I saw this as a kid and laughed all the way through it. I didn't laugh so hard this second time around, but then it's more difficult to get me to laugh at anything nowadays. I still found it a lot of fun though.
Ronald Coleman is Beauregard Bottomley, a walking encyclopedia; Vincent Price is Bainbridge Waters who runs the Milady Soap Company that sponsors a quiz show that Coleman is determined to put out of business. Coleman's plan is to answer every question correctly until the company, and Price, go broke.
As Coleman's winnings go up week after week, doubling each time and heading towards the ultimate forty million dollars, Price is rapidly turning into a neural shambles trying to figure out how to sabotage him. He cancels the show but then nobody buys Milady Soap, so he has to renew the contest. Finally it occurs to him that he can insert a mole into Coleman's private life, a beautiful and razor-sharp spy in the becoming shape of Celeste Holm as nurse Flame O'Neill.
It works. Coleman is immediately attracted to her intelligence, beauty, and imperious manner. She wheedles her way into Coleman's life, sometimes agreeing to a date, then not showing up, and obviously lying about it later. She burrows constantly, looking for a weakness in his data storage system. He seems to know everything. Soon she has Coleman spinning around, confused, uncertain, distracted, not knowing what show he is on. "At last!," crows Price, "Now he can join the rest of us men who have been driven absolutely NUTS by WOMEN!" It's amusing and at time exhilarating. And it's not at all badly acted, though it's a minor comedy. Price practically carries the show as the greedy, selfish, treacherous egomaniac, Bainbridge Waters. (You can tell this is supposed to be a comedy from all the oddball names.) Alone in his opulent office, Price muses on the unlucky steps that have led him to the brink of catastrophe -- "And it's all my fault." He turns to the camera and snarls, "But I won't admit it, even to myself." Near the end, he does a classic and insane double take after receiving a phone call from "Professor Einstein at Princeton." Ronald Coleman, even in dramatic roles, has always seemed to be rather light-hearted, shrugging off bad fortune with an arid chuckle. His best moment here is when he is on stage at the quiz show and is asked a question that reveals Celeste Holm's betrayal. In a close up, he turns and stares at her, his expression a mixture of surprise and devastation.
The host of the quiz show is Art Linkletter who, although he's given a few good lines, cannot, alas, act and whose face is as interesting as a tuna fish sandwich. And the score was done by Dmitri Tiompkin, a Hollywood icon, who demonstrates that he's much better scoring adventures and dramas than comedies. (When Coleman applies for a menial job, the music is straight out of Laurel and Hardy.) It's a superior comedy, with few dull moments. Is it possible to imagine a time when judged competitions depended on how much you knew, rather than how popular you were with your other American Idols? Is this, as Beauregard Bottomley wondered, the beginning of our Dark Ages?
Ronald Coleman is Beauregard Bottomley, a walking encyclopedia; Vincent Price is Bainbridge Waters who runs the Milady Soap Company that sponsors a quiz show that Coleman is determined to put out of business. Coleman's plan is to answer every question correctly until the company, and Price, go broke.
As Coleman's winnings go up week after week, doubling each time and heading towards the ultimate forty million dollars, Price is rapidly turning into a neural shambles trying to figure out how to sabotage him. He cancels the show but then nobody buys Milady Soap, so he has to renew the contest. Finally it occurs to him that he can insert a mole into Coleman's private life, a beautiful and razor-sharp spy in the becoming shape of Celeste Holm as nurse Flame O'Neill.
It works. Coleman is immediately attracted to her intelligence, beauty, and imperious manner. She wheedles her way into Coleman's life, sometimes agreeing to a date, then not showing up, and obviously lying about it later. She burrows constantly, looking for a weakness in his data storage system. He seems to know everything. Soon she has Coleman spinning around, confused, uncertain, distracted, not knowing what show he is on. "At last!," crows Price, "Now he can join the rest of us men who have been driven absolutely NUTS by WOMEN!" It's amusing and at time exhilarating. And it's not at all badly acted, though it's a minor comedy. Price practically carries the show as the greedy, selfish, treacherous egomaniac, Bainbridge Waters. (You can tell this is supposed to be a comedy from all the oddball names.) Alone in his opulent office, Price muses on the unlucky steps that have led him to the brink of catastrophe -- "And it's all my fault." He turns to the camera and snarls, "But I won't admit it, even to myself." Near the end, he does a classic and insane double take after receiving a phone call from "Professor Einstein at Princeton." Ronald Coleman, even in dramatic roles, has always seemed to be rather light-hearted, shrugging off bad fortune with an arid chuckle. His best moment here is when he is on stage at the quiz show and is asked a question that reveals Celeste Holm's betrayal. In a close up, he turns and stares at her, his expression a mixture of surprise and devastation.
The host of the quiz show is Art Linkletter who, although he's given a few good lines, cannot, alas, act and whose face is as interesting as a tuna fish sandwich. And the score was done by Dmitri Tiompkin, a Hollywood icon, who demonstrates that he's much better scoring adventures and dramas than comedies. (When Coleman applies for a menial job, the music is straight out of Laurel and Hardy.) It's a superior comedy, with few dull moments. Is it possible to imagine a time when judged competitions depended on how much you knew, rather than how popular you were with your other American Idols? Is this, as Beauregard Bottomley wondered, the beginning of our Dark Ages?