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May 28, 2026; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Chicago Cubs left fielder Ian Happ (8) hits a two run home run against the Pittsburgh Pirates during the eighth inning at PNC Park. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images | Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images
It’s Wednesday night here at BCB After Dark, the hippest hangout for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and sit with us. There’s no cover charge. We can find a table for you. The show will start shortly. Bring your own beverage
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Last night I asked you how many games (out of 27) did the Cubs need to win in June to have a “successful” month. In first place with 42 percent of the vote is “19 or 20.” Another 38 percent of you thought 17 or 18 wins was good enough to call it a success.
Here’s the part where we listen to jazz and talk movies. Feel free to skip that if you want. Or read that and skip the baseball stuff. Your call.
We continue our tribute to the “Saxophone Colossus” that was Sonny Rollins, who died last week at the age of 95. Tonight we have a couple of European performances from 1959 featuring Rollins. There’s about a two-minute interview after the first song here. Joining Rollins are Henry Grimes on bass and Pete La Roca (aka Peter Sims) or Joe Harris on drums.
As a bonus for those of you who don’t generally listen to jazz, I present Sonny Rollins playing saxophone on the Rolling Stones’ hit “Waiting on a Friend.” Yep, that’s Sonny Rollins playing sax on a track that I would dare say is the most mature of the Rolling Stones discography, and they’re not a band known for acting like grownups. Charlie Watts, who would have been a full-time jazz drummer if the pay was better, was convinced that Mick was going to embarrass him in front of one of his idols in Rollins. Mick did not. It’s a great song and a great sax part by Rollins.
Director Tod Browning was truly one of the great weirdos of the early days of cinema. Browning, who was the nephew of the original “Louisville Slugger” Pete Browning, by the way, quit high school to join a traveling circus where he worked the sideshows. That experience would later directly lead to the film that most consider his masterpiece Freaks (1932). Browning is also famous for directing the original Dracula (1931) with Bela Lugosi. He took the stage name “Tod” (German for “death”) to enhance the macabre nature of his art.
The Devil-Doll (1936) is another cult favorite directed by Browning that goes in some very weird and offbeat directions. Stripped of his ability to be explicit (like in Freaks and Dracula) by the Production Code, Browning leans into the really weird.
Lionel Barrymore (of all people!) stars in The Devil-Doll as a French man sent to Devil’s Island after the robbery and murder of a guard at the bank he worked at. However, Barrymore’s Paul Lavond is actually innocent of these charges, having been framed by three of his colleagues to hide the truth that they actually committed the crime.
Paul escapes Devil’s Island with fellow inmate Marcel (Paul B. Walthall) who can charitably be called a “mad scientist.” Although to be fair, his motives are pure. He has invented a way to shrink living creatures down to doll size. He thinks this can solve the problem of world hunger (a concept repeated in this year’s TV show The Minature Wife) but he also has a way to control the animals or people that he shrinks down to doll size.
As soon as Paul and Marcel make it back to France and Marcel’s wife Malita (Rafaela Ottiano), Marcel drops dead from a heart attack. Luckily, Malita knows how to shrink people on her own. Malita and Paul then team up to use their mind-controlled tiny people to take revenge on the people who framed Paul and clear his name.
Malita has hair that invokes the Bride of Frankenstein. I’m sure that’s not a coincidence. Malita doesn’t care much about clearing Paul’s name as much as she just likes hurting people.
To go about this plan, Paul dresses up like an old lady who sells the “dolls” to the evil bankers who framed him. Yes, Lionel Barrymore goes through over half the film in old lady drag.
Paul’s real motivations are to make life better for his daughter Lorraine (Maureen O’Sullivan), who believes he is guilty and hates the way his (false) crimes have ruined her life. Paul goes to visit her (as old lady Madame Mandilip) in the laundry where she works because he can’t bear not to see her.
Like I said, The Devil-Doll is just weird. It starts out as a horror film with the mind-controlled shrunken people and then it goes heavy into the family drama of the Lavond family. Then it’s just a drag comedy with Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life walking around as an old lady trying to trick his enemies and trying to prove to his daughter than he loves her and that he was innocent of what they accused him of. There’s also a side plot that Lorraine has a cab driver boyfriend who wants to marry her but she loves him so much that she won’t marry him and have him share the dishonor of her father. So that’s another reason Paul has to clear his name.
Ottiano was an Italian actress with extensive experience with the Grand Guignol theater in Paris, a place so famous for its macabre and horror productions that “Grand Guignol” is now a term to describe any kind of art that features terror, the horrible and the macabre. Ottiano absolutely eats the screen with her Bride of Frankenstein hairdo and whacked-out expressions.
Barrymore is an absolute hoot in drag. It certainly cuts into the idea that this is a “horror” picture with him acting like a kindly old grandmother most of the time, but it certainly ups the “weird” factor.
The special effects are what you’d expect out of a film from 1936. If you’ve seen the little people in The Bride of Frankenstein, this is pretty similar.
The Devil-Doll just isn’t a film you can take seriously and that’s a good thing. It’s a ridiculous hodgepodge of genres and tones and I don’t think that bothered Browning one bit. It shouldn’t bother you either.
Here’s the trailer for The Devil-Doll.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
MLB announced the start of All-Star Game voting and I promise you that at least one Cub will be named to the National League All-Star team. So if only one Cub got named to the All-Star Game, which one should it be?
The Cubs this year haven’t had any one player shine above the rest. Even when the team was going well, it was a real team effort with few standouts. Now that the team isn’t going so well, there isn’t one player who has been lifting the team up.
So who would be your first choice to make the All-Star Game on the Cubs? I have a few options to vote for here and I was going to go over their numbers for you. But really, you know what these guys have done and if you don’t, you know how to look it up.
So which Cub is most deserving of being an All-Star in 2026?
Thanks for stopping by, both tonight and all week. We hope you had a good time. Tell your friends about us. Recycle and cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more BCB After Dark.
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