Champagne For Caesar

''Champagne for Caesar'' is a 1950 American comedy film about a quiz show contestant directed by Richard Whorf from an original screenplay by Hans Jacoby and Fred Brady. It stars Ronald Colman, Celeste Holm, Vincent Price, Barbara Britton, and Art Linkletter. The film was produced by Harry M. Popkin for his Cardinal Pictures, and released by United Artists.

Plot

Beauregard Bottomley is a polymath who lives in Hollywood with his piano-instructor sister Gwenn. He is knowledgeable about every subject—except how to hold a job.

By accident, Beauregard and Gwenn see a television quiz show, ''Masquerade for Money'', which is hosted by Happy Hogan and sponsored by Milady Soap. Each contestant comes dressed in a costume, which determines the type of questions asked, and the prize money doubles with each correct answer, from $5 up to $160. A contestant can quit at any time, but an incorrect response results in the loss of all money previously won. Beauregard is contemptuous of the show.

A representative of the Department of Employment encourages Beauregard to interview for a job with Milady Soap. Beauregard meets the company's eccentric owner, Burnbridge Waters, who disapproves of Beauregard's humor and intellect and rejects him. To get even, Beauregard becomes a contestant on ''Masquerade for Money'', dressing as an encyclopedia, so the host can ask him questions about anything. Beauregard easily answers his six questions, then requests one more, which he also answers, earning $320. He turns down the money and suggests he return the next week.

Waters invites Beauregard back for one question per show for six weeks as a publicity stunt. ''Masquerade for Money'' tops the ratings, and sales of Milady Soap skyrocket. At the end of the run, Waters approves giving Beauregard an impossibly hard question, but Beauregard answers it correctly. To calm a worried Waters, Happy offers to take piano lessons from Gwenn and search for a weakness in Beauregard. Beauregard immediately sees through the scheme, but Gwenn sneaks out on a date with Happy. She tells Happy that she also knows he is just trying to get information from her, and he admits it, but also says he is glad to have met her. Gwenn tells Happy that Beauregard intends to win $40 million and take everything that Waters has. Happy informs Waters, who cancels the show and sends Beauregard a check for his current winnings of $40,000, which Beauregard refuses to accept.

Sales for Milady Soap plummet, forcing Waters to reinstate the show. When Beauregard reaches $10 million, Waters calls in blonde temptress Flame O'Neill to distract him. Beauregard catches a cold from being in a rainstorm, so Flame pretends to be a nurse sent to care for him. He is somewhat suspicious, but nevertheless quickly succumbs to Flame's charms, and takes the bait when she tries to make him think she is cheating on him.

The night of the next show, Beauregard discloses to Flame that he never mastered Albert Einstein's "space-time theories". When the $20 million question is about Einstein's views of space-time, he realizes Flame betrayed him, and Happy says the answer he comes up with is incorrect. However, Einstein himself telephones to say that the answer was correct. Afterward, Beauregard confronts Flame, who has fallen for him. Unaware of this, he spanks her with her hairbrush and informs her that he deliberately misled her, having once "spent an entire season with Einstein", but also admits that he has fallen in love with her.

Intending to go out with a bang, Waters books the Hollywood Bowl for the final show. Happy and Gwenn, and Beauregard and Flame, each plan to marry, but Beauregard and Gwenn caution each other that their would-be spouses could just be after the money. Each calls and suggests marrying ''before'' the show, but Happy and Flame both come up with excuses.

For the final question, Happy asks Beauregard what his Social Security number is. Beauregard answers incorrectly, but Flame and Happy still want to marry the Bottomley siblings. Waters shows up at Beauregard's home bearing gifts, including champagne, and is recognized by Beauregard and Gwenn's dipsomaniac pet parrot, Caesar, who he lost in college. As Beauregard and Flame drive to Las Vegas to get married, Beauregard reveals that he and Waters made a deal where Beauregard would lose, in exchange for getting his own radio show and some stock, among other considerations, though his main reason to take the deal was to test Flame's feelings for him. Beauregard then admits that he really did not know his Social Security number.

Cast

Reception

In his 1950 review of the film in ''The New York Times'', Bosley Crowther panned the film, sparing only Holm:

"Some of incent Price'sbroad aberrations offer faintly satirical thrusts at advertising genius, but most of them are duds. Mr. Coleman's exquisite urbanity wears awfully thin as time goes on. ..With Celeste Holm playing the charmer, there is some evident reason, at least, for the hero's infatuation. But with a chap named Art Linkletter cast as the quiz-master, we cannot fathom the basis for the sister's romance."

Some contemporary reviews of the film criticized the final plot twist for violating Beauregard's earlier criticism of the nature of quiz shows by having him be given his own quiz show—unless he were to use the opportunity to reform quiz shows by having one that is truly intellectually stimulating.

Nicholas Laham has analysed the treatment of Beauregard as a highly educated, yet unemployable, character in the context of how scholars were regarded in the 1950s, and in anticipation of the unemployment of information-based, highly educated people in later decades in the information age/"new economy". Laham also placed ''Champagne for Caesar'' in the historical lineage of screwball comedy, a genre that had reached its peak over a decade earlier, before World War II.Laham. Nicholas, ''Currents of Comedy on the American Screen''. McFarland & Company (Jefferson, North Carolina, USA), p 49 (, 2009).

References

External links

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American Movie Channels page on ''Champagne for Caesar''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Champagne For Caesar
1950 films
1950 romantic comedy films
American black-and-white films
American romantic comedy films
Films scored by Dimitri Tiomkin
Films about television
Films directed by Richard Whorf
Films set in Los Angeles
Films about quizzes and game shows
United Artists films
1950s English-language films
1950s American films
English-language romantic comedy films