Fifty Years of Film in 50 Weeks, #30: Champagne for Caesar, 1950

This post is my contribution to the Classic Movie Blog Association's Fall Blogathon, "Laughter is the Best Medicine." Go here to find your next classic comedy from the picks shared by the best in the classic film blog community. 

Gwen Bottomley: "Happy Hogan really is interested in the piano! I'd like to continue what we started...with the piano."

Beauregard Bottomley: "Gwen, my dear, you are unwise in the ways of the world. This insidious instigator of infamy stands poised at my vitals with a knife of treachery!"

Champagne for Caesar, 1950 

Director: Richard Whorf
Writers: Story and screenplay by Hans Jacoby and Frederick Brady
Cinematographer: Paul Ivano
Producer: Harry M. Popkin for Cardinal Pictures
Starring: Ronald Colman, Celeste Holm, Vincent Price, Barbara Britton, Art Linkletter

Why I chose it
Vincent Price in a comedy? Price is such a unique film star, now remembered primarily for schlocky horror. Whenever I have a chance to see Price earlier in his career pre-typecasting, I jump at it. The premise of this one, culture vs. education vs. corporate America in the 1950s as seen through the lens of TV quiz show shenanigans, intrigued me.

'No-spoiler' plot overview 
It's 1950 and radio and TV quiz shows are sweeping the nation. Unemployed scholar, egghead, and renaissance man Beauregard Bottomley (Ronald Colman) finds himself the center of attention as the persistent star of "Masquerade for Money" quiz show, hosted by "Happy" Hogan (Art Linkletter) and sponsored by Milady Soap Company. The chief executive of Milady Soap is Burnbridge Waters (Vincent Price) a shallow despotic clown of a man who prompted Bottomley's long run on the quiz show because he refused to hire him. Bottomley's game is to win enough to buy Milady and usher Waters into an early retirement. For his part, Waters deploys his secret weapons: "Flame" O'Neil (Celeste Holm) who romances our hero while attempting to uncover a gap in his prolific knowledge, and "Happy" Hogan himself, who seeks the same information while romancing Bottomley's sister, Gwen (Barbara Britton). All the while, Bottomley's cynical pet parrot Caesar comments on the proceedings mainly by demanding "let's get loaded!"

Production Background

Harry Popkin was head of Cardinal Studios that he managed with his brother Leo. He produced a few interesting films in the late 1940s and early 1950s, most notably the cult noir D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien. In 1949 he assembled a strong team of actors, headlined by former romantic leading man Ronald Colman, whose cultivated English accent set him up perfectly to play an erudite but lonely bachelor. In a 1990 interview, Vincent Price mentioned how thrilled he was to work with "Ronnie" Colman, one of his favorite actors, whom he studied to hone his craft in front of the camera. Cast as quiz show host was Art Linkletter, who went on to have a great career in radio and TV but never had as big of a role in film. 

Linkletter later described how all the actors made a deal with Popkin to take (smallish) flat fee in exchange for a share in the 'net' -- and then later they never got their 'net'. When driving down the Popkin's street, Linkletter apparently looked up at the house and said "we're co-owners!" Even Colman, according to his daughter, would shake his fist at Popkin's house and say "that's where that son-of-a-bitch Harry Popkin with all my money used to live!"

In a case of life imitating art, a few years after the film, Price himself was a guest on an episode of "The $64,000 Question" that focused on fine art. Price was an art expert, and somewhat of a collector, like his opponent on the show, Edward G. Robinson. Price was embroiled in controversy when he may have manipulated an answer during a key showdown on the show.

The film was the second-to-last film appearance, as a member of the quiz show's studio audience, of bit player Jean Spangler, who made headlines for her mysterious disapperance in October 1949. She was never found; only her tattered purse was recovered in a park, containing a note to "Kirk", whom some think was Kirk Douglas. The case remains sadly unsolved. 

Some other notable film-related events in 1950 (from Filmsite.org):

