The Solid Gold Cadillac
1956 US
Dir:Richard Quine
Stars:Judy Holiday, Paul Douglas, Fred Clark, John Williams
Left:Paul Douglass, Right:Judy Holiday
Even if he can't usually be referred as a great director, Richard Quine is one of my most favorite directors.
The reason is quite simple; that is, it seems that he knew how he could entertain and satisfy his audience, and
here in this movie, we the audience can witness his mastery in this regard. The story is simple and amusing. A
girl named Laura Partridge played by fabulous Judy Holiday who owns 10 shares of the stock of a company called
International Projects attends the stockholders meeting and finds out that almost all of the executives except
the founder played by Paul Douglas are crooks. Therefore, she decides to attend every stockholders meeting and
say something against all those crooks. Quite irritated by her attendance, they decide to hire her in order not
to let her intervene every crooked move they make by puting her under their supervision. Meanwhile, the only honest
man Paul Douglas retires from the company and goes to Washington for governmental works, which means those crooks
can run the company whatever way they like unless Judy Holiday who has become the manager of some kind of customer
service for small stockholders and has gained reputation from them prevents them from doing so. And, surely she
does. Therefore, the crooks try to get rid of her, and send her to Washington to make up a kind of scandal in order
to dispose of both Holiday and Douglas. But, their ploy backfires, because, in the next stockholders meeting, Holiday,
unexpectedly for the crooks, controls the company by gathering all the votes from small stockholders, and it is
the crooks that is finally fired from the company, and Holiday and Douglas are given a solid gold cadillac by those
small stockholders (only this last scene is in color probably because in black & white the audience won't think
it's a solid gold cadillac). Here, Richard Quine is making good use of Judy Holiday's personality, and her natural
good-naturedness matches the character of the principal Laura Partridge. Her character seems to me to succeed in
avoiding making this movie just another "the dogooders finally beat the evilminded crooks" type of story
as you might have surmised from the plot line described above. I can guarantee that, because of her natural charm,
even those who usually want to say something cynical about such kind of story will be satisfied without any criticism.
And, other support players are also matching their respective rolls very well. Especially, Fred Clark and John
Williams who play the crooks are excellent as usual. Although Paul Douglas wasn't the type of actor that would
suit the roll that had to satisfy the romantic interest of the principle Laura Partridge, even so he is good as
usual here. And, Arthur O'Connel and Neva Patterson look fine though in a slightly sober manner unlike their usual
way. Considering that this type of movie requires not only the good performances from lead characters, but also
the ones from support players, I can surely say that this movie certainly is the exemplar, and Richard Quine had
the good sense to make such a one. Anyway, I can assure that you will surely feel so good when you've watched the
final scene where Judy Holiday loudly and in her usual peculiar voice declares to the crooks "You are all
fired!" in the stockholders meeting.