Judy Holliday

Judy Holliday, born Judith Tuvim on June 21, 1921, in Queens, New York, was an American actress, comedian, and singer whose Broadway career spanned from 1945 to 1963. She was the only child of Abe and Helen Tuvim, both of Russian-Jewish descent. Her father served as executive director of the foundation for the Jewish National Fund of America from 1951 to 1958 and ran unsuccessfully six times as a Socialist Party candidate for the New York State Legislature between 1919 and 1938. Her mother taught piano. Holliday grew up in Sunnyside, Queens, graduated from Julia Richman High School in Manhattan, and took her stage name from the Hebrew phrase yamim tovim, meaning "holidays." Her first job was as an assistant switchboard operator at the Mercury Theatre, then administered by Orson Welles and John Houseman.

Holliday entered show business in 1938 as a member of a nightclub act called The Revuers, alongside Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Alvin Hammer, John Frank, and Esther Cohen. The group performed at New York venues including the Village Vanguard, Spivy's Roof, the Blue Angel, and the Rainbow Room, as well as the Trocadero in Hollywood. Leonard Bernstein, who shared an apartment with Green, occasionally played piano accompaniment for the group. In 1940, The Revuers released a 78-rpm album titled Night Life in New York, and in 1944 filmed a scene for the Carmen Miranda picture Greenwich Village, though their segment was cut and Holliday appeared only as an unbilled extra in a separate scene. The group disbanded in early 1944. That same year, Holliday took her first film role, playing an airman's wife in Twentieth Century Fox's Winged Victory.

Holliday made her Broadway debut on March 20, 1945, at the Belasco Theatre in Kiss Them for Me, earning a Theatre World Award that year. She also received the Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Female Actor in 1945. In 1946, she returned to Broadway in Born Yesterday, playing the role of Billie Dawn. Garson Kanin had originally written the part for Jean Arthur, but when Arthur left New York, Kanin chose Holliday as her replacement. The performance earned Holliday widespread critical acclaim. When Columbia Pictures acquired the rights to adapt the play, studio head Harry Cohn was initially reluctant to cast her, but Kanin, George Cukor, Spencer Tracy, and Katharine Hepburn worked to raise her profile by securing her a key role in the 1949 Tracy-Hepburn film Adam's Rib. Cohn ultimately offered Holliday the film role, and her performance in the 1950 screen version of Born Yesterday earned her the first Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and the Academy Award for Best Actress at the 23rd Academy Awards, where she defeated Gloria Swanson, Eleanor Parker, Bette Davis, and Anne Baxter.

In 1950, Holliday's name appeared in Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and TV, a publication listing 151 alleged pro-communist artists. The following year she was subpoenaed by Senator Pat McCarran's Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. She appeared before the committee on March 26, 1952, represented by attorney Simon H. Rifkind. Advised to adopt a persona similar to her Billie Dawn characterization, she denounced Stalinism while defending the free-speech rights of those who held such views. The investigation found no positive evidence of Communist Party membership and concluded after three months. Unlike many performers whose careers were severely damaged by such allegations, Holliday's professional standing remained largely intact.

In November 1956, Holliday returned to Broadway starring in the musical Bells Are Ringing, with book and lyrics by her former Revuers colleagues Betty Comden and Adolph Green and direction by Jerome Robbins. The role brought her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1957. She reprised the role in the 1960 film adaptation, which became her final screen appearance. Her Broadway credits also included Hot Spot and The Dream Girl. In October 1960, Holliday began out-of-town tryouts for the play Laurette, based on the life of actress Laurette Taylor and directed by José Quintero, but she became ill and the production closed in Philadelphia without reaching Broadway. Holliday died on June 7, 1965, from breast cancer, at the age of 43.