Judy Holliday

Early life

Holliday was born Judith Tuvim in Queens, New York, the only child of Abe and Helen (née Gollomb) Tuvim. She took her stage name from yamim tovim, which is Hebrew for "holidays". Her father was executive director of the foundation for the Jewish National Fund of America (1951–1958), and a political activist who ran unsuccessfully six times between 1919 and 1938 as a Socialist Party candidate for the New York State Legislature. Her mother taught piano. Both were of Russian-Jewish descent. Judith grew up in Sunnyside, Queens, New York, and graduated from Julia Richman High School in Manhattan. Her first job was as an assistant switchboard operator at the Mercury Theatre, which was administered by Orson Welles and John Houseman.

Early career

Holliday began her show business career in 1938 as part of a nightclub act called The Revuers, whose other members were Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Alvin Hammer, John Frank and Esther Cohen. They played engagements in New York night clubs including the Village Vanguard, Spivy's Roof, the Blue Angel, and the Rainbow Room, and the Trocadero in Hollywood, California. Leonard Bernstein, a friend of the group who shared an apartment with Green, occasionally provided piano accompaniment for their performances. In 1940, The Revuers released a 78-rpm album entitled Night Life in New York. The troupe filmed a scene for the 1944 Carmen Miranda movie Greenwich Village. Although the Revuers' performance was cut, Holliday was an unbilled extra in another scene. The group disbanded in early 1944.

In her first film role, Holliday played an airman's wife in Twentieth Century Fox’s version of the U.S. Army Air Forces' play Winged Victory (1944). She made her Broadway debut on March 20, 1945, at the Belasco Theatre in Kiss Them for Me, and was one of the recipients that year of the Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Female actor.

In 1946, she returned to Broadway as the scatterbrained Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday. Author Garson Kanin wrote the play for Jean Arthur; but when Arthur left New York for personal reasons, Kanin selected Holliday, two decades Arthur's junior, as her replacement. When Columbia bought the rights to adapt Born Yesterday to film, studio boss Harry Cohn initially would not consider casting the Hollywood unknown, even though Holliday received rave reviews for her Broadway performance. Kanin, along with George Cukor, Spencer Tracy, and Katharine Hepburn conspired to promote Holliday by offering her a key part in the Tracy-Hepburn film Adam's Rib (1949).

Cohn eventually relented and offered Holliday the chance to repeat her role for the film version, For her film performance in Born Yesterday, Holliday won the first Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy; and at the 23rd Academy Awards, won the Academy Award for Best Actress, defeating Gloria Swanson, nominated for Sunset Boulevard; Eleanor Parker, for Caged; and Bette Davis and Anne Baxter, both for All About Eve.

Holliday starred opposite newcomer Jack Lemmon in his first two feature films, the comedies It Should Happen to You and Phffft (both 1954).

Film historian Bernard Dick summed up Holliday's acting: "Perhaps the most important aspect of the Judy Holliday persona, both in variations of Billie Dawn and in her roles as housewife, is her vulnerability...her ability to shift her mood quickly from comic to serious is one of her greatest technical gifts." Director George Cukor also observed that Holliday had "that depth of emotion, that unexpectedly touching emotion, that thing which would unexpectedly touch your heart."

Investigation for communist sympathies

In 1950, Holliday's name appeared on a list of 151 alleged pro-communist artists in the publication Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and TV. The next year, she was subpoenaed by Senator Pat McCarran's Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which was investigating subversion and communist activity in the entertainment industry. Holliday was one of several actors accused of fundraising for communist front organizations. She appeared before the committee on March 26, 1952 with Simon H. Rifkind as her legal counsel.

Holliday was advised to play dumb, as in her film portrayal of Billie Dawn, and she did, often to comedic effect. She denounced Stalinism and authoritarianism generally, but defended the free-speech rights of those who espoused such views. Holliday later wrote of the experience to her friend Heywood Hale Broun: "Woodie, maybe you're ashamed of me, because I played Billie Dawn ... But I'm not ashamed of myself, because I didn't name names. That much I preserved." The investigation "did not reveal positive evidence of any membership in the Communist Party". The investigation concluded after three months and, unlike others whose careers were severely damaged by communist allegations, her career was relatively untarnished.

Later career

Holliday starred in the film version of The Solid Gold Cadillac, which was released in August 1956. In November 1956, Holliday returned to Broadway, starring in the musical Bells Are Ringing with book and lyrics by her Revuers friends Betty Comden and Adolph Green and directed by Jerome Robbins. In 1957, she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Of Holliday's performance in the stage musical, Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times:

Returning to her film career after a gap of several years, Holliday starred in the film version of Bells Are Ringing (1960), her last film.

In October 1960, Holliday started out-of-town tryouts on the play Laurette, based on the life of Laurette Taylor. The show was directed by José Quintero with background music by Elmer Bernstein and produced by Alan Pakula. When Holliday became ill and had to leave the show, it closed in Philadelphia without opening on Broadway.

Holliday had surgery for a throat tumor shortly after leaving the production in October 1960. Her last role was in the stage musical Hot Spot, costarring newcomers such as Joseph Campanella and Mary Louise Wilson, which closed after 43 performances on May 25, 1963.

Personal life

In 1948, Holliday married clarinetist David Oppenheim, later a classical music and television producer, and academic. The couple had one child, Jonathan, before they divorced in 1957. In the late 1950s, Holliday had a long-term relationship with jazz musician Gerry Mulligan.

In 1960, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Death

Holliday died on June 7, 1965, at Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital from metastatic breast cancer. She was interred in the Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Filmography

Radio appearances

Stage

Discography

Holliday recorded two studio albums (not including her film and Broadway soundtracks) during her lifetime.

• Trouble Is a Man (1958)
• Holliday with Mulligan (DRG, recorded 1961, released 1980) with Gerry Mulligan

References

References

1. Obituary ''[[Variety Obituaries. Variety]]'', June 9, 1965, p. 71.
2. (16 January 1958). "Abe Tuvim; Zionist Official,. Dies at 64; Executive Director of Fund Foundation". [[The New York Times]].
3. 1940 United States Federal Census
4. "Our Campaigns - Candidate - Abraham Tuvim".
5. "Judy Holliday (1921–1965)".
6. "Helen Tuvim - United States Census, 1940".
7. "[https://www.nytimes.com/1965/06/08/archives/judy-holliday-42-is-dead-of-cancer-judy-holliday-actress-is-dead-of.html Judy Holiday, 42, Is Dead of Cancer]", ''The New York Times'', June 8, 1965, p. 1
8. [http://jwa.org/discover/infocus/comedy/holliday.html "Judy Holliday (1921–1965) Biography"] {{webarchive. link. (2010-03-05 , Jewish Women's Archive (jwa.org), retrieved February 21, 2010)
9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20090422130419/http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/participant.jsp?spid=88083 "Judy Holliday Biography"], Turner Classic Movies (tcm.com), retrieved February 21, 2010
10. Sargeant, Winthrop.[https://books.google.com/books?id=6E4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA107 "Judy Holliday"]''Life Magazine'', April 2, 1951.
11. (1940). "Night Life in New York (78rpm 12-in Set Musicraft Records #N-2)".
12. Holliday remembered her years in the Revuers as unpleasant, saying she was initially a bad actress and so shy that she vomited between shows. She found it difficult to perform on stage in smoke-filled rooms while patrons over-imbibed, heckled, and fought with each other, but deemed entertainers successful if they persevered in such atmospheres.Dudar, Helen. "The Post Presents the Judy Holliday Story." ''New York Post'', 11 December 1956.
13. [http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=1685 "Kiss Them For Me Internet Broadway Database listing"] ibdb.com, retrieved February 21, 2010; accessed 10 June 2014.
14. (1991). "Me: Stories of My Life". Random House.
15. (2016). "Katharine Hepburn". New Word City.
16. [http://www.chicagotribune.com/search/mmx-6803_lgcy,0,3524816.story "Top winners from 1950"]{{dead link. (July 2020)
17. Dick, Bernard F. ''Columbia Pictures: Portrait of A Studio'' (1992). University Press of Kentucky; {{ISBN. 0-8131-1769-0, pp. 135–136.
18. Sicherman, Barbara and Green, Carol Hurd. ''Notable American Women: The Modern Period'' (1980). Harvard University Press; {{ISBN. 0-674-62733-4, p. 349
19. "Hearing Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-fourth Congress".
20. Barranger, Milly S.. (2008). "Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theater, and Film in the McCarthy Era". [[Southern Illinois University Press]].
21. [http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article06220901.aspx Profile], thesmartset.com; accessed June 10, 2014.
22. Duncan, Stephen R.. (2014). "Smart Chicks on Screen: Representing Women's Intellect in Film and Television". Rowman & Littlefield.
23. [http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=2590 ''Bells Are Ringing'' listing], ibdb.com, retrieved February 21, 2010.
24. [[Brooks Atkinson. Atkinson, Brooks]]. "Theater: 'Bells Are Ringing' for Judy Holliday", ''The New York Times'', November 30, 1956, p. 18
25. "Judy Holliday Faces Surgery", The New York Times, October 12, 1960, p. 44
26. [http://www.kritzerland.com/elmer.htm "Laurette: Music from the play"], kritzerland.com, retrieved February 22, 2010.
27. [http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=3006 ''Hot Spot'' listing], Internet Broadway Database; retrieved February 22, 2010.
28. "Judy Holliday – Hollywood Walk of Fame".
29. (2010). "Promise Me: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer". Three Rivers Press/Random House.
30. (March 21, 2020). "The Tragic Early Death of Judy Holliday". The Life and Times of Hollywood.
31. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110830015349/http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/88083%7C90684/Judy-Holliday/ “Judy Holliday”], biography, [[Turner Classic Movies]] (TCM). Retrieved March 3, 2018.