Champaña para César

On one level, Champagne for Caesar showcases the comic talent of Vincent Price and Ronald Colman in one of the best screwball comedies to come from the tail end of Hollywood's golden age. Colman and Price are not two names commonly associated with comedy but as this movie shows they should have been.

This movie deserves to be rediscovered by an audience niche who will appreciate it. On a deeper level this movie displays the willful innocence of the Fifties with a tongue-in-cheek manner. The comedy is both of it's time and mocking the institutions of its time. It is the first movie I know that examines the emerging world of television, crass commercialism and the hypocrisy and hype that it brought with it. You might consider it the grandfather of the Truman Show. A comedy that goes deeper than it first seems. Besides any comedy that uses Mel Blanc as the voice of a parrot is worth looking into.

It has always amazed me what a wonderful job of casting was done on this film. Ronald Colman in a departure from his normal films, Celeste Holm as the vamp with a giggle/laugh that would keep anyone awake, Vincent Price, Art Linkletter and Barbara Britton doing what they each do so splendidly. This film was quite underrated originally, but true film buffs will enjoy the comedic plot and the great acting.

There is no way that you can present a synopsis of this film that can make it appealing. Here is a film that stars Ronald Colman, Vincent Price, Celeste Holm and Art Linkletter???? The plot includes a soap company, a quiz show and a talking parrot. Not only does this film work, it is one of the most riotous comedies ever filmed.

It is the incongruity (and thus the brilliance) of the casting that makes this successful. Colman who is so well known for his romantic voice and looks and just coming off as Oscar winning performance in the dark but brilliant "A Double Life" plays Bouregard Bottomley, a man who knows "everything about everything", except how to get a job. He goes to the Milady Soap Company and is almost hired except he had the audacity to make a joke in front of company President Birnbridge Waters, played by Vincent Price. It seems that Milady sponsors a quiz program and Bottomley decides to go on as a contestant and take Price for all he is worth and thereby hangs this uproarious tale.

For all of the dramatic accomplishments by the principals, Colman, Price and Holm are tremendously funny with Price as a particular standout. He goes way over the top (similar to James Cagney in the equally as funny "One, Two, Three") but he is perfect.

The real surprise is Art Linkletter. Having made his reputation as a rather bland variety show host in radio and the early days of television, he comes off very effectively as both the quiz show and the romantic lead. This was his only acting appearance and it is too bad. He was very good.

This film demands several viewings. Often you are laughing so hard you miss some great lines.

The Champaign in the title does not go solely to Caesar (a talking parrot). It goes to all involved with this classic. Here's to you.

Ronald Colman, self confessed genius and bookworm extraordinary, lives in a small bungalow with sister Barbara Britton who supports both of them with giving kids piano lessons.

Colman works every now and then because frankly there isn't much call for geniuses at entry level jobs and he intimidates those in power when he does get hired. But one day a particularly arrogant head of a soap manufacturing company dismissed him without an explanation during the interview.

But Colman takes an unusual way of getting even. He goes on the company sponsored quiz program and keeps winning and winning week after week. They're going to owe him big time before he's done.

Champagne for Caesar anticipates the big money quiz show era and the celebrities they spawned by about seven years and the movie about that time, Quiz Show, by over 40. Colman is seemingly the detached man of letters that he was in The Late George Apley. But in fact he turns out to have an exceedingly good grasp on reality and the more mundane treacheries associated with every day life.

Although this is Ronald Colman's film, whenever he's on Vincent Price steals the show totally with his portrayal of the megalomaniacal soap king. It's the kind of outrageous part that actors can really chew the scenery with and Vincent Price had a full course meal.

Celeste Holm plays the femme fatale that Price hires to do Colman in and she's good at her job. But the seemingly unworldly Colman is more than up to her tricks.

Art Linkletter who was just getting nationally known as a radio and television host plays, what else, the host of Price's quiz show. Linkletter did some dramatic television work later on Wagon Train, GE Theater, and Zane Grey Theater, but this is his only feature film role as other than Art Linkletter.

Champagne for Caesar was an independent production by Harry Popkin for United Artists. Though he got great critical reviews, Colman was shorted on his money for this film by Popkin. According to his daughter Juliet's biography of her father, the lawsuit her father brought against Popkin dragged on so long that it got to be something of a family joke. It was still not settled when Colman died in 1958.

Legal problems aside, Champagne for Caesar is one very funny film and should not be missed by fans of Ronald Colman or Vincent Price.

Excellent comedy starring comic Ronald Colman as Beauregard Bottomely, who is described as being the last scholar in America. He takes his "cornflakes with Schopenhauer", basically spends the whole day reading. Anyway he doesn't seem to do very well in the world of work, he's such a know-it-all that he doesn't last long anywhere. Believe me, and I know, correcting a boss who is talking nonsense on a matter of fact will earn you no brownie points.

One evening Beauregard goes to the TV store with his sister and the nightly crowd to watch the evening shows, specifically in his case, a science show where they send a radar beam to the moon. Afterwards there is a quiz show on that his sister forces him to watch. It's a "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" type show where you are asked 7 successive questions, each time you answer a question correctly the prize doubles. The prize is not much, it's more of a masquerade program where you dress up as a historical personage or an inanimate object, or an animal, and the questions they ask you are based on your costume, a bit of fun really.

Beauregard is (rightly) disgusted by what he presciently sees as the the herald of intellectual Armageddon: "If it is noteworthy and rewarding to know that 2 and 2 make 4 to the accompaniment of deafening applause and prizes, then 2 and 2 making 4 will become the top level of learning." Anyway quite by chance he ends up applying for a job at the company that sponsors the show, only he doesn't get it because he's too superior in the interview (not arrogant mind you, he actually is superior, but that just doesn't do in a hierarchy). When he is given the cold shoulder he decides to get his own back by appearing on the quiz show.

Hilariously, he turns up dressed as the Encylopaedia Britannica, which basically means the quizmaster can ask him any question he feels like. Of course Beauregard gets all seven question right and wins something paltry like $120. But he says he wants to continue and the showbiz guys think it will be a ratings spinner so they ask him some more questions on a next show. The problem is when the amounts of prize winning get too high and the soap company wants to take the show off the air. They make the questions more and more harder in order to get him off, but with mounting hilarity they're unable to. One question for example: "How many dental plates are there on the molar of an Asiatic elephant", Beauregard comes straight back with "24".

It's well plotted with lots of twists and a great ending, there's also a lot of unashamed raunch in the movie. You can't help but enjoy yourself, and Vince Price is simply hilarious in what is perhaps a career best performance as the anti-intellectual soap company boss Burnbridge Waters with solipsistic tendencies.