Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

It is the Annual General Meeting of International Projects, a large listed company. The board of directors are a shady lot but none of the shareholders ever question their decisions or vote against their motions. Until now. Laura Partridge, a minor shareholder, starts to ask some pretty important questions, questions which the directors don't like. In the aftermath of the meeting the directors are worried that she will form a committee of minority shareholders, and exercise some control of the company. In order to keep her quiet and in line, they offer her a job in the company, as Director of Shareholder Relations. The idea is to give her nothing to do, but Laura has other plans...Great comedy, lead by the irrepressible, effervescent Judy Holliday as Laura Partridge. Some great lines and wonderful comedic timing. A good satire on the corporate world generally.Had the potential to be a great drama too, and expose on the ethics and machinations of corporate boards. Here it falls a bit short of great, though it started very well. The initial few scenes are a wonderful indictment of company boards, how they're in it for themselves rather than the shareholders, the people they represent and work for.However, beyond those few scenes the movie loses focus on the subject. The directors become too cartoonish in their villainousness, and some of the schemes seem unlikely and contrived. Does still make a decent point regarding corporate governance and ethics, though this is dampened somewhat by the final scene, which jars with Ms Partridge's Jane Average "looking out for the little guy" ethic.The romantic angle involving Ms Partridge and Mr McKeever also set the movie back. Due to the obvious large age difference between them, felt very contrived and even creepy. Was also unnecessary and detracted from the message.

You'll have to wait until the very end of the film to actually see The Solid Gold Cadillac. Such a vehicle I doubt would run, I rather think this was gold sheeting. Maybe even gold paint.Paul Douglas is the president of a big conglomerate that he built from the ground up. Now he's getting out to take a big job in Washington, in the Defense Department which is always hiring business executives. More in the Eisenhower administration than in most others for this was the presidency which had Charles E. Wilson who opined during his Senate confirmation hearings that 'what's good for General Motors is good for the USA'. Lots of folks thought that way then.But as he's taking leave at his last stockholder's meeting 10 shares holder Judy Holliday shows up asking a lot of questions, annoying the rest of the board which has such folks as Ray Collins, John Williams, and Fred Clark on it, but she charms Douglas.Try as I might I could not wrap my mind around the concept of a man succeeding in business as Douglas does and being such a boy scout. To avoid conflict of interest the normal procedure is to put one's holdings in a blind trust. But the fact that his company specifically does not get government contracts at Douglas's say so at the Defense Department is just off the wall. Who knows, they might actually have the low bid and the right product.Still Douglas does what he does and would be actress Holliday is actually hired by the company. But our villains are indeed full of tricks.George S. Kaufman is one of the creators and I find that hard to believe. I think Kaufman was having an off day. Holliday and Douglas do the best they can with limited material as does the rest of the cast.

Although all the events that take place in this timely farce are highly improbable, JUDY HOLLIDAY is so adept at making a believable character out of her ditsy blonde that she makes the whole plot seem plausible by the time she steps into her solid gold Cadillac for the final Technicolor scene shot at Rockefeller Plaza. Today's headlines full of corporate greed and big bonuses for men in high places makes the plot more relevant than ever.She turns up at a stockholders meeting at the start with a whole bunch of seemingly innocuous questions, wondering how much the stuffed shirts who run the huge corporation make when all they have to do is show up at board meetings four times a year. And even though she only owns 10 shares of stock, she upsets the apple cart of some crooked members of the Board of Directors and has them scrambling to find ways to make her disappear. The slimiest one of all (played by FRED CLARK) thinks that murder is a possible option.But then they set her up in an office (with nothing to do), hoping that she just fades away and giving her secretary strict instructions to keep her nose out of their business. Naturally, Holliday takes charge with her own ideas about contacting the small stock holders with letters she dictates to her secretary--and, well, you can pretty much guess what happens next.The script has some bright and witty moments, played to the hilt by an expert cast including PAUL DOUGLAS, JOHN WILLIAMS, RAY COLLINS and NEVA PATTERSON, but Richard Quine's direction is rather unimaginative and the film never quite soars into the stratosphere of bright farce that it's striving for. A tighter pace would have helped.Judy Holliday's perky performance as the naive stockholder seems more like a retread of previous parts than anything else, but she does brighten things up considerably whenever she has a clever line, and Paul Douglas is amusing as the business man she impresses.

What can you say about Judy Holliday? Her timing was always absolutely perfect. Her facial expressions frequently making speech unnecessary. In Solid Gold Cadillac she gives a magical portrayal as Laura Partridge, the supposedly, dumb blonde, part time actress with no appreciation of Shakespeare, ("You don't even get to sit down unless you're a king" - a typical Holliday line), but who is nonetheless shrewd enough to see through the corrupt shenanigans of the board of directors of a multi-national company in which she owns just ten shares. The partnering of Judy Holliday and that fine actor, Paul Douglas, as Edward L. McKeever, the upright, down to earth and totally incorruptible founder of the company, who is (according to Laura Partridge) "scared of girls", works like a dream. The film also has excellent support from Ray Collins, Arthur O'Connell, Neva Patterson, John Williams and of course Fred Clark, as Snell, the oily, slippery company treasurer, a real nasty piece of work. I defy anyone not to boo and hiss whenever he appears. In addition to being a delightful romantic comedy, this is also a tale of good fighting to overcome evil, and the little people of this world getting together and refusing to be trampled by a big faceless conglomerate. If you've never seen this picture before, or maybe never seen a Judy Holliday movie, you're in for a treat.