‘Champagne’ Toast

Ronald Colman spent most of his career as a dashing British leading man and adventurer in “Lost Horizon,” “The Prisoner of Zenda” and the like.

One of the few leading men from the silent-film era whose success not only continued but also grew when talkies arrived, he always brought a Cary Grant-like lighter-than-air sophistication to his roles.

Colman didn’t, however, do as much comedy as Grant--unfortunate, since he did such a magnificent comic turn toward the end of his career as know-it-all Beauregard Bottomley in “Champagne for Caesar” (1950), screening tonight at Chapman University in Orange.

The one piece of information Bottomley doesn’t seem to have socked away in his otherwise flawless brain is how to make a buck. That’s what leads him to try out for “Masquerade for Money,” a TV game show sponsored by Milady soap (“The soap that sanctifies!”), a company run by alternately demonic and zoned-out Burnbridge Waters (Vincent Price).

The movie whimsically anticipates TV quiz show scandals that came in the 1950s and also brilliantly anticipates the lowest-common-denominator mentality that would become the norm on television over the next half-decade.

Bottomley gets his first glimpse of “Masquerade for Money” while standing outside a department store window where a crowd has gathered, not to watch the science show he’s enraptured by, but to catch the antics of “Masquerade for Money” host Happy Hogan (Art Linkletter, in his movie debut).

When a contestant gets an ovation upon revealing that she’s from Brooklyn, Bottomley mutters, “I fail to see why the location of birth should be met with applause.”

And when Hogan leads the cheers after she guesses correctly that it was the Nile river that Cleopatra sailed down, Colman’s character announces to the onlookers: “This man is the forerunner of intellectual destruction in America. If it is noteworthy and rewarding to know that 2 and 2 make 4, to the accompaniment of deafening applause and prizes, then 2 and 2 make 4 will become the top level of learning!”

Soon, though, the chronically unemployed Bottomley applies for a job with Milady. He’s quickly dismissed by Waters, who tells him, “You would be a poor ambassador of goodwill for Milady. This is a deadly serious world, this world of business, and at some given moment you would probably revert to type. You are the intellectual type. I despise the intellectual type.”

That’s when Bottomley gets the idea to go on “Masquerade for Money” and take Waters for everything he’s worth.

He gets on the show and quickly becomes an audience favorite, which compels Waters to keep bringing him back, even as his winnings continue to mount. Celeste Holm appears as the deliciously devious and brainy femme fatale Waters hires to be Bottomley’s undoing.

The movie was one of Price’s early ventures into comedy on screen. In 1950, Price had been working primarily as a villain--it wasn’t until the 1960s and 1970s that he regularly began showing up in other comedies parodying his horror-meister persona.

The script by Fred Brady and Hans Jacoby is consistently sharp and kindheartedly witty. And their big finale--where Bottomley is given the all-or-nothing question in front of teeming multitudes gathered at the Hollywood Bowl nervously awaiting his answer--is masterful.

Oh, and the title? Caesar is the name of a stray parrot Bottomley and his sister took in, and who also is a lush. He doesn’t say “Polly want a cracker,” but “Polly wants a drink--let’s get loaded!” If Caesar’s voice sounds vaguely familiar, it should. It’s Mel Blanc’s.

Ironically, several people who worked on this skewering of the then-young medium of TV went on to lucrative careers in it.

Linkletter, of course, became one of TV’s most familiar and trusted faces as host of “House Party” and “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”

Long Beach native Barbara Britton, who played Bottomley’s irrepressibly romantic sister, became a TV pitchwoman for Revlon products and starred in the 1952-54 series “Mr. and Mrs. North.”

Director Richard Whorf, who had done movies including “Blonde Fever” in 1944 and “Till the Clouds Roll By” in 1946, became a prolific TV director of “Gunsmoke,” “Wagon Train” and many other 1950s westerns. In the 1960s, he directed episodes of “My Three Sons,” “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Petticoat Junction” (including the latter series’ premiere episode) and several other series before his death in 1966 in Santa Monica.

