I recently introduced my daughter and younger son to a spate of #JudyHolliday films, which I’ve talked about before. But it’s a different generation, and I was interested in their reactions to the humor of this Queens-born movie star with her cheery looks, offbeat timing, and ironic humor. She worked the same time period as Marilyn Monroe and created her own cult around her, as her intelligence shines through all her dumb blonde roles. Her sparkling, big heart comes through each time. In a way, Monroe did the same thing for the audience, although she was much more sexual. But Judy had, like Mae West, a specific kind of humor that was very touching in its innocence. She died too young, like Monroe, in 1965 from breast cancer.
1) #ItShouldHappentoYou (1954) -- Judy plays a working girl in a gritty, 1954, photographed New York where she’s failed in the City and is heading back home upstate, leaving behind her dream of seeing her name in billboard lights. In other words, a moment of recognition, which, in this fairy tale of a movie written by Garson Kanin and directed by her favorite, #GeorgeCukor, becomes reality, as her everyday name -- Gladys Glover -- spreads in an early example of social media’s takeover of our society; now, it seems almost everyone can become famous for its own sake, or, at the very least, an influencer, etc. The situation gets completely out of control in this movie until Judy finds out, to her astonishment, that fame isn’t really what she wants, and she’s miserable again.
#JackLemmon and #PeterLawford, at the handsome peak of their youth, play opposites of manhood, vying for her heart. Both are wonderful, but Lawford was a surprise to me. Splendid in concept, execution, and acting.
#BornYesterday (1950), another classic film from Garson Kanin and Albert Mannheimer, directed by George Cukor, presents another Pygmalion story of Judy as a dumb gangster’s moll who grows into a self-confident woman of brains and beauty with the help of the very handsome #WilliamHolden, who, in that same year, also did “Sunset Boulevard.” They both became classics.