Holiday Money and Love in ‘How to Marry a Billionaire’

Fox, the network that brought the world the now infamous “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” special earlier this year, is now offering advice on how to marry a billionaire.

But don’t look for Darva Conger or Rick Rockwell to pop on this holiday offering. Premiering Wednesday, “How to Marry a Billionaire: A Christmas Tale” is actually a two-hour holiday romance based on the 1953 film classic “How to Marry a Millionaire.”

“Millionaire” followed three beautiful young women (Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe) as they attempted to lasso rich husbands. “Billionaire” gender-bends the original comedy and adds a lot of the sauciness of HBO’s sex comedy, “Sex and the City.”

This time around, the comedy finds three struggling friends--an artist (John Stamos), a not-so-bright but handsome actor (Shemar Moore) and a teacher (Joshua Malina)--banding together to find rich wives by Christmas Eve. Weaving in and out of the proceedings is a wisecracking Santa (Hamilton Camp) who is always giving advice to Stamos.

Stamos jumped at the chance to do “Billionaire” because he felt he needed to do a comedy. He had just come off of producing the Emmy-nominated ABC “Beach Boys” miniseries and “was looking forward to being funny again.”

Besides, Stamos adds, he hasn’t done a broad, joke-filled comedy since his hit sitcom “Full House” went off the air a few years back.

“Billionaire” was just the creative fix he needed. “It felt really comfortable to do it again, to tap into those rhythms,” Stamos says. “When I was a kid I wanted to be on a sitcom. That was the dream. I guess I should have shot a little higher. And if you really liked all the people you worked with, and I did, it made it kind of fun to go to work and be funny.”

Director Rod Daniel (“K-9,” “WKRP in Cincinnati”) believes Stamos could be a screen idol. “John Stamos is remembered for that goofy sitcom, but I am telling you that John Stamos has more Cary Grant floating around in him than anybody I have ever worked with in my life. And Jack Benny. He’s got Jack Benny rolling around in him. He has this incredible savoir-faire and this real underplayed sort of almost cynical, smiling delivery. Boy, I think America is going to wake up and discover him anew.”

Stamos cracks up when he learns of Daniel’s praise. “I think he’s thinking of Lou Grant and Jack Tripper,” Stamos says laughing.

“Billionaire” is the first leading-man role for Malina, late of “Sports Night.” Malina was attracted to the material because it “wasn’t the disease-of-the-week type thing. And you don’t see many romantic comedies.”

Though the friends’ plan to marry for money and not love is a smarmy idea, Malina says the characters “are too nice to put it into motion.”

Malina, who is married and has a young daughter, would never marry for money. “I’m not like that at all, not in the realm of thinking of doing something like that.”

Stamos, though, says the movie’s plot was one that felt very familiar. “I was trying to find out how I should research this and I realized it’s my life,” he says, laughing.

“I married a rich girl” [supermodel and actress Rebecca Romijn-Stamos] and I sat around for a few years when we first got married. She was like my little cash cow. I would just send her out to make money and I would hang out. This is me! This is my life story.”

Director Daniel says Moore of “The Young and the Restless” was worried about playing a dim bulb. “He said to me, ‘I don’t want to play the dumb African American guy.’ I said to him it’s not that he’s dumb but stuff just flies over his head. He wears his heart on his sleeve. I think he is the sweetest of those three guys.”

In fact, says Daniel, “Billionaire” has a lot of heart. “This movie is a love story. It’s about love and about giving.”

* “How to Marry a Billionaire: A Christmas Tale” airs tonight at 8 on Fox. The network has rated it TV-14-LDS (may be unsuitable for children under 14 with special advisories for coarse language, suggestive dialogue and sex).