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Solid Gold Cadillac: A Comedy
Excerpt from Solid Gold Cadillac: A Comedy
It is a theatrical custom to send opening-night telegrams to the cast and the authors - sometimes even the ushers and the producers - Of plays opening on Broadway. The value of these good-luck messages to the recipients has never been scientifically determined. There are cynics who claim that if on the way into the theatre on the night of a premiere you strike oil in the lobby - that's luck. Nothing else.
But Western Union does not hold with this viewpoint. Opening nights are always lucky for Western Union. On the opening night of The Solid Gold Cadillac more than sixteen hundred orchid-bordered telegrams were delivered at the stage door. Consequently, I consider The Solid Gold Cadillac a noteworthy drama, a touching and revealing saga of American home life and ideals. Grandma's Diary, where we also delivered sixteen hundred telegrams, was equally good.
It is a theatrical custom to send opening-night telegrams to the cast and the authors - sometimes even the ushers and the producers - Of plays opening on Broadway. The value of these good-luck messages to the recipients has never been scientifically determined. There are cynics who claim that if on the way into the theatre on the night of a premiere you strike oil in the lobby - that's luck. Nothing else.
But Western Union does not hold with this viewpoint. Opening nights are always lucky for Western Union. On the opening night of The Solid Gold Cadillac more than sixteen hundred orchid-bordered telegrams were delivered at the stage door. Consequently, I consider The Solid Gold Cadillac a noteworthy drama, a touching and revealing saga of American home life and ideals. Grandma's Diary, where we also delivered sixteen hundred telegrams, was equally good.
- GenresDrama
174 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1954
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 9, 2026
Notes:
- didn't think the jokes landed right on the page
- liked the class commentary -> only the rich that are already in the room and have nothing to do are able to fight against the power (or maybe not the definitive assertion but showcases how hard it is for the everyman)
- play was quite predictable which i think made it less funny
- showed that the concept that amazon banks on (undersell and slash profit) has been around since at least the 50s, and amazon aint some genius company for making that up
- thought the critique on big businesses kind of fell because their downfall was really just their stupidity which doesn't really showcase I think some of the bigger faults
- didn't think the jokes landed right on the page
- liked the class commentary -> only the rich that are already in the room and have nothing to do are able to fight against the power (or maybe not the definitive assertion but showcases how hard it is for the everyman)
- play was quite predictable which i think made it less funny
- showed that the concept that amazon banks on (undersell and slash profit) has been around since at least the 50s, and amazon aint some genius company for making that up
- thought the critique on big businesses kind of fell because their downfall was really just their stupidity which doesn't really showcase I think some of the bigger faults
July 7, 2022
HILARIOUS play that the movie cast Judy Holliday in as a younger Laura Partridge. I want to watch a community theatre production of it!
March 8, 2021
Written by Howard Teichmann and George S. Kaufman, The Solid Gold Cadillac is a comedy play which makes fun of business and government, while perhaps giving a running commentary on humanity.
The main character of the work, Laura Partridge, a former actress who shows up at a shareholders' meeting and begins to madness to follow, is what one might call an actress in two senses of the word. In the first, we see her to be a former actress, someone who obviously loves the craft and has been part of it, even if she made very little doing so. In the second, we see her as an actress of her part in the world. She believes in Astrology up to the point at which it stops being useful to her -- then, she prioritizes money above magic. She clearly knows what she is doing, or, in the very least, the play clearly hints that she knows what she is doing, throughout the play. The thing she is doing, of course, being the undermining of 4 rich, horrible men, who seem to have a set of feelings somewhere within them, but buried so deep -- and hurt so much by greed -- that they lay untapped unless they wish to be sententious, for her own benefit.
At first one might think of her as a Robin Hood figure (even if the play insists that she is Cinderella). She questions why the richest of the rich assign their own salaries, and why those salaries are so high; she determines that stockholders should be included in the dealings of the company; when she meets with Mr. McKeener, she wishes him to have a better life, thus convincing him to leave politics. But we realize that her position as such is not necessarily so. She is Cinderalla, and she must be married to a Prince; and, if she does not marry McKeener, she does gain high prominence in his company, and -- by the end -- knows that others who might question are dangerous, and should not be tolerated; she is a pig from Animal Farm, perhaps, in this way; she has become what she destroyed.
