Champagne for Caesar

Champagne for Caesar is a 1950 US comedy movie about a trivia quiz show, directed by Richard Whorf and written by Fred Brady and Hans Jacoby. The movie stars Ronald Colman, Celeste Holm, Vincent Price, Barbara Britton, and Art Linkletter. The film was produced by Leo C. Popkin for his Cardinal Pictures, and released by United Artists.

Synopsis

The quiz show features a format where the prize doubles with each successive question, presaging The 64,000 Dollar Question.

Colman starred as the perpetually unemployed, snobbish scholar Beauregard Bottomley, who found it demeaning that the public could be interested in people who can answer a few simple questions on a quiz show. On first hearing his sister (Britton) listening to a quiz show, Bottomley quipped "... whatever THAT means ..." in response to a statement in the show's dialogue. To get even after being turned down for a job at the soap company that sponsored and produced the show, he got on the show and easily answered the maximum five questions, then dared the host -- played by real-life radio/TV host Linkletter -- to ask him a sixth one ... and then a seventh ...

Eccentric tycoon Burnbridge Waters (Price), the soap company owner, sensed a ratings jackpot and played along, calling Bottomley back for one question per show. The questions became more erudite, but Bottomley kept winning.

As the stakes continued to double, Waters became alarmed that his soap company could go bankrupt as a result and attempted sabotage, but Bottomley was not stopped. At one point, a femme fatale named "Flame O'Neal" (Holm) tried to induce Bottomley to reveal a subject which would stump him, in a manner reminiscent of Delilah and Samson. Bottomley answered relativity, whereupon the next question in the show involved relativity. Bottomley answered the relativity question correctly but was told he had given the wrong answer. Unfortunately for Waters, Albert Einstein (supposedly) was watching the show and called in during the show to state categorically that Bottomley had given the correct answer. Embarrassed, Waters had to let Bottomley continue appearing.

Having been guaranteed a long, paid tropical vacation with Flame, Bottomley's run was finally ended by the question "What is your Social Security Number?" Bottomley revealed privately that, having proven his point, he had himself suggested the question he could not answer, even though one would think he must have known his Social Security Number to complete employment applications.

The title refers to Bottomley's alcohol-loving parrot.

stock | retire | vm
Why are we here?
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
This page is cache of Wikipedia. History