, but...

In Utero

In 1994, I wore my In Utero shirt to college. I’d walk down the hall, and people would look at the shirt. I still remember a professor looking at it, not apparently hip to the scene. She asked, “Bret, is there something you’re trying to tell us?” I had no idea what I was trying to say. Kurt Cobain had just shot his head off with a shotgun. Before that life-changing event, I hadn’t been the biggest fan of Nirvana, but I did recognize the immediate impact “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had on music, or at least on MTV. Nirvana had seemingly killed and buried Hair Metal, and they had done it single-handedly. What exactly was this “Alternative” sound? It was weird, because soon it felt like everything was “alternative,” and that didn’t make any sense. Once everything is the same, how can it be anything but standard, normal? Nirvana was okay, but at least at the time I was wearing the merch, I was much more into Offspring and Green Day and Tool. And that’s about as far as I went into...

Octavia Hermione Fuller

So, she finally arrived. October 9, 2007 at 7:20 p.m. 8 lbs, 8 ounces and 22 inches long.

The Writer's Poke

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