The Solid Gold Cadillac

Writing a successful comedy is, it would seem, almost as easy as looking through the New York Times in the morning. All you do is take some comically suggestive idea--a lady asking embarrassing questions at a stock-holders' meeting, for instance--and let it lead you into satirizing various topics found right there on the front page. Then, for good measure, supplement the jokes about businessmen moved to Washington and press sensationalism with a few vaudeville routines and technical novelties, and the rave reviews are as good as written. You play is sure to run at least a year on Broadway--and perhaps two, if your technique is as polished as that of Howard Teichmann and George S. Kaufman, authors of The Solid Gold Cadillac.

Experts in any field, however, have the characteristic faculty of making their work look easy. Cadillac does this for comedy-writing precisely because it is an expert comedy, skillfully contrived to wrest a maximum of humor from every topic it touches.

Messrs. Teichmann and Kaufman have not confined their wit to one vein or aimed it at one specific target. Early in the evening, for example, they cast out a few promising barbs at the monopolistic tendencies of "free enterprise," but they choose not to linger here, and immediately move on to the subject of Senate investigations, and then to the foibles of the press, and from there to the proxy system of stock-voting. Meanwhile, they have thrown in such diverse gimmicks as a recorded narration, fairly-tale style, by Fred Allen; a slapstick routine of an executive doing his morning exercises; and a pantomime scene in which the heroinc, moving out of her office, spends about five minutes transferring such articles as girdles and galoshes from filing cabinets to a brief-case.

This diversity of comic elements, in the hands of other playwrights, could certainly lead to chaos. Indeed, even Teichmann and Kaufman have over-reached themselves in the girdle episode, which, besides being irrelevant, is largely unfunny. But on the whole, Cadillac's material stays admirably cohesive. The authors may be using a shotgun instead of a rifle, but their target is the large one of sustained humor rather than the pin-point of specific ridicule. And the laughs are constant all evening.

The acting, like the plot, is distinguished by competent humor in all directions. Loring Smith, as the ex-business tycoon ("I don't get ulcers; I give 'em!") whose life in the Pentagon is made miserable by "the damned ole Senate, epitomizes this comic versatility. He delivers everything from vaudeville gags to a farcical high school oration, and is so unabashed a comedian that he laughts at his own material. The audience does too, of course. Ruth McDevitt plays Mrs. Laura Partridge, the ex-actress who attends a stock-holders meeting on the advice of her horoscope and ends up controlling the corporation, with a perfectly-timed juxtaposition of naivete and shrewdness.

One of Edward Gilbert's settings, his conception of a Pentagon mogul's office, seems rather more prosaic than it might have been, but on the whole the decors are elaborate and clever. There is, in fact, very little about The Solid Gold Cadillac that is not highly enjoyable, and a visit to the Colonial before next Saturday is highly recommended.