• Hollywood began to develop ways to counteract free television's gains by the increasing use of color, and by introducing wide-screen films (i.e., CinemaScope, Techniscope, Cinerama, VistaVision, etc.) and gimmicks (i.e., 3-D viewing with cardboard glasses, Smell-O-Vision, etc.).
• John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo were imprisoned and the eight remaining members of the Hollywood Ten were convicted of contempt of Congress.
• Japanese director Akira Kurosawa released Rashomon (1950, Jp.), a crime mystery about a man's murder and the rape of his wife. It was the first Akira Kurosawa film to be nominated for an Oscar (Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White). The tale was told through the subjective recollections and perspective of four different characters - a template called the "Rashomon Effect" that has been reproduced many times henceforth. 
• Studio control of stars further eroded when James Stewart signed a precedent-setting independent (or free-lance) contract to share in the box-office profits of the Anthony Mann western Winchester '73 (1950), and for the film version of the stage comedy Harvey (1950). The first-ever back-end deal was negotiated by legendary agent Lew Wasserman. In fact, for all of Stewart's Universal Studios films (including Bend of the River (1952), and The Far Country (1954)), he took no salary in exchange for a large cut of the gross profits -- which turned out to be a very lucrative deal. 
• Producer George Pal's Destination Moon (1950) was one of the first science-fiction films to take a serious look at space exploration, with its attempt to provide accurate details about space travel.

My Random Observations

• Vincent Price, man. I'm not sure what I expected of him, but he over-delivered. His "Burnbridge Waters" was at once loathsome, hysterical, and sympathetic. His first scene ratcheted up the farce by ten, as the camera zoomed in on his rigid frame, in stop-motion at a large executive desk, with his henchman looking worriedly on. It turns out that Waters often falls into trances with no warning: "He's on another plane," whispered his associate, with a note of awe. Throughout the film Price's broad style was perfectly executed - this from someone who is not a particular fan of broad comedy. I missed him when he wasn't on screen. 

Bottomley first meets Waters in one of his "higher-plane" trances.

Waters reacts to Bottomley answering a difficult quiz question
right, again.

• If nothing else, this movie provides a perfect time capsule of mid-20th-century popular entertainments, especially the nascent ones. You've got radio, TV, quiz shows, and, so as not to leave out the film industry, drive-in movies. Today, as we marvel at the latest smart technology or gasp to see citizens taking joy-rides into space, it was fun to relive the wonder and excitement of the burgeoning technologies we take for granted today, even if the film poked fun at our obsession with them. And, as some critics have pointed out, the film was prescient in portraying how quiz shows can manipulate their audiences in variety of ways; the "Twenty-One" scandal was only a few years away.

Early quiz show (with Gordon Nelson) features obscure science
factoids and doesn't go over well with audiences. 

Goofy quiz shows catch on, however. Here is "Happy" Hogan
(Linkletter) with a contestant dressed as Cleopatra.

Gwen Bottomley and "Happy" Hogan have a date at the drive-in.

• Ah yes, the classic trope of the scholar who knows everything (and here Bottomley really knows EVERYTHING), yet is a social misfit making no measurable contributions to society. In somewhat of a pleasant surprise, Bottomley is shown to have more street smarts than the stereotype would ordinarily allow. When given the right circumstance, a scholar can make it in our success-obsessed society after all.

  

  Scholar as Celebrity

  
  

  

  In his first appearance on "Masquerade for Money", 
  Bottomley appears as the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

  
  For this role, Colman was perfectly suited. In a contrast to Price, his comedy was subtle and somewhat underplayed. Colman knew that just reading the hilarious lines given to him with his British accent and with a slightly raised eyebrow would be all that's needed from him. Despite his film career playing straight heroic or leading man types (don't miss him in A Tale of Two Cities), Colman had already made a foray into comedy with his radio and then TV series The Halls of Ivy, where as head of a small New England college, he has to juggle academic issues and his marriage with a former Music Hall star, played by his real-life wife Benita Hume. Watch an episode of the TV series below.

• Leading lady Celeste Holm gets ripped off a bit here. She doesn't appear until halfway through the film, and then her first series of scenes, in which she ingratiates herself as a "nurse" to an under-the-weather Bottomley, go way too long. (That was my only issue with an otherwise hilarious and well-paced script). Holm plays well off of Colman, though, and shows a flair for comedy as well as romance.
  

  

  "Flame" O'Neil (Holm) cloyingly turns the charms on a willing
  Bottomley.

• I think I'm going to include a section in these reviews called "Bit Player Bingo", in which I appreciate small roles inhabited by well-known players. In addition to the sad and infamous Jean Spangler, whom I discussed above, you'll see Lyle Talbot, former leading man of the pre-code era, as one of Waters' executive staff, and hear renowned cartoon voice artist Mel Blanc supposedly voicing Caesar, the parrot. I say supposedly, as some writers state that while he was credited, others, notably a woman, actually stepped in that key 'avian' role.

Lyle Talbot (left) peers around at Bottomley in the lobby of 
the Milady Soap Company.

Where to Watch
The film is in the public domain and can be streamed from Archive.org here. It's also been released on DVD.

Further Reading
Read this "bubbling" review from fellow CMBA blogger Rick of Rick's Classic Film and TV Cafe.