Holliday was born Judith Tuvim (she took her stage name from yomim tovim, which is Hebrew for "holidays") in New York City, the only child of Abe and Helen Tuvim (née Gollomb). Her father was executive director of the foundation for the Jewish National Fund of America (1951–1958),[2][3] and a political activist who ran unsuccessfully six times between 1919 and 1938 as a Socialist Party candidate for the New York state Legislature.[4] Her mother taught piano. Both were of Russian-Jewish descent.[5][6] 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.[7][8]
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.[8][9] 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.[10] In 1940, The Revuers released a 78-rpm album entitled Night Life in New York.[11] 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.[7] 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.[12]
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.[7][10][14] 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).[15][16]
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."[19] Director George Cukor also observed that Holliday had "that depth of emotion, that unexpectedly touching emotion, that thing which would unexpectedly touch your heart."[20]
Holliday was advised to play dumb, as in her film portrayal of Billie Dawn, and she did – often to comedic effect.[22][23][24] She denounced Stalinism and authoritarianism generally, but defended the free speech rights of those who espoused such views.[22] 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."[22] The investigation "did not reveal positive evidence of any membership in the Communist Party".[22] The investigation concluded after three months and, unlike others whose careers were severely damaged by communist allegations, her career was relatively untarnished.
Nothing has happened to the shrill little moll whom the town loved in Born Yesterday. The squeaky voice, the embarrassed giggle, the brassy naivete, the dimples, the teeter-totter walk fortunately remain unimpaired ... Miss Holliday now adds a trunk-full of song-and-dance routines...Without losing any of that doll-like personality, she is now singing music by Jule Styne and dancing numbers composed by Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse. She has gusto enough to triumph in every kind of music hall antic.[26]
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.[27][28] Her last role was in the stage musical Hot Spot, co-starring newcomers such as Joseph Campanella and Mary Louise Wilson, which closed after 43 performances on May 25, 1963.[29]
In 1948, Holliday married clarinetist David Oppenheim, later a classical music and television producer, and academic. Oppenheim struggled with his sexual orientation; Leonard Bernstein, a mutual friend, suggested that Oppenheim marry Holliday as a beard.[citation needed] (In 1943, Bernstein himself wrote in a letter to Oppenheim, then in the U.S. Army, that he had thought of marrying Holliday.)[30] 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.[7][9]
^ abcdeBarranger, Milly S. (2008). "Billie Dawn Goes to Washington: Judy Holliday". Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theater, and Film in the McCarthy Era. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 9–33. ISBN978-0809328765.
^Profile, thesmartset.com; accessed June 10, 2014.
^Brinker, Nancy G.; Rodgers, Joni (2010). Promise Me: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer. New York: Three Rivers Press/Random House. p. 77. ISBN978-0-307-71813-6.
^Rothaus, Steve (March 21, 2020). "The Tragic Early Death of Judy Holliday". Stories from Classic Hollywood. The Life and Times of Hollywood. Archived from the original on 28 November 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
