Judy Holliday

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Judy Holliday (born June 21, 1921 in New York as Judith Tuvim , † June 7, 1965 ibid) was an American actress and singer . She celebrated great success as a comedy actress on both Broadway and Hollywood from the mid-1940s . She won the Oscar for Best Actress for the film It's Not Yesterday , in which - as in many of her other films - she embodied a warm-hearted and naive blonde who was underrated in her intelligence and cleverness.

Life

Holliday was born Judith Tuvim in New York City, the only child of Abraham and Helen Tuvim, who were Jewish emigrants from Russia . Tuvim is similar to the Yiddish word for festival time, English holiday , which then became Holliday . She first worked as a switchboard operator and stage manager at Orson Welles ' Mercury Theater before finding employment in a nightclub revue in Greenwich Village in 1938 . There, a talent scout from 20th Century Fox became aware of her, but she initially turned down his Hollywood offer out of loyalty to her Revue colleagues. After they had finally accepted the offer, the Fox dissolved their contract after only a few screen appearances. She then went to Broadway , where she had her first success as an actress with the play Kiss Them for Me .

However, her breakthrough came with Garson Kanin's play Born Yesterday , in which she played the role of the naive and uneducated Billie Dawn 1642 times under Kanin's direction from 1946 to 1949. When Columbia Pictures acquired the film rights to the play, they were initially not intended for the lead role. Her appearance in the film comedy Ehekrieg alongside Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy convinced studio boss Harry Cohn to let Holliday slip into the role of Dawn on the screen. In 1951, Holliday won an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for George Cukor's film adaptation of the comedy, titled This Isn't Yesterday .

Hollidays grave

In the early 1950s, rumors that she was close to the communists made her the target of an investigation by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities . Although she was able to refute the allegations against her, she received only a few offers of roles in film afterwards. In 1956 she finally returned to Broadway, where she was seen on stage in the musical Bells Are Ringing until 1959 . In 1960 the musical, for which Holliday had received the Tony Award in 1957 , was adapted for the screen , as was previously Born Yesterday with her in the lead role. It was to be her last film.

In 1948 Judy Holliday married the composer Dave Oppenheim. In 1957 the marriage, from which a son (born November 11, 1952) emerged, was divorced. Judy Holliday died of breast cancer shortly before her 44th birthday . Her grave is in Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson , New York.

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Web links

Commons : Judy Holliday  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Judy Holliday at filmreference.com