In the sense above delineated, the comedy of the play seems to be quite cynical. It brings up ideas about equity, but in doing so the solution is never provided. All is laughed at, and the bad people are hurt whilst the good are given happiness, only for the system of capitalism which the book provides for our analysis to make the good bad (although the bad remain bad, for all we can tell). It mocks government, it compliments government as being conspicuously capable of making a person honest, but at the same time it critiques the amount of time that government takes from a person, and seems to think it worthless time, at that! There is no solution but to leave it, apparently. News media is treated much the same: they do misrepresentative things and that's that.
It is good play, and I found it funny, but the play fails in that it does not have a core message.
I can think of many ways in which we can derive meaning from the work, however. For example, I referenced Animal Farm above, and the theme of anti-authoritarianism can be extended to this book: power (and money) are corrupting agents to humans. Even when honest people are endowed with that power, the time 'wasted' to keep them honest is immeasurable. I don't think there is a solution is sight for us readers, but I think that is fine, for we all have personal ideologies which can inform how we might deal with the issue: to me this play is meant first to be comedic, second to raise issues to our attention.
[A lot of the business stuff -- in the least, the meetings and more hyperbolic aspects of the play -- seem to me a bit too unrealistic for anything but comedy, I might add as an afterthought here.]
The main character of the work, Laura Partridge, a former actress who shows up at a shareholders' meeting and begins to madness to follow, is what one might call an actress in two senses of the word. In the first, we see her to be a former actress, someone who obviously loves the craft and has been part of it, even if she made very little doing so. In the second, we see her as an actress of her part in the world. She believes in Astrology up to the point at which it stops being useful to her -- then, she prioritizes money above magic. She clearly knows what she is doing, or, in the very least, the play clearly hints that she knows what she is doing, throughout the play. The thing she is doing, of course, being the undermining of 4 rich, horrible men, who seem to have a set of feelings somewhere within them, but buried so deep -- and hurt so much by greed -- that they lay untapped unless they wish to be sententious, for her own benefit.
At first one might think of her as a Robin Hood figure (even if the play insists that she is Cinderella). She questions why the richest of the rich assign their own salaries, and why those salaries are so high; she determines that stockholders should be included in the dealings of the company; when she meets with Mr. McKeener, she wishes him to have a better life, thus convincing him to leave politics. But we realize that her position as such is not necessarily so. She is Cinderalla, and she must be married to a Prince; and, if she does not marry McKeener, she does gain high prominence in his company, and -- by the end -- knows that others who might question are dangerous, and should not be tolerated; she is a pig from Animal Farm, perhaps, in this way; she has become what she destroyed.
In the sense above delineated, the comedy of the play seems to be quite cynical. It brings up ideas about equity, but in doing so the solution is never provided. All is laughed at, and the bad people are hurt whilst the good are given happiness, only for the system of capitalism which the book provides for our analysis to make the good bad (although the bad remain bad, for all we can tell). It mocks government, it compliments government as being conspicuously capable of making a person honest, but at the same time it critiques the amount of time that government takes from a person, and seems to think it worthless time, at that! There is no solution but to leave it, apparently. News media is treated much the same: they do misrepresentative things and that's that.
It is good play, and I found it funny, but the play fails in that it does not have a core message.
I can think of many ways in which we can derive meaning from the work, however. For example, I referenced Animal Farm above, and the theme of anti-authoritarianism can be extended to this book: power (and money) are corrupting agents to humans. Even when honest people are endowed with that power, the time 'wasted' to keep them honest is immeasurable. I don't think there is a solution is sight for us readers, but I think that is fine, for we all have personal ideologies which can inform how we might deal with the issue: to me this play is meant first to be comedic, second to raise issues to our attention.
[A lot of the business stuff -- in the least, the meetings and more hyperbolic aspects of the play -- seem to me a bit too unrealistic for anything but comedy, I might add as an afterthought here.]
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews