Judy Holliday

She had an IQ of 172 so it's no wonder she was considered an intellect.  She was also considered sweet, funny, talkative with a squeaky voice and often so adorable.   She could be enthusiastic (thanks to her father) and yet suffered with depression all her life.   She could display a fierce temper (thank Mom for this one) and was often fiery with her political rhetoric and her quest for personal freedom and free speech and a passion for those who suffered in life.  

Judy Holliday was born to Russian Jewish parents in 1921 in New York.  Her father Abe was a life-long socialist who may have married his wife Helen to avoid the draft.  Mom was a piano teacher and the three of them lived commune-like with her extended family.  Some of them, including young Judy and her father, hung out in Greenwich Village as often as possible.  He thought he might latch onto another job, maybe a real profession, while hobnobbing in bohemia.  Being in literary and theatrical circles of the East Village was intoxicating stuff for Abe and it didn't take a lot of effort on his part to convince his young daughter.  She was mesmerized.  

At age 4 she was enrolled in ballet school and loved it, years later saying that's when she knew performing was something she wanted to do.  She had a pixie-ish smile that people commented on and as she grew older, it embarrassed her when people said she was cute.  As a young teen she was appearing in every school play.  In her mind, she had found that calling to The Great White Way.

When she was six her parents divorced.  He didn't feel respected or having any say-so in a house full of in-laws (their house).   Neither mother nor daughter handled his departure very well.  Mom had a nervous breakdown and Judy, who adored her father, suffered her own increased depression when her mother, grandmother and uncle all ran him down.  Judy was always devoted to her family.  All of them.  Always.

In high school there were rumors that her friendship with classmate Pat Highsmith (future author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley) was more than that.   There would also be rumors that Holliday had a relationship throughout most of the 40s with a female police officer.

 

After being rejected by Yale Drama School right after high school, she got her first job as a switchboard operator for Orson Welles's Mercury Theater.

When she was almost 18, she joined a comedy cabaret group called The Revuers alongside future famed songwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green and occasionally a young Leonard Bernstein on the ivories.  Their zany performances packed 'em in in the Village and the Borscht Belt and in 1942 The Revuers appeared on the stage in My Dear Public.  And as you've read in these pages countless times, someone was in an audience from 20th Century Fox and wanted the group for the silver screen.

Revuers: Judy, Comden, Green on left

They had cameos in two Carmen Miranda movies, Greenwich Village and Something for the Boys.  Also in 1944 Holliday played Jeanne Crain's pal in Winged Victory.  She had not been upbeat about a trip out west but reality was even worse.  She wasn't fond of moviemaking and even less fond of lecherous Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox.  She was thrilled to get back to New York.  

For most of 1945 she was on Broadway in Kiss Them For Me and the following year she replaced Jean Arthur in the role of Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday opposite Paul Douglas.  The part was written for Arthur but there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Holliday owned it.  The role of the junkyard tycoon who hires a tutor to teach etiquette to his ditsy girlfriend was made for this woman to play.  It would make her famous, at least on Broadway.  Arthur, by the way, left without notice and Holliday had three days to memorize the script.  She was a savior and the company largely loved her.  Holliday was not loved necessarily on all stages and film sets.  If she got pissed off, run for shelter.

In 1948 she married clarinetist Dave Oppenheim.  They produced a son, Jonathan (1952-2020).  The marriage lasted nine years on paper but in actuality they hadn't lived together for several years.  She, in fact, was already living with another musician.  

Hepburn greatly admired Holliday after seeing her as Billie and felt she should get the film role but rumblings were around saying she may not.  In a short time there would be more rumblings about JH and KH.   When someone told Columbia head Harry Cohn (the studio had bought the film rights) that he should hire Holliday because she was a sensation in the Broadway production, he yelled something very insulting, insensitive and racist.  He was looking at several others... among them Gloria Grahame, Betty Hutton, his own employee, Evelyn Keyes, and Jan Sterling who understudied Holliday.

