The Solid Gold Cadillac

The Plot

Our comedy begins with the annual stockholders’ meeting and election of officers of a colossal manufacturing empire called General Products. Some new officers must be elected because the president of the corporation has taken a big government post in Washington and has been forced to sell his stock at a profit of three million dollars.

The meeting is about over when a timid old lady named Laura Partridge who owns ten shares asks a question. She has read every page of the annual report and she wants to know why the chairman of the board is being paid $170,000 a year, and how many hours he works to earn this money… She puts one mild query after another, and pretty soon the new officers hush Laura up by giving her a phony job at $150 a week.

She is hired to be a kind of liaison officer for the other minority stockholders. She takes her job seriously and makes solid friendships with the small stockholders.

When the former president learns—thanks to Laura–what a mess the current directors are making of his business, however, he resigns from his government job, and the big fight is on to regain control of his own business. Things look dark indeed, the wicked directors are about to triumph, but then the proxies of all the small stockholders start pouring in, and thanks to them the little old lady and former president foil the wicked Board of Directors.

About the Play

Kaufman teamed up with writer Howard Teichmann (who would ultimately write the first full biography, George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait, in 1972) to write this post-war spoof of corporate America and the stock exchange. They wrote the leading part of Laura Partridge for Josephine Hull, who had helped You Can’t Take It With You become such a success several decades earlier.

Audiences in the 1950s were still interested in the Kaufman point of view deployed to skewer the quickly rising post-war industrial companies such as General Motors and IBM. It was Kaufman’s last big hit and was quickly sold to the movies, where the 1956 screen version was rewritten to accommodate the talents (and much younger age) of Judy Holliday. It was nominated for an Oscar and featured George Burns in the cameo role of the Narrator.

Stage history

The play opened at the Belasco Theatre on November 5, 1953, eventually moving to the Music Box Theatre where it closed on Feb 12, 1955, after 526 performances. The narrator was the recorded voice of radio comedian Fred Allen.

Character actress Ruth McDevitt took over for Josephine Hull and the play became popular in summer stock where the lead role has been played by Martha Raye and Anne Pitoniak. In 2004, it was performed on the West End with beloved British character actress Patricia Routledge in the lead.