- Genre: Comedy, Romance
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Synopsis
The Solid Gold Cadillac was adapted from the George S. Kaufman-Howard Teichmann Broadway hit of the same. Both the play and film were predicated upon the notion of a humble ten-share stockholder triumphing over a corrupt big-business board of directors, but there was one significant difference.
In the stage version, septuagenarian Josephine Hull starred as Laura Partridge, a sweet little old lady who asks several embarrassing questions at a stockholder's meeting. In the film version, Laura's age is lowered by at least four decades to accommodate star Judy Holliday.
In both versions, a romance develops between Laura Partridge and Edward L. McKeever, the owner of the corporation she takes on.
McKeever (played in the film by Paul Douglas, Holliday's co-star in the Broadway version of Born Yesterday) is an honest man, which is more than can be said for his self-serving board of directors (Fred Clark, John Williams, Ray Collins et. al.) With McKeever's covert help, Laura, who has been given a dummy executive position in the corporation in hopes that she'll shut up, forms a stockholder's association intent upon throwing the rascals out.
Though the dialogue in Solid Gold Cadillac is consistently entertaining, the film's best line goes to Judy Holliday: Describing her brief career as an actress in a Shakespearean troupe, she recalls ruefully that No one's allowed to sit down unless you're a king.
George Burns, taking over from the stage version's Fred Allen, provides the wry scene-setting narration. Currently available TV prints of The Solid Gold Cadillac have restored the original Technicolor final shot.