Hepburn championed Holliday

Hepburn, in her typical style, was undaunted.  As it so happened she and Tracy were doing a movie at Columbia called Adam's Rib (1949).  What better way, she thought, than having Judy play the key role of a woman accused of killing her husband (her attorney is Hepburn) and it might serve as an audition of sorts for the creepmeister Cohn.  It wasn't lost on anyone that Hepburn pal George Cukor would be directing both Adam's Rib and Born Yesterday.

Hepburn thought Holliday was glorious in Rib and so, it seems, did everyone else.  And best of all it produced the desired results.  With her newly white-blonde, short do and red lips and white teeth and a ditsy manner, Holliday burst onto that big screen as Billie.  Everyone was soon talking about the dumb blonde who had them laughing their asses off.

If Cohn had any doubt about the wisdom of casting Holliday, he had his insurance policy with Broderick Crawford (inheriting Douglas's role) and a young, handsome William Holden as the tutor.  I should do a whole posting on William Holden in glasses.  Oh stop, I would never...  

Douglas would have been better in the role.  His comic gift was that he handled gruffness and made one laugh.  Crawford didn't have a comic bone in his body.  But he had won the Oscar the year before for the studio and they wanted him in this flick.  Hey, it's business...

There were kudos for the film, the actors and the writing but it catapulted Holliday to a legendary status.  It is one of those indelible performances... the magical blending of actress and role.  She was a gifted actor and although comedy was her forte, her performances were always so damned real (she dug deep), so honest and so very touching.  It was possible one could watch her and laugh and cry seemingly at the same time.

She was on Broadway appearing in Dream Girl when the Oscars were given out.  The Oscars in 1951 are legendary.  At the time the best actress category was the most talked-about it had ever been.  Alongside Holliday's nomination for Born Yesterday, there was Eleanor Parker in her most harrowing role as an inmate in Caged.  There was Gloria Swanson returning to the movies in the role of a once-famous actress returning to the movies in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd..  (Holden was in this one, too.)  

And then there was Joseph Mankiewicz's All About Eve that added two names to the list, Bette Davis and Anne Baxter.  There was so much chatter... would it be Davis or Swanson who would take home the gold? Personally, I have always thought the award should have gone to that old ham, Davis, but I have always thought Holliday was exceptional in her role.  It was odd that a comedy performance would win over four electrifying dramatic performances.   The noise that was heard when Holliday's name was announced by Broderick Crawford was false teeth dropping out of the mouths of the Academy voters across the country.  

My favorite of all of her movies is The Marrying Kind (1952) although to be truthful here, Aldo Ray, in his first starring role, had a lot to do with it.  I reveled at the serio-comic performances of the pair of them as a bickering married couple who, during their divorce hearing, decide to give it one more try.  Holliday's genius as a comedy actor, as I see it, is her addition of pathos into the mix.  I'm guessing she was the same way in real life.  Even while in the throes of depression and ragging on about it, I'm guessing there were those moments that were for quick humor.  I love how she showed that in this character.  She was the best thing about her films. 

The Marrying Kind  had all the geniuses back from Born Yesterday... Holliday and Cukor and writers Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.  The Kanins wrote the thing for Judy.  While the film certainly has comedy, it is a drama and a rather serious one at that.  Harry Cohn insisted that his new find, Aldo Ray, be given the male lead.  Listening to Ray and Holliday argue is even funnier considering they didn't much see eye-to-eye on anything off camera either.

Holiday and Ray... now this was acting

In 1952 she was investigated by the FBI regarding accusations that she had communist ties.  She had lent her name to liberal causes and made contributions to them.  She said I have awakened to a realization that I have been irresponsible and slightly-- more than slightly--stupid.  When I was solicited I always said oh isn't that too bad, sure use my name.    When she was called before HUAC, she did her best Billie Dawn impression.  They must have thought she was too dumb to be of any concern and she never heard from them again.