* “Champagne for Caesar,” Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. 8 p.m. today. Free. Not rated. Running time: 99 minutes. (714) 997-6765.

Q&A; With Director Paul Mazursky

Director Paul Mazursky looked to his own upbringing in New York when he made “Next Stop, Greenwich Village” (1976). It takes place in 1953 and follows a boy, played by Lenny Baker, who moves to the Village with dreams of becoming an actor. Following Monday’s screening at Chapman University, Mazursky and director Arthur Hiller (“Love Story,” “Man of La Mancha,” “Silver Streak”) will hold a Q&A; session.

* “Next Stop, Greenwich Village,” Chapman University’s Argyros Forum, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. 7 p.m. Monday. Free. Rated R. Running time: 109 minutes. (714) 997-6765.

The Nightmare Air of ‘Cement Garden’

Four young siblings descend into weirdness when they lose their parents in “Cement Garden” (1992), director Andrew Birkin’s screen version of Ian MacEwan’s 1978 novel. “MacEwan’s novel was celebrated for its matter-of-fact surrealism and the film . . . manages to capture MacEwan’s nightmare air of plausibility,” critic Peter Rainer wrote for The Times. “But it’s a coy, drab, chuckling nightmare.”

* “Cement Garden” screens at 7 and 9 p.m. Friday, UC Irvine Student Center, Crystal Cove Auditorium, West Peltason Drive and Pereira Road. $2.50-$4.50. Running time: 105 minutes. (949) 824-2727.

‘Manufacturing Consent’ Examines Role of Media

“Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media” (1993) is the documentary that tries to explain various of Chomsky’s theories about media and how it shapes public opinion.

“Talking-head documentaries are only as involving as the head doing the talking,” wrote Times film critic Kenneth Turan in his review, “and ‘Manufacturing Consent . . .’ has the great advantage of having as its subject America’s most controversial intellectual, a soft-spoken provocateur whose radical theories clash with the norm at every turn.”

But with its running time of nearly three hours, noted Turan, the filmmakers “have made it regrettably likely that it will play most to those who need its message the least.”

* “Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media” screens at 7 p.m. Saturday at Irvine Valley College, Room B-110, 5500 Irvine Center Drive. Free. Times rated: Mature. Running time: 167 minutes. (949) 451-5232.

‘Harvest’ Charts Cycle of Ethiopian Poverty

“Harvest: 3,000 Years” (1976) charts the seemingly endless cycle of poverty and exploitation of the peasantry that has plagued Ethiopia throughout history. It was directed by Haile Gerima, who was born in that country, studied film at UCLA and went on to teach film at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Its two main characters, wrote Kevin Thomas for The Times, “are often comical, but Gerima’s film ends as a dead-serious call for revolution.”

* “Harvest: 3,000 Years” screens at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. 8 p.m. Free. Not rated. Running time: 150 minutes. Part of the African Cinema Film Series. (714) 997-6765.

Animation Gets a Turn at Sick & Twisted Festival

Animation is the hot thing on TV these days, yet as out there as it’s gotten with “The Simpsons” and “South Park,” there are animators who go even further out. These are the kind of folks whose no-holds-barred cartoons make up the 1999 Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation, running through May 13 at Edwards Cinema in Costa Mesa. Included are a pair of shorts by “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker--”Frosty” and “The Spirit of Christmas”--with 13 other entries exhibiting varying degrees of demented and/or tasteless humor.

Coupled with “Sick & Twisted” is the 1998 Classic Festival of Animation. The program includes Oscar-winning “Geri’s Game” from Pixar Studios, plus “Stage Fright,” from Nick Park’s Aardman Animations, creator of the ever-popular Wallace & Gromit. “T.R.A.N.S.I.T.,” an all-star short from England that cost $400,000 and uses 30,000 individual cels, represents the apex of current animation technique.

* Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted and 1998 Classic Festival of Animation. Edwards Cinema, 1534 Adams Ave., Costa Mesa. Sick & Twisted: 9:30 p.m. daily, also midnight screenings Friday-Saturday; Classic Festival: 7 p.m. daily, also 4:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday. $7.50 per program. (714) 546-3102.