Judy Holliday was one of the most gifted and talented performers Hollywood was ever lucky enough to have.
She was stunningly beautiful, could sing and dance, act alongside the best of them and boy was she funny. A superb comedian.
The film version of Born Yesterday and her portrayal of ditzy moll Billie Dawn is the role for which Ms Holliday will always be best remembered and associated (although by saying this, the last thing I wish to do is diminish or disparage any of her subsequent roles, because all of her screen performances were just as good)
She had originated the role on Broadway several years earlier alongside Paul Douglas and although Columbia studio heads tried to recast the role for the movie adaptation, with Rita Hayworth or Jean Arthur (even a relatively unknown Marilyn Monroe auditioned for the part) they finally agreed that the role was to associated with Holliday for it to be played by anyone else.
Paul Douglas however turned down the role of Harry Brock and he was replaced by the similarly built Broderick Crawford, who was at the time riding high from an Oscar win for the previous years All the Kings Men playing a fast talking, blustering and overbearing character not too dissimilar to Harry Brock
Columbia's biggest leading man William Holden was cast as Paul Verrall to give the movie the big box office name that it needed and established director George Cukor was assigned to oversee the project.
It tells the story of a corrupt uncouth galoot of a millionaire (Harry Brock) descending on Washington to buy himself a corrupt congressman or two to keep in his pocket.
He considers his girlfriend and kept women (Billie Dawn) too uneducated and embarrassing to present to the polite society of Washington, so he hires a journalist (Paul Verrall) to give her the smattering of education she needs to pass herself off as a lady.
As Billie gets smarter she also gets wiser as to how corrupt Harry is and questions why she is wasting her life with such a bully, especially as she has now fallen head over heals in love with Paul, and together they take a principled stand to bring an end Harry's dodgy dealings.
Cukor directs Garson Kanin's (uncredited) script well, finding the perfect balance between comedy, romance and drama, however the scene where Harry slaps Billie twice across the face is quite hard to watch. We knew what a bully Harry was without having to witness such a display of violence towards a character the audience had taken to their hearts. The words 'Gratuitous' and 'Cukor' seldom go together but in this particular instance I felt they did.
The funniest scene for me was the game of 'Gin' between Harry and Billy. Both Broderick Crawford and Judy Holliday are superbly funny in it.,
Another high point but purely because it highlights just what a great actress Judy Holliday was, is the scene where she is talking to the would-be corrupt senator and it's clear she doesn't know what the word constituent means.
There's a bit of flag waving patriotism slipped into the 'sight-seeing' scenes which may have the viewer believing that he is watching an old Frank Capra film from the 30's (Miss Dawn goes to Washington perhaps) but this mainly serves as Billie's catalyst for change, realising bullies have no rights or jurisdiction over decent ordinary people.
Every performance in this film is worthy of praise but none more so than Judy Holliday, who deservedly won an Oscar for her performance.
It's truly heartbreaking that she only made a few films throughout that one decade and that she was taken from the world at just 43 years old due to breast cancer. A monumental loss.
We are lucky to have her films preserved on digital so we can keep her long extinguished flame burning for evermore.
She was stunningly beautiful, could sing and dance, act alongside the best of them and boy was she funny. A superb comedian.
The film version of Born Yesterday and her portrayal of ditzy moll Billie Dawn is the role for which Ms Holliday will always be best remembered and associated (although by saying this, the last thing I wish to do is diminish or disparage any of her subsequent roles, because all of her screen performances were just as good)
She had originated the role on Broadway several years earlier alongside Paul Douglas and although Columbia studio heads tried to recast the role for the movie adaptation, with Rita Hayworth or Jean Arthur (even a relatively unknown Marilyn Monroe auditioned for the part) they finally agreed that the role was to associated with Holliday for it to be played by anyone else.
Paul Douglas however turned down the role of Harry Brock and he was replaced by the similarly built Broderick Crawford, who was at the time riding high from an Oscar win for the previous years All the Kings Men playing a fast talking, blustering and overbearing character not too dissimilar to Harry Brock
Columbia's biggest leading man William Holden was cast as Paul Verrall to give the movie the big box office name that it needed and established director George Cukor was assigned to oversee the project.
It tells the story of a corrupt uncouth galoot of a millionaire (Harry Brock) descending on Washington to buy himself a corrupt congressman or two to keep in his pocket.
He considers his girlfriend and kept women (Billie Dawn) too uneducated and embarrassing to present to the polite society of Washington, so he hires a journalist (Paul Verrall) to give her the smattering of education she needs to pass herself off as a lady.
As Billie gets smarter she also gets wiser as to how corrupt Harry is and questions why she is wasting her life with such a bully, especially as she has now fallen head over heals in love with Paul, and together they take a principled stand to bring an end Harry's dodgy dealings.
Cukor directs Garson Kanin's (uncredited) script well, finding the perfect balance between comedy, romance and drama, however the scene where Harry slaps Billie twice across the face is quite hard to watch. We knew what a bully Harry was without having to witness such a display of violence towards a character the audience had taken to their hearts. The words 'Gratuitous' and 'Cukor' seldom go together but in this particular instance I felt they did.
The funniest scene for me was the game of 'Gin' between Harry and Billy. Both Broderick Crawford and Judy Holliday are superbly funny in it.,
Another high point but purely because it highlights just what a great actress Judy Holliday was, is the scene where she is talking to the would-be corrupt senator and it's clear she doesn't know what the word constituent means.
There's a bit of flag waving patriotism slipped into the 'sight-seeing' scenes which may have the viewer believing that he is watching an old Frank Capra film from the 30's (Miss Dawn goes to Washington perhaps) but this mainly serves as Billie's catalyst for change, realising bullies have no rights or jurisdiction over decent ordinary people.
Every performance in this film is worthy of praise but none more so than Judy Holliday, who deservedly won an Oscar for her performance.
It's truly heartbreaking that she only made a few films throughout that one decade and that she was taken from the world at just 43 years old due to breast cancer. A monumental loss.
We are lucky to have her films preserved on digital so we can keep her long extinguished flame burning for evermore.