Brains in a blond’s clothing

JUDY HOLLIDAY’S performance as the not-so-dumb blond Billie Dawn in 1950’s “Born Yesterday” earned her a best actress Oscar. But in the decades since, many moviegoers have had little exposure to her comic skills. She made only six more films and died of throat cancer in 1965, just a few weeks shy of her 44th birthday.

A few of her films pop up on cable, and others have recently been released on DVD, but cineastes will have a rare chance to see them all on the big screen at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art film department’s “Full of Life: The Films of Judy Holliday” retrospective.

The two-weekend festival kicks off Friday with the George Cukor-directed “Born Yesterday,” in which she reprised her Broadway role as the ditzy mistress of a boorish magnate (Broderick Crawford), and the 1956 farce “The Solid Gold Cadillac,” directed by Richard Quine, which finds her playing a warmhearted young woman who, with only one share of a company’s stock, takes down its corrupt corporate board.

“She was so unique,” says film historian and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne. “She had a much bigger range than people gave her credit for, but she was smart enough to work mainly in that range she knew was good for her.”

“She brought to these performances something [special],” says film historian Rudy Behlmer. “She would bring dimensions to everything. She did things that were unexpected.”

The retrospective include three other films she made with Cukor: 1949’s “Adam’s Rib,” 1952’s “The Marrying Kind” and 1954’s “It Should Happen to You,” which introduced Jack Lemmon.

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Broadway as springboard

REPORTED to have scored 172 on her IQ test, Holliday -- born Judy Tuvim -- was an avid student who loved books and yearned to study theater. After being rejected by Yale University, she worked as a telephone operator and stage manager for Orson Welles’ landmark Mercury Theater. In the early 1940s, she joined friends Adolph Green and Betty Comden to create a sketch comedy troupe called the Revuers. The group was hired by 20th Century Fox to do a sketch (most of which was cut) in the 1944 musical “Greenwich Village.” She also appeared in small roles in 1944’s “Winged Victory” and “Something for the Boys,” but the studio thought she had limited potential.

Holliday returned to New York, where she got noticed in the forgettable play “Kiss Them for Me.” Then in 1946 came the stage version of “Born Yesterday.”

Playwright Garson Kanin had written the play for Jean Arthur, but when she became ill, someone in the troupe remembered Holliday and asked her to step in. “She literally had three days and nights of getting ready to open,” says Behlmer. “Thank God she had the experience with the Revuers.”

Though Holliday became an overnight sensation on Broadway, Hollywood didn’t beckon. When it came time to do the film version, Columbia’s chief Harry Cohn didn’t think Holliday was movie material.

To prove her brand of comedy could work in the movies, Kanin and his wife, Ruth Gordon, beefed up a supporting role in their 1949 Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy comedy “Adam’s Rib” for Holliday. Her engaging, quirky performance as a harried young woman who attempts to kill her husband and his mistress won her kudos. Cohn was won over and agreed to cast in her in the film version of “Born Yesterday.”

In winning the best actress Oscar for “Born Yesterday,” she beat favorites Bette Davis in “All About Eve” and Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard” and was able to negotiate a deal with the iron-fisted Cohn that she would make one film a year for Columbia. “That way she could go and do plays,” says Behlmer. “The fact that she got Harry Cohn to agree to that was a minor miracle.”

“I think she had a wonderful career,” says Osborne. “What was amazing is that she was under contract to Columbia and had that career. With Harry Cohn running the studio at the time, it was such a machine thing that it was only rarely something special and offbeat [was made]. The studio’s films were along more commercial lines like Rita Hayworth movies. I am not sure that if she worked more then we would have appreciated her more. She was a unique talent like Margaret Sullavan and was special because we didn’t see her that much.”

Holliday’s liberal leanings led her to be called to testify in front of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. But she turned on the Billie Dawn charm and ended up not having to name names on the witness stand.

Asked if Comden and Green were Communists, she said they were not, adding, “I am as sure of that as I can be of anybody that isn’t me.” Though she was not found to be a Communist, Behlmer says there was “taint” to her reputation.

Holliday’s last film for Columbia was 1956’s comedy-drama “Full of Life.” That same year, she returned to Broadway in the Comden and Green musical comedy “Bells Are Ringing,” in which she played a sweet, lovelorn answering service operator. She won a Tony and repeated the role in the 1960 film version directed by Vincente Minnelli.

“I think that’s one example of how good she is,” says Osborne. “I don’t think that movie is that good, but she’s wonderful in it.”

During her battle with cancer -- she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1960 -- she appeared on Broadway in the disappointing musical “Hot Spot,” cut an album with her then-boyfriend Gerry Mulligan and even penned the lyrics to Mulligan’s theme song for the 1965 film “A Thousand Clowns.”

Once when asked about her illness, Holliday replied: “It’s trite to say, but it’s absolutely true -- that adversity strengthens. I could go into a tizzy much easier before than now, though it’s too bad you have to learn it the hard way. But then it wouldn’t be adversity if you didn’t have to learn it the hard way.”

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‘Full of Life: The Films of Judy Holliday’

Where: Leo S. Bing Theater, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd.

When: Fridays and Saturdays through April 1

Price: $6 to $9

Contact: (323) 857-6000 or go to www.lacma.org

Schedule

Friday: “Born Yesterday,” 7:30 p.m.; “The Solid Gold Cadillac,” 9:25 p.m.

Saturday: “The Marrying Kind,” 7:30 p.m.; “Adam’s Rib,” 9:15 p.m.

March 31: “It Should Happen to You,” 7:30 p.m.; “Phffft!,” 9:10 p.m.

April 1: “Bells Are Ringing,” 7:30 p.m.; “Full of Life,” 9:45 p.m.