The Millionaire

... and it's a shame that he is largely forgotten to film history. He was in Warner Brothers' earliest talking films, and even scored a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Disraeli in 1929. He was later lured to Fox, and I think that was a mistake since his best film work was at Warner Brothers. He was largely known for his stage work.

Here Arliss plays James Alden, owner and founder of an automobile company. When his doctor tells him he must stop work at age 60 and take a prolonged rest or die, at first he wants to ignore the warnings, but then thinks of his wife and daughter (played by Arliss' actual wife and Evalyn Knapp, respectively).

So off the trio goes to California, and the next we see of Alden he is sitting at a table in a garden wrapped in a blanket surrounded by prescription bottles, looking entirely unhappy about his situation. He is visited by an insurance agent, Scofield (James Cagney) who wants no part of selling him life insurance once he finds out Alden is retired, because he says the retired tend to die quickly. Scofield says if he had Alden's money what he would do is find one of the small business opportunities in the newspaper, and take an interest in running some small place so that he has a sense of purpose.

Alden takes Scofield's advice, but in the meantime he must fool his wife and daughter so that they don't worry or put a stop to his plans, and he must also fool his new business partner (David Manners) because he doesn't want him to think/know that they can just go to James Alden for any money they need. He wants to live by his wits, like he did when he started out, because he thinks the challenge might refresh and thus cure him. Things get complex when Manners' character gets interested in Alden's daughter, independent of the business venture. Noah Beery plays the villain here, trying to thwart the plans of Alden and his partner. It is rather refreshing here to see him play a normal kind of villain for a change.

I can't help but believe that Arliss might have been, in real life, the same kind of person he played on the screen - mischievous, impish, energetic, and always trying to help out the younger crowd. He gave Bette Davis her start at Warner Brothers, and I wonder if this cameo role for James Cagney wasn't his doing too.

At any rate, this film is a light hearted delight and I'd recommend it.

Automobile tycoon James Alden (George Arliss) is forced into retirement due to health concerns. He is utterly bored. After talking to insurance salesman Schofield (James Cagney), he answers a newspaper ad to buy half a gas station under the fake name Charles Miller. He and his new partner Bill Merrick have been suckered by Peterson who moved his business next to the new highway. The duo decides to move across the street to compete directly. Meanwhile, Bill falls for Alden's daughter without realizing her father is his partner.

Arliss is great. There are social class differences that are harder to understand. Non-physical comedy is often harder to translate across time. The stakes are pretty low since Alden will always be rich and he will always approve of Bill for his daughter. Early James Cagney has a minor role. It has its fun but it doesn't strike me as hilarious in the modern sense.

Coerced into early retirement, a bored former automobile tycoon decides buy a petrol station and operate it, but keeping the business a secret from his concerned family and competing with a rival petrol station proprietor prove challenging in this amiable comedy starring George Arliss. The film is best known nowadays for James Cagney's brief turn as a fast-talking, pipe-smoking insurance salesman who first makes Arliss consider buying a side business after noting that retirees tend to pass away earlier than those who remain employed to the end. Cagney absolutely nails the role, but the film belongs to Arliss all the way who proves himself a surprisingly sharp and shrewd businessman (he puts up a sign saying "don't ruin your car with cheap gas" as a response to his competitor lowering his prices). The film takes an incredibly long time to warm up though and it is only really in the second half of the movie that the comedy side of the film takes off. The laughs are, however, very good with lots of confused identity business as Arliss has to pretend to be penniless for his gas station partner and also has to pretend to not be working for the benefit of his family. 'The Millionaire' is a tad problematic if viewed as a message film (it advocates blatantly ignoring medical advice), but the writers are smart enough to keep any such themes in the background though and the comedy at the forefront. Noah Beery (brother of Wallace) also turns in a fine performance as the petrol competitor who learns an unexpected lesson or two from the highly experienced Arliss.

James Cagney is forever in the minds of movie buffs as the hyper-acting gangster hitching up his pants before he fires guns-a-blazing. The New York City-native played a variety of characters throughout his long career in addition to his many roles as a criminal. One account describes how director William Wellman and the Warner Brothers studio selected the actor to be in "The Public Enemy" when May 1931's "The Millionaire" was being filmed on the studio lot in late 1930. Cagney's role as a life insurance salesman is brief in the movie, but it is pivotal to the plot's development.

George Arliss plays wealthy car maker James Alden, and has just retired. He's completely bored with new his sedentary life-style when he's approached by Schofield (Cagney) to give Alden a sales pitch on a life insurance policy. Once he realizes it's futile for an elderly man to buy such a policy, Schofield tells him if he were retired he would start a new business just to liven those retirement years up. That spurs Alden to go partners with Bill Merrick (David Manners) to buy a gas station, only to realize he's been swindle by the seller. The garage owner knows a highway is being planned a mile up the road where he aims to place his new gas station while Alden is stuck with a white elephant.

What makes "The Millionaire" so noteworthy, besides being a light-hearted movie showcasing veteran stage and film Academy Award Best Actor winner George Arliss, is how Cagney and he play off one another in that short scene. Cagney, in his budding film career, was limited to small roles in several of his movie appearances. He didn't advance into larger ones because studios felt his quick-talking delivery was unsuitable for the emerging audio technology. For the first couple of years of sound dialogue, the standard practice was to have the actors speak in slow, deliberate voices, with pauses between the actors' lines so viewers could digest what was being said. With Cagney, his lightning-fast delivery was completely opposite. Arliss, who was given the power to select the actor for that brief, albeit crucial scene, chose Cagney among those young actors whom Warner Brothers offered. Arliss loved Cagney's "natural behavior and innate cockiness," he said, just the perfect characteristics for the role.

As reviewer Mick LaSalle noted, the passing of the torch between generations of actors was occurring during that one brief scene. "In The Millionaire, the past and future meet at a moment of ideal stasis, just before the past has started to end and the future about to start. Two actors, two styles, and two eras are there before our eyes- in a union both incongruous and yet surprisingly harmonious."

George Arliss's name was synonymous with "Great Acting" back in the early talking film era and he more or less lives up to the reputation herein, playing a Henry Ford-style auto magnate in failing health whose doctor insists that he retire and take it easy lest his heart give out. So he reluctantly but obediently moves to sunny California with his wife and daughter where he settles into a life of vice-free boredom. One day a cocky insurance salesman (played by the motor-mouthed James Cagney in an early supporting role) suggests that he would be happier if he bought a small business as a hobby just to keep the old juices flowing. Arliss finds the advice intriguing and responds to a newspaper ad offering half interest in a filling station. Posing as an ordinary investor under an assumed name, he purchases the half interest without hesitation from a suspicious seller (Noah Beery) and discovers his partner is a handsome young would-be architect (David Manners in one of his better efforts) biding his time until he can get his real career off the ground. Soon it becomes clear to both that Beery has swindled them, knowing that a new superhighway nearby would soon open and attract all vehicles away from the spot where their filling station was located. Using the business acumen he has accrued through the years, Arliss hatches a plan to purchase property across the street from the swindler's new filling station and drive him out of business with better service, better advertising and a more attractive establishment. Meanwhile, Arliss's daughter drives in for a fill-up and is recognized by Manners as the attractive girl he met briefly at a college dance a few years earlier. He falls head over heels in love with her and decides to marry her, little knowing she is the daughter of his partner. As this romantic subplot plays out, Arliss's health improves by degrees under the healthy stimulus of running a small business, even as he declines to swallow the medicines prescribed by his doctor. It's fun to watch Arliss play this lovable character who learns how to heal himself. It's a wise film indeed, demonstrating that care of the spirit is just as important as medicinal regimens. The whole thing moves along at a brisk pace. Cagney's brief bit is memorable in a "star is born" manner—the elegant old pro Arliss generously allowing the brash young actor to steal the scene. Arliss did a similar favor for young Bette Davis in THE MAN WHO PLAYED GOD a year later.