Businessman's Holliday

When I heard that they were making a film of "The Solid Gold Cadillac" with a blonde instead of a dear old biddy in the leading role, I feared the worst. Of course I should have known that a comedienne like Judy Holliday could fully justify such a risky change; in any case, my fears were set at rest when I got around to sceinfi the film last week.

If you saw the play when the N.Z. Players put it on last year, you will remember it as a highly amusing CindeYella-type story coccrning a lady who, as owner of ten shares in a vast corporation known as International Projects, begins to ask the directors a number of embarrassing questions at the annual stockholders' meeting. These excellent gentlemen apply the old maxim—"If you can't break em, join 'em"—and ofler the lady a job as Director of Stockholder Relations: her task—to reply to letters sent in by the Small Stockholders. The crooks on the board of directors don't write. Buot how they have underestimated the power of this woman. She doesn't wait for letters to come in and begins instead to send letters out; before long she is costing the business several times her salary in postages. The plot thickens, dear old lady finds what utter bounders the directors really are, and finally at the next stockholders' meeting manages to oust the whole lot of them because her pen friends have all sent her their proxy votes. She ends up as Secretary Treasurer, and all the other positions on the board are filled by her friends. (I am sure this points Some sort of moral but what is it?)

The exceptional talent of Judy Holliday did most to make this film so enjoyable. No wise cracker, her humour is warm and lovely; she has heart, and if Laura Partridge is to be a young blonde instead of a dear old lady, then heart is what is needed. (For some reason I am tortured by a vision of Ekberg.)

Paul Douglas played opposite her as Big Ed. MacKcever, ex-president of International Enterprises who has been called to serse his country in Washington; upon his return he finds that the rogues on the board of directors won't give him his old job back, but all is put to rights in the finish., He was his usual good self.

The satirical approach towards cheesecake advertising, the executive-type and the world of Big Business in general was handled with a light touch and constant good humour. All in all. "The Solid Gold Cadillac" was a first-class piece of smoothly tailored American comedy.—J.R.S.

There was a young curate called Sims
Who hod the most curious whims
And the Bishop of the diverse
Hod still odder biases
So life was not all singing hymns.