In 1954 Holliday made two, back-to-back films with Jack Lemmon.  They were his introduction to films in a long and illustrious career and the pair very much got on.  Lemmon would one day say she was intelligent and not at all like the dumb blonde she so often depicted.  She didn't give a damn where the camera was placed, how she was made to look or being a star.  She just played the scene... acted with, not at.  She was also one of the nicest people I ever met.

The first Holliday-Lemmon collaboration was It Should Happen to You (1954), a comedy again directed by Cukor and penned by Kanin (without Gordon).  Yeah, it's another dumb blonde role but delivered with the actress's great emotional honesty and vulnerability.  She is a NY model who is tired of life and all the bad breaks she's gotten.  So she decides to rent a billboard, advertising herself, and becomes a minor celebrity as a result. 

It did well at the box office and critics were kind.  Holliday is so damned funny.  She felt lucky to have not one but two leading men... the other is Peter Lawford with whom she had an affair. 

Phffft (1954) isn't quite the laugh riot that the former was but it gave all it probably had.   Cohn was hot to pair Holliday and Lemmon again and she was put into something that was not tailored for her, although it is a comedy.  Director Mark Robson was no Cukor and although George Axelrod wrote the script (his first), he didn't know Holliday well enough to put all her isms in the script.

The story concerns a divorced couple who continue running into one another at various events.  Despite their relationships with others, it becomes apparent maybe the couple has some unfinished business.  Jack Carson and Kim Novak were along to mix things up.

Did you want a short paragraph on the silly title (which couldn't have helped the pic's success)?  Columnist Walter Winchell used it all the time to describe a marriage that's heading for the divorce mill.

The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956) had been a solid gold hit on Broadway in which Holliday did not star.  Cohn bought it for her.  The character would be younger in the movie.  Finally she would get to make a flick with Paul Douglas and they were both very excited since their formerly testy relationship had been repaired.  He was now married to Jan Sterling, her former understudy, and Holliday spent a lot of time with them while she was in California.  Douglas's character, by the way, was not in the play.

It is a very funny movie although I never thought it got the attention it should have.  Of course, it was tailor-made for Holliday and she was again playing the dumb blonde.  She is an enthusiastic but small stockholder in a billion dollar Manhattan company who takes on the crooked board of directors, mainly for the large salaries they command.

Full of Life (1956) is unquestionably Holliday's least known movie and not one of her favorites.  Neither she nor costar Richard Conte wanted to do it and once they were into it, they liked it less.  In her case, she was under contract and as usual always needed the money so she had to do it.  She also had just two more films to do on the contract and would be free.

It's a family values story with heavy dollops of religion in which a couple expecting a baby and in financial woes needs to make repairs on their home.  They call in his father, with whom he has long been estranged, to help.  Gee, what could go wrong... and that's the point.  Holliday seems in the shadows for this one.  She and Conte became good, platonic, after-work friends who loved to talk.

Sometime in 1956 Holliday got together with her old Revuers pals, Comden and Green.  Holliday wanted to get back on the stage and asked her pals to write something for her.  They came up with Bells Are Ringing, the story of a well-intentioned operator at an answering service who manages to solve her callers' problems while not being so fortunate with her own.  Comden and Green knew that trait to be one of Judy's own.

Holliday was apoplectic over having to sing.  It was the one thing she didn't do all that well and one could really not count what she did with The Revuers as singing... exactly.  She put her voice coach through hell.  

More importantly she had begun a relationship with her leading man, Sydney Chaplin.  She actually got him the role and it was a fight till the end because those in charge didn't want a newbie to stage acting or an actor who couldn't sing.  But Holliday demanded him and it ruined her long friendship with Comden and Green.   She fell madly in love with him but Sydney, who was always an over-privileged, usually unemployed jerk living off Daddy Charles's trust fund, just played her.  Apparently he never said he loved her but he lead her to believe it would come in time.   When she finally thought that time had come, he walked out on her.  Poof.  Gone.  She didn't handle it well and basically never recovered.

In 1957 she won a Tony for her exhilarating turn in Bells Are Ringing.  It was well-deserved although neither the play nor its next incarnation, the movie, was all that much to shout about as I see it.  

Her last great love, Gerry Mulligan

She had fallen into a relationship, problematic as it often was, with jazz saxophonist Gerry Mulligan.  She loved him dearly but after awhile they had a dreadful time getting along.  Although he had lived with her in her apartment in the famed Dakota , he moved out from time to time and then back in with her again.  He was with her until the day she died.

In early 1960 she completed the film version of Bells Are Ringing.  It was not a pleasant experience for her for a couple of reasons.  One was that she argued constantly with director Vincente Minnelli.  He was highly acclaimed, to be sure, and certainly knew his way around the musical genre.  But he wanted to change much and Holliday got her dander up.  She acknowledged that he was a smart guy but this work was written for her and she played it on Broadway and won a Tony for it.  She wanted him to appreciate her point of view and he probably never did.

She liked Martin but thought he was miscast

She was also not particularly pleased with costar Dean Martin whom she thought was utterly wrong for the part and who didn't take his work on the film very seriously.  Frankly, I'm not sure how someone could take this silly, lightweight nonsense seriously but oh well...!   She liked him personally which made things rough for her.  Her other issue during filming was that she hadn't felt well and wasn't sure why.  Bells Are Ringing would be her final movie although she didn't know it at the time.

She started another play, Laurette, about Laurette Taylor, an actress who inspired Holliday in her youth and more so after she saw her in The Glass Menagerie.  She still didn't feel well and there had been too many problems while it was still out of town and the decision was made to close it before it was savaged in New York.

In late 1960 Holliday learned she had breast cancer and underwent an operation.   She spent a lot of time resting, often under the care of friends and family, including her mother who had always figured prominently in her adult life.  Mulligan was usually present, as well, which meant a great deal to her. 

A year or so after her operation she was feeling pretty good and was getting a little antsy about getting back to work.  For health purposes it would have been easier on her to do a film but nothing presented itself so she signed up for another Broadway musical.  Hot Spot was a political satire and right up her alley but its run was a mere 43 performances, closing in 1963.

She said that the main thing she and Mulligan had in common was music... mainly his music.  They both played the piano and sang.   He killed it on the sax and loved his guitar.  Sometimes his buddies were jamming with them but it was their times alone that she cherished while they played and sang.  They even wrote songs together, some of which were published.

Like Marilyn Monroe around the same time, Holliday talked about wanting to do dramatic work.  She knew she had a lock on comedy and would never shut it out but she wanted to do serious stuff.  

Her last two years were miserable.  The cancer had come back with a vengeance.  Judy Holliday died in a New York hospital of breast cancer in June of 1965, two weeks before her 44th birthday.

Born Yesterday will always be her signature role.  If people remember her at all today, it is chiefly for this role.  And specifically, it's that dumb blonde thing.  People might say... like Marilyn Monroe.  Well, actually, MM's dumb blonde thing was like Judy Holliday.  Offscreen, Holliday was the antithesis of a dumb blonde but I've read many times that MM was not in real life how she was in films either.  Onscreen, Holliday had just a bit of a head start on it but we can agree that MM did it more famously.  And actually, they were different dumb blondes with different motivations.  MM usually just wanted to get laid while Holliday's characters seemed to have more to do with ambitious plans and unmasking jerks.  I have never confused the two actresses.

Her son Jonathan was 12 when his mother passed away.  One day as an adult, looking back on her as an actress he recalled... My mother carved her own path.  She had this sort of faith in her own talent and its uniqueness.  The talent is very, very specific and it is unique.  Everyone has their own very unique, very specific thing but it's easy to overlook it.  She was able to be herself.  Find herself.  Find her talent. 

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