Happy Holliday
On January 31, I wrote here about how Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin, George Cukor, and Katharine Hepburn concocted a scheme to, in essence, give Judy Holliday a "screen test" in their movie Adam’s Rib, so that the studio would hire her to recreate her acclaimed Broadway starring role in Born Yesterday for the movie version. Their surreptitious effort was so successful that she did indeed get hired -- and all the better, later won the Oscar as Best Actress.
I mention this to note that Born Yesterday will be on TCM tomorrow -- Saturday, March 4 -- at 1 PM, Los Angeles time.
The play was a huge hit, running 1,643 performances (around four years), and as recently as 2019 it was still the seventh longest-running non-musical in Broadway history. Judy Holliday got a Tony nomination for her performance.
As a movie, the comedy also stars William Holden and Broderick Crawford. It tells the story of Billie Dawn, the quintessential dumb blonde, who's been engaged for seven years to the corrupt Harry Brock (played by Crawford), who's bought some Washington politicians. Brock has social ambitions and so hires crusading journalist Paul Verrail (Holden) to educate her.
Here's the trailer. It's fun, but doesn't give much of an idea of the film.
This is a better idea of the film.
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