Biography
Despite cancer claiming her life prematurely, the actress and vocalist Judy Holliday compiled an impressive record of achievements throughout a 25-year professional span that brought her both an Academy Award and a Tony. Her output stayed modest in volume, consisting of major parts in eight feature films, three Broadway dramas, and two stage musicals, supplemented by scattered recordings, radio and television guest spots, and nightclub engagements. Even so, she rose to prominent fame in both Hollywood and the legitimate theater by fashioning unforgettable portraits of likable women whose intellect proved far greater than surface appearances suggested. Theatergoers responded to these witty, relatable characterizations by filling venues to capacity for every Holliday appearance, whether projected or live.
Widely listed as 1922, her birth year actually corresponds to June 21, 1921, according to biographer Gary Carey, who located the certificate on record with the New York Department of Health; the original name entered there was Judith Tuvim. She arrived as the sole offspring of Abraham Tuvim, a fundraiser and promoter whose talents extended to songwriting, including additional lyrics credited in the 1934 Broadway musical Africana, and Helen (Gollomb) Tuvim, a homemaker who performed on and subsequently instructed piano. Holliday studied ballet during childhood and displayed early theatrical leanings. Her parents separated when she turned six, although they never divorced, leaving her mother to raise her. At age ten an ordinary intelligence test recorded her IQ at an exceptional 172; unsurprisingly she read voraciously and finished high school at the head of her class in 1938. Rather than pursue college she accepted employment as a telephone operator at the Mercury Theatre, where she aspired to write and direct plays. In September 1938 she persuaded the proprietor of the Village Vanguard, a compact Greenwich Village club, to permit her and several friends to supply Sunday-night entertainment. That engagement marked the debut of the Revuers, a five-member ensemble of writers and performers—Holliday together with Betty Comden, Adolph Green, John Frank, and Alvin Hammer—who presented comic and satirical sketches and songs. Over the ensuing year they cultivated an audience and favorable notices that enabled moves to additional venues, among them the celebrated Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center. By spring 1940 they possessed their own NBC radio program and cut two routines for Musicraft Records, “Joan Crawford Fan Club” and “The Girl with Two Left Feet.”
From 1940 through 1943 the Revuers alternated high-profile New York dates at Radio City Music Hall, the Blue Angel, and Café Society with engagements across the country. Frank’s departure in 1943 reduced the group to a quartet shortly before they headed west for an unsuccessful film proposal and a Trocadero booking. Hollywood scouts spotted them there and extended multiple picture offers to Holliday. She declined to commit unless her colleagues were included, ultimately negotiating a 20th Century-Fox agreement that placed her under term contract while Comden, Green, and Hammer received provisional contracts; all four would appear together in the then-shooting musical Greenwich Village, with continued studio ties contingent on the film’s reception. Upon its September 1944 release, however, most of the Revuers’ footage had been excised. The ensemble disbanded: Comden and Green returned to New York to establish themselves as a lyricist-librettist-screenwriting partnership, Hammer pursued character roles in film, and Holliday stayed at Fox. The studio mandated the professional alteration of Judith Tuvim to Judy Holliday. She received a single-line appearance in Something for the Boys (November 1944) and slightly expanded dialogue in Winged Victory (December 1944), yet by the latter’s release Fox had dropped her option, prompting her return to New York.
She received an immediate Broadway assignment in Kiss Them for Me, which opened March 20, 1945, and completed 111 performances; her supporting turn earned the Clarence Derwent Award for best supporting player of the season. That honor led directly to the lead female role in Garson Kanin’s Born Yesterday, a comedy centered on a corrupt junk dealer who brings his seemingly dim girlfriend to Washington to lobby Congress, only to discover her hidden shrewdness. Holliday portrayed the girlfriend, and the February 4, 1946, opening transformed her into a Broadway star. She remained with the production beyond three years; the run ultimately totaled 1,642 performances. On January 4, 1948, she married David Oppenheim, a New York City Symphony Orchestra clarinetist; they divorced in March 1957.
Her television bow came in the Ford Theater live teleplay She Loves Me Not on November 4, 1949. She reentered features with a supporting part in the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy vehicle Adam’s Rib (December 1949), strengthening her bid for the screen adaptation of Born Yesterday. While filming that project her name appeared in Red Channels, a publication purporting to identify Communists and sympathizers in entertainment, chiefly because of contributions and benefit appearances for African-American civil rights and the loyalist cause in the Spanish Civil War, events tied to organizations then alleged to have Communist links. She mounted an effort to clear her name, culminating in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Internal Security Subcommittee on March 26, 1952, during which she denied Communist ties, professed ignorance of having assisted any Communist-linked groups, and refrained from naming any supposed associates. Certain television and radio opportunities disappeared, although she served as a semi-regular on NBC’s Sunday-night radio series The Big Show throughout 1951, logging seven appearances. In 1984 AEI Records issued an LP drawn from those broadcasts, A Legacy of Laughter, which also contained two Revuers tracks.
Her film and stage commitments nevertheless proceeded without interruption. Columbia Pictures released Born Yesterday, the initial picture under her new seven-year contract, in December 1950; the following March she captured the Academy Award for best actress, prevailing over nominees that included Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. She returned to Broadway for a two-week limited revival of Dream Girl beginning May 9, then toured the production in summer stock before reporting to Hollywood for The Marrying Kind (March 1952). While pregnant she stepped away temporarily, giving birth November 11, 1952, to son Jonathan Lewis Oppenheim. She resumed work in 1953 and maintained a steady schedule of film and television roles for several years: It Should Happen to You opened in January 1954; she headlined the NBC Goodyear Playhouse drama The Huntress on February 14, 1954; she appeared in the NBC special Sunday in Town on October 10, 1954; Phffft reached theaters in November 1954; The Solid Gold Cadillac arrived in October 1956; and Full of Life, her final Columbia release, premiered in February 1957.
To promote Full of Life she cut a single of the title song for Decca Records, her first solo disc. Although she had sung with the Revuers, on radio, and informally in certain films, her next major vocal undertaking was the full-scale Broadway musical Bells Are Ringing, written for her by longtime colleagues Comden and Green with music by Jule Styne. The plot followed a telephone receptionist at an answering service who becomes entangled with her clients. The part suited Holliday perfectly; the November 29, 1956, premiere became the season’s biggest success and earned her a Tony Award. Columbia Records’ Original Broadway Cast album reached the Top 20, prompting the label to sign her for the solo LP Trouble Is a Man, issued in 1958. She stayed with Bells Are Ringing through its entire 924-performance Broadway engagement ending March 7, 1959, then completed a 17-week road tour before traveling to Hollywood to film the screen version, which opened in June 1960 accompanied by a Capitol Records soundtrack album.
She next accepted the title role in Laurette, a biographical play about actress Laurette Taylor, but withdrew during out-of-town tryouts because of failing health. Back in New York she received a breast-cancer diagnosis and underwent a successful mastectomy. During recuperation she collaborated with jazz musician Gerry Mulligan, her companion in her final years, on songs intended for a musical adaptation of Anita Loos’ Happy Birthday. The project never reached the stage, yet in April 1961 Holliday and Mulligan recorded four original numbers plus standards; the tapes remained unreleased until DRG Records issued the LP Holliday with Mulligan in 1980.
She starred in the new musical Hot Spot, with songs by Mary Rodgers and Martin Charnin, which opened on Broadway April 19, 1963; the production failed after 43 performances. No cast album was made, though Blue Pear Records released a live recording in 2004 that had previously circulated as a bootleg. Cancer recurred, ending her work after this final effort—a collaboration with Mulligan on the title song for the film A Thousand Clowns, heard only briefly in the finished picture. She died June 7, 1965, two weeks before her 44th birthday.
Widely listed as 1922, her birth year actually corresponds to June 21, 1921, according to biographer Gary Carey, who located the certificate on record with the New York Department of Health; the original name entered there was Judith Tuvim. She arrived as the sole offspring of Abraham Tuvim, a fundraiser and promoter whose talents extended to songwriting, including additional lyrics credited in the 1934 Broadway musical Africana, and Helen (Gollomb) Tuvim, a homemaker who performed on and subsequently instructed piano. Holliday studied ballet during childhood and displayed early theatrical leanings. Her parents separated when she turned six, although they never divorced, leaving her mother to raise her. At age ten an ordinary intelligence test recorded her IQ at an exceptional 172; unsurprisingly she read voraciously and finished high school at the head of her class in 1938. Rather than pursue college she accepted employment as a telephone operator at the Mercury Theatre, where she aspired to write and direct plays. In September 1938 she persuaded the proprietor of the Village Vanguard, a compact Greenwich Village club, to permit her and several friends to supply Sunday-night entertainment. That engagement marked the debut of the Revuers, a five-member ensemble of writers and performers—Holliday together with Betty Comden, Adolph Green, John Frank, and Alvin Hammer—who presented comic and satirical sketches and songs. Over the ensuing year they cultivated an audience and favorable notices that enabled moves to additional venues, among them the celebrated Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center. By spring 1940 they possessed their own NBC radio program and cut two routines for Musicraft Records, “Joan Crawford Fan Club” and “The Girl with Two Left Feet.”
From 1940 through 1943 the Revuers alternated high-profile New York dates at Radio City Music Hall, the Blue Angel, and Café Society with engagements across the country. Frank’s departure in 1943 reduced the group to a quartet shortly before they headed west for an unsuccessful film proposal and a Trocadero booking. Hollywood scouts spotted them there and extended multiple picture offers to Holliday. She declined to commit unless her colleagues were included, ultimately negotiating a 20th Century-Fox agreement that placed her under term contract while Comden, Green, and Hammer received provisional contracts; all four would appear together in the then-shooting musical Greenwich Village, with continued studio ties contingent on the film’s reception. Upon its September 1944 release, however, most of the Revuers’ footage had been excised. The ensemble disbanded: Comden and Green returned to New York to establish themselves as a lyricist-librettist-screenwriting partnership, Hammer pursued character roles in film, and Holliday stayed at Fox. The studio mandated the professional alteration of Judith Tuvim to Judy Holliday. She received a single-line appearance in Something for the Boys (November 1944) and slightly expanded dialogue in Winged Victory (December 1944), yet by the latter’s release Fox had dropped her option, prompting her return to New York.
She received an immediate Broadway assignment in Kiss Them for Me, which opened March 20, 1945, and completed 111 performances; her supporting turn earned the Clarence Derwent Award for best supporting player of the season. That honor led directly to the lead female role in Garson Kanin’s Born Yesterday, a comedy centered on a corrupt junk dealer who brings his seemingly dim girlfriend to Washington to lobby Congress, only to discover her hidden shrewdness. Holliday portrayed the girlfriend, and the February 4, 1946, opening transformed her into a Broadway star. She remained with the production beyond three years; the run ultimately totaled 1,642 performances. On January 4, 1948, she married David Oppenheim, a New York City Symphony Orchestra clarinetist; they divorced in March 1957.
Her television bow came in the Ford Theater live teleplay She Loves Me Not on November 4, 1949. She reentered features with a supporting part in the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy vehicle Adam’s Rib (December 1949), strengthening her bid for the screen adaptation of Born Yesterday. While filming that project her name appeared in Red Channels, a publication purporting to identify Communists and sympathizers in entertainment, chiefly because of contributions and benefit appearances for African-American civil rights and the loyalist cause in the Spanish Civil War, events tied to organizations then alleged to have Communist links. She mounted an effort to clear her name, culminating in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Internal Security Subcommittee on March 26, 1952, during which she denied Communist ties, professed ignorance of having assisted any Communist-linked groups, and refrained from naming any supposed associates. Certain television and radio opportunities disappeared, although she served as a semi-regular on NBC’s Sunday-night radio series The Big Show throughout 1951, logging seven appearances. In 1984 AEI Records issued an LP drawn from those broadcasts, A Legacy of Laughter, which also contained two Revuers tracks.
Her film and stage commitments nevertheless proceeded without interruption. Columbia Pictures released Born Yesterday, the initial picture under her new seven-year contract, in December 1950; the following March she captured the Academy Award for best actress, prevailing over nominees that included Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. She returned to Broadway for a two-week limited revival of Dream Girl beginning May 9, then toured the production in summer stock before reporting to Hollywood for The Marrying Kind (March 1952). While pregnant she stepped away temporarily, giving birth November 11, 1952, to son Jonathan Lewis Oppenheim. She resumed work in 1953 and maintained a steady schedule of film and television roles for several years: It Should Happen to You opened in January 1954; she headlined the NBC Goodyