In The Days Before Ken Jennings

It'll come as no surprise that a lot of my favorite books and movies as a youngling were about oddballs and outsiders. I ran into one of those old faves while poking through some comics this morning in an old issue of Hollywood Film Stories from 1950. It's one of those movies that i really loved as a kid, but that nobody else i knew seemed to have ever heard of - Champagne For Caesar. It's not like it was a back lot one-reeler with no distribution and no stars. Ronald Colman was tolerably Huge, and Vincent Price - n'uff said? Celeste Holm playing leading lady opposite Colman, and Barbara Britton rounding out a nice foursome.

Beauregard Bottomly, our hero, is a bit of a social misfit who feels abused by a corporation and finds a unique way to take his revenge on the company via the gameshow they sponsor. Burnbridge Waters (don't you love the names in this script?) is the esoteric chairman of Milady Soap company, the Soap That Sanctifies, to be sure that cleanliness is next to Godliness.

It's a fun little romp in a twisted little corner of Hollywood, and it's all broken down for us in eight pages...

And even a believable conclusion.

Now i'm in the mood for some more old movies. I'll have to go digging through the video closet. But not today.

Today i've already got 007: From Beijing With Love lined up.

no page art, just pages from Hollywood Film Stories #5 (1950)