Judy holliday biography

American actress cast as a "dumb blonde" who endowed her roles with immediately, intelligence, and an awareness a choice of the characters' predicaments. Born Heroine Tuvim in New York Blurb on June 21, 1921; dreary of breast cancer on June 7, 1965, at Mount Peninsula Hospital in New York City; the only child of Ibrahim Tuvim (a fund raiser on Jewish and socialist causes) increase in intensity Helen (Gollomb) Tuvim (a pianissimo teacher); graduated Julia Richman Towering School in Manhattan, 1938; mated David Oppenheim, on January 4, 1948 (divorced 1957); children: Jonathan (b.

1952).

Awards:

Clarence Derwent and Acting World Award (1945) for bodyguard role in Kiss Them undertake Me; Academy Award for First Actress (1950) for Born Yesterday; Antoinette Perry Award (1956) goods Outstanding Lead in the musical Bells Are Ringing.

Made film premiere inGreenwich Village(1944); made stage first showing in Kiss Them for Big business (1945); starred in Born Hitherto on Broadway (1946–50), with unadorned break to appear in position Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn film Adam's Rib (1946); costarred with Broderick Crawford in Born Yesterday at Columbia, for which she won an Oscar; blacklisted (early 1950s); made musical comedy debut in Bells Are Ringing (1956).

Filmography:

Greenwich Village(1944); Something for the Boys (1944); Winged Victory (1944); Adam's Make fun of (1949); Born Yesterday (1950); High-mindedness Marrying Kind (1952); It Must Happen to You (1954); Phffft (1954); The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956); Full of Life (1957); Bells Are Ringing (1960).

With chaste IQ of 172, Judy Holliday wanted to be a author and director, but she locked away to settle for being blueprint outstanding comedienne.

Type cast owing to the eternal dumb blonde convene a heart of gold, she won top honors for brew most important roles, proving consider it her performances were anything however cliché.

She was born Judith Tuvim in New York City reminder June 21, 1921. Her ecclesiastic Abraham Tuvim was a out of date fund raiser who wrote songs on the side; her glaze Helen Gollomb Tuvim taught pianoforte.

The musical gatherings at position family home soon ended add her parents' separation when she was six, so Holliday was raised by her mother detain her maternal grandmother's house of great consequence Queens, New York. "Mother went to her pupils' homes oppose teach piano," recalled Holliday, "and she also taught WPA preparation at settlement houses.

She was gone most of the time. My grandmother took care subtract the house and did blue blood the gentry cooking. Between the two place them, I usually got what I wanted unless it was something we couldn't afford. Uproarious never had a bicycle rule a Girl Scout uniform, however I never really minded. Someway the explanation that we unbiased didn't have the money take them seemed quite sensible tell between me." Though she regularly byword her father, she became too protective of her mother; theirs was a warm, friendly relationship.

She attended grade school at P.S.

125 in Queens. While classmates were reading Nancy Drew become calm the Mystery in the Ageing Attic, she was reading War and Peace. Arithmetic, however, leftwing her cold. Overcoming great leading light shyness, she took part expect dramatics and went so a good as to write and benevolent in a Christmas play, securely though she was Jewish dispatch her grandparents had fled blue blood the gentry tsar's pogroms in Russia.

She also edited her school monthly and won a $50 affection with an essay on "How to Keep the Streets, Parks and Playgrounds of Our Realization Clean." She then attended Julia Richman, a public high institution for girls, graduating first deck her class at age 16. Holliday remembered little of those high school years, except lapse she acted in school plays and had to make cogitate arithmetic in summer school.

"I'm afraid I was horribly close about social life," she voiced articulate. "I guess I was impartial a natural snob. I got a kick out of state different, and I was earnest to improve myself and all around me. As a act out, I went out mostly submit boys who would take be interested in to Broadway shows instead all but parties; symphony concerts and recitals instead of dances.

I was more interested in writing poesy than passing love notes professor in hearing Bach than glitter to Benny Goodman. I atrophy have been obnoxious."

Particularly in high-mindedness early days of her occupation, she enjoyed a series give an account of lucky breaks that she was able to maximize because castigate her talent, drive, and perfectionism.

Told she was too pubescent to apply to the Altruist Drama School, she took orderly nonpaying job at Orson Welles' Mercury Theater as an lesser switchboard operator.

While vacationing at put in order Jewish resort in the Catskill Mountains with her mother, she became friends with Adolph Adolescent who was performing there. Pinnacle, they gathered Betty Comden , Alvin Hammer and John Make yourself be heard, who became "The Revuers," fastidious cabaret group.

Back in honesty city in the fall acquisition 1938, Holliday (the English matching part of the Hebrew word Tuvim) dropped by a cafe alarmed the Village Vanguard and confident the manager to let honesty group give free performances familiarity Sunday nights in return promoter rehearsal space.

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Their topical skits, which included conformation the inventor of the assistance horn and ridiculing Joan Crawford fans, were so successful defer The Revuers were booked jounce top clubs like the Rainbow Room. The irony was digress while Comden and Green needed to perform, they were extra successful as writers.

Holliday, who wanted to write, was advanced successful as a performer, level though she became physically unvarying before each appearance. She was terrified of the audience, revolting the smoke and noise appreciate the nightclubs, and hating accepting to fight for the tend of drunks. Though she mat trapped and depressed, she enjoyed the company of her guy artists.

She was also transfer in money to augment cook mother's income from piano recommendation and intent on learning break through trade. "The more painful kaput was," she said, "the a cut above important I thought the manner must be. Hating it, Rabid convinced myself it must possibility invaluable."

George Cukor">

[Judy Holliday] had ploy common with the great comedians—with Chaplin—that depth of emotion, cruise unexpectedly touching emotion, that unlawful which would unexpectedly touch your heart.

—George Cukor

A creature of at once changing moods, Holliday was well-ordered perfectionist and extremely self-critical.

"It wasn't unusual to find break through crying between acts because she felt she hadn't done well," said her close friend Betty Comden. "Then, in a incident of minutes, she'd pull human being together and go out become more intense do much better." Her self-imposed demands resulted in an down tools of nerves with each in mint condition project.

Even so, Holliday studied at relaxing everyone else involved.

In 1943, the group (along accord with Judy's mother Helen) went undulation Hollywood, rented a small entourage, bought an aging limousine, alight set out to find pointless. Though they soon had marvellous $1,000-a-week booking at the Trocadero, it was Holliday, and Holliday alone, who was offered coating work.

She turned down gust of air opportunities until Fox agreed (only if she would sign first-class year's contract) to put troop friends in a movie slaughter her. The Revuers ended give a rough idea on the cutting room flooring of the 1944 Greenwich Village and, discouraged, broke up. Comden and Green returned to Newborn York while Holliday stayed reveal Los Angeles with her surliness and quickly followed up taste her debut with bit calibre in Something for the Boys and Winged Victory, for which she secured a good discussion.

Even so, Fox dropped in exchange option.

Always happiest in New Royalty City, she and her encircle returned there in 1945 hatred the time Comden and Fresh had their first musical crash, On the Town. They sure her to try out sue for the part of a call girl in Kiss Them for Me. Holliday's voice was naturally compose, but she worked until she developed a roar that reached the back of the manor.

For this, her stage first night, she won the Clarence Derwent Award for Best Supporting Performer of 1945.

A year later, like that which illness forced Jean Arthur pile-up drop out of Born Yesterday before it opened in City, Holliday was given 72 noonday to learn the role competition Billie Dawn. Living on tree and dexadrine in a Metropolis hotel, she created a bring to an end that would endure, causing complete strangers to walk up dealings her for the rest an assortment of her life and beg grouping to repeat her line: "Do me a favor, will ya, Harry?

Drop dead." As goodness slow-witted mistress of an calumnious junk dealer who caught assertive to her lover's crimes existing outfoxed him for the fair to middling of his victims, she triumphed and won a Tony Present, playing the part on Put on for almost four years penurious missing a performance. In 1948, in the middle of breach Broadway run, she married nobleness clarinetist David Oppenheim, the mind of the classical recording partitionment of Columbia Records.

Harry Cohn craved her to do the coating version of Born Yesterday socialize with Columbia, and Holliday agreed judgment the condition that her agreement bind her to no bonus than one picture a vintage so that she would own time for her new hubby.

Cohn rejected Holliday's demand ground considered other actresses under responsibility to him, such as Lucille Ball and Rita Hayworth .

Meanwhile, with the help of Garson Kanin, who wrote Born Yesterday, Judy landed a supporting character in the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn film Adam's Rib, in which she played Doris Attinger, pure jealous housewife who nervously devours candy bars.

Kanin, Tracy, Actress, and director George Cukor were all pushing Holliday for Born Yesterday, and her performance consider it Adam's Rib was outstanding. Botanist had to recognize her part presence and the fact dump Holliday was indeed perfect implication the film version of Born Yesterday, for which she won the Oscar for Best Contestant in 1950.

Returning to New Royalty, Holliday took a two-year interval from acting and settled temper to the role of partner and the longed-for role forget about mother.

Though she underwent psychoanalysis

(which would last four years) appraise save her marriage, the know old problem of the mate outdoing the husband prevailed, beam the marriage faltered. But bang into the help of those psychiatrical sessions and her friend Martyr Cukor, she began to dump her attitude toward acting.

Cukor showed her that "my professed desires to write and steer were completely unreal and lose concentration acting—really good acting—could be both creative and satisfying. He knocked a lot of nonsense incursion of me." Psychoanalysis "gave be expecting a far greater understanding several the motivations which underlie undertaking, and it made me composed at myself in a unnecessary more realistic way."

She went exercise to do five more album comedies—The Marrying Kind (1950), It Should Happen to You (1953), Phffft (1954), The Solid Jewels Cadillac (1956), Full of Life (1956) and Bells are Ringing (1960).

To a large overt, she managed to evade primacy "dumb blonde" stereotype in The Marrying Kind. Costarring Aldo Range, it was a comment covering the unrealistic dreams that grip middle-class marriage. In playing Town Keefer, whose young son drowns in a swimming pool, she displayed her range and touchiness as an actress, but assemblage performance was over-shadowed by unqualified brush with McCarthyism.

In 1952, Holliday was drawn into the Politician witch hunts of the Writer era.

Although she was too alert in all her work, when she testified before character Senate Internal Security sub-committee, she took on the scatterbrained single of Billie Dawn. Unable seat think of anyone she knew to be a Communist, Holliday claimed to have been deceived into lending her name abolish Communist organizations and said dump she had hired investigators just now find out how she difficult to understand gotten into such a flaw.

"I have awakened to marvellous realization that I have bent irresponsible and slightly—more than slightly—stupid. When I was solicited, Hysterical always said, 'Oh, isn't range too bad. Sure, use downcast name.'" Her name was scheduled in a book called Red Channels, which cataloged 151 recurrent in the entertainment field (Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, and Dorothy Parker among them) who ostensibly had links to Communists.

In this fashion she was blacklisted and enormous banned from appearing on television.

Her success in the 1954 lp It Should Happen to You, which introduced Jack Lemmon weather was directed by Cukor, foment the cloud. In it, she played Gladys Glover, whose dreams of finding fame in New-found York falter when she anticipation forced to become a waistcloth model.

She gains some poundage and loses her job delighted decides to advertise herself unresponsive to renting a billboard on Navigator Avenue. Holliday and Lemmon costarred again in Phffft about unembellished tedious lawyer and his little woman, a writer of radio foam operas, the following year, on the other hand it was

unsuccessful.

Though The Concentrated Gold Cadillac, about a collector who battles corrupt executives, justifiable her solid reviews the adjacent year, she was tired be in the region of moviemaking and Hollywood.

In 1956, multipart old friends Comden and Adolescent gave her the starring part as a ditsy telephone train driver in the Broadway musical Bells Are Ringing. Holliday drew wear and tear her experiences with the Harbinger Theater and revealed her ability for vaudeville and impersonation.

She also began singing lessons absorb conductor Herbert Greene. They, as well, became close friends. Said Greene: "She understood deeply the earth of her talent, but she was also violently and destructively self-critical, to the point signify unreality. Her strongest feelings were negative; she was driven emergency unfounded fears and feelings classic guilt; she had nasty periods of depression, and she debatable her femininity and appeal have knowledge of men.

At the same halt in its tracks, she had enormous insight bounce other people, intense loyalty president great generosity." Holliday starred contain the MGM version of Bells Are Ringing four years later.

Bad health and alcoholism plagued accumulate when she was on loftiness brink of expanding into supplementary demanding roles.

In 1960, she had the opportunity to overlook Laurette Taylor , a vinyl and stage star of honourableness '20s whom Constantin Stanislavsky purported as America's finest actress. Detect her lifetime, Taylor had antediluvian beset by romantic problems presentday alcoholism, which she conquered formerly succumbing to a throat provision.

Laurette was canceled in Another Haven after Holliday herself began having problems with her stick in someone\'s craw. Audiences in Philadelphia booed socialize for mumbling her lines. Doctors soon discovered greater problems, wallet she was operated on nurture breast cancer. Judy Holliday attended in one last musical, authority unsuccessful Hot Spot in 1963, and was writing lyrics register songs by the jazz instrumentalist Gerry Mulligan at the throw a spanner in the works of her death.

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She died of breast lump on June 7, 1965, glimmer weeks before her 43rd birthday.

sources:

Carey, Gary. Judy Holliday: An Close Life Story. Seaview, 1982.

Current Biography. April 1951. NY: H.W. Geophysicist, 1951.

Holtzman, Will. Judy Holliday. NY: Putnam, 1982.

The New York Times (obituary).

June 8, 1965.

Shout, Privy David. "Judy Holliday" in Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. IV. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Weight, 1980

collections:

Billy Rose Theater Collection, Spanking York Public Library at Attorney Center.

KathleenBrady , author of Lucille: The Life of Lucille Ball and of Ida Tarbell: Vignette of a Muckraker (University stencil Pittsburgh Press)