Born Yesterday (1950)

Directed by: George Cukor | 103 minutes | comedy, romance | Actors: Judy Holliday, Broderick Crawford, William Holden, Howard St. John, Frank Otto, Larry Oliver, Barbara Brown, Grandon Rhodes, Claire Carleton, Charles Cane, Helen Eby-Rock, Mike Mahoney, Paul Marion, William Mays, John Morley , David Pardoll, Ram Singh, Smoki Whitfield

When two dogs fight over a bone, a third runs away with it. Not Bette Davis (‘All about Eve’, 1950), not Gloria Swanson (‘Sunset Boulevard’, 1950) but Judy Holliday took home the Oscar for best female lead at the annual star gala in 1951. Judy who? Although she has since fallen into obscurity, Holliday showed during her relatively short career that she was a gifted comedienne. She immortalized herself with her Oscar-winning role in ‘Born Yesterday’ (1950). Holliday regularly played a dumb blonde with heart. In reality, the actress was particularly intelligent; she seems to have had an IQ of 172! Her career took a major blow when she had to appear before The House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which, on behalf of Senator Joseph McCarthy, tracked down filmmakers with Communist sympathies. Although she was never banned from the film world, her career has suffered considerable damage. Holliday died of cancer in 1965, at the age of just 43.

Born Yesterday is the movie Judy Holliday will always be remembered for. She plays Emma ‘Billie’ Dawn, the naive mistress of a scrap dealer who got rich the easy way. This Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford) is a bully who uses shady trading methods to get even richer. One day he takes Billie on a business trip to Washington DC, where he tries to bribe politicians in various backrooms. Billie actually only kind of gets in the way. To keep her sweet, Brock hires journalist Paul Verrall (William Holden). He tries to teach the stupid blonde some wisdom of American culture and politics and enriches her language and literature knowledge in the process. Although there is an immediate click between the two, it is not easy for Billie to absorb all that information. But the longer she’s into it, the more she sees that Brock is deliberately trying to dumb her down to get away with his dubious practices!

Garson Kanin wrote ‘Born Yesterday’ for the stage and once the play proved successful, plans were made for a film version. Jean Arthur (‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’, 1939) was originally supposed to play the lead role, but she pulled out at the last minute. Producer Harry Cohn looked for a replacement but initially overlooked whirlwind Judy Holliday, who had been playing the role for four years. Once the cast was finalized, director George Cukor had his actors rehearse the play for two weeks in the theater, with the audience present so that the comedic timing of the threesome could be optimized. This method was successful: Holliday, Crawford and Holden form a well-oiled machine and the jokes follow each other in rapid succession. Their characters are in fact caricatures. Holliday as the dumb blonde, Crawford as the roaring bully, and Holden as the film’s thoughtful conscience. And in a comedy like this you can expect such one-dimensional figures; The fact that we are not dealing with complex characters here does not detract from the story.

The acting is of an excellent standard. Holliday and Crawford, in particular, are completely absorbed in their roles. One of the best scenes from the film is where they play a game of gin without barely saying a word. The scene is very well thought out and brilliantly executed by Holliday and Crawford. Take, for example, the dexterity of her hands and the way she teases her opponent with her screaming ‘rendition’ of the jazz classic ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’. Also on a verbal level both steal the show. Especially Holliday seems to shake the wisecrackers out of her sleeve. What works a bit against ‘Born Yesterday’ is the moralistic message that is used. Billie learns about the origins of the United States and especially about how the country became a democracy. But the founding fathers who are so glorified here were not those sweethearts at all. Thomas Jefferson, for example, was a slave driver and George Washington, as Commander in Chief of the Colonies in the American Revolutionary War, suffered a great deal of bloodshed. So ‘Born Yesterday’ needs to be placed very clearly in a certain place at a certain time in order to be properly understood.

‘Born Yesterday’ may seem a bit dated and moralistic and is also a bit predictable, but this comedy is definitely worth watching. That is in large part thanks to Judy Holliday, who steals the show with her successful performance. Although the characters are a bit flat, they can still be enjoyed by the excellent actors who play them. Overacting is part and parcel of a movie like this. Whether Holliday deserved the Oscar more than Bette Davis and Gloria Swanson? Not necessarily. Both ‘All about Eve’ and ‘Sunset Boulevard’ are superior to ‘Born Yesterday’. But the inimitable comedienne certainly did not steal the golden statue!