Champagne for Caesar

Satire is a difficult form to realize on film. I first defined the term years since as the idea-level or explicit-idea form of comedy. In satire, the ending cannot be a bad one for the central character because he/she possess sufficient mental capabilities to overcome (eventually) any opposition being offered. "Champagne For Caesar" (the hero's parrot) is such a film, I suggest. By many people's standards, it is also one of the most hilarious films ever made. The storyline is a simple one. A human encyclopedia, Ronald Colman, decides to take part on an early televised TV quiz show sponsored by a soap company run by Burnbridge Waters, played by Vincent Price. Once he wins their top prize, he challenges them to let him go on and on, and bowing to public pressure, the executive does. The hero is thrown a curve in the person of Flame O'Neill, Celeste Holm; what happens next provides the film's climax. Will Beaurgeard Bottomley end up running the company and win the grand prize? Will he and Flame ever get together? Will Waters be sent to an asylum or continue his course of selling soap? The entire cast is very good in this film; even announcer Art Linkletter brings off the role of the quiz show's host while romancing lovely Barbara Britton, the boss's daughter. Colman, Price and Holm are priceless. The direction by actor Richard Whorf is perhaps his best ever; the music by Dimitri Tiomkin and art direction by George Van Marten are bright and exactly right at every point. What in lesser hands could have become a parody here finds the makers' choosing their targets for satirization on a basis of very wrong ideas--the advertising industry in the US being a Hollywood favorite in this regard, in such films as "Good Neighbor Sam" and "The Thrill of It All" and many more. This film remains one of Hollywood's funniest and most affectionately remembered satirical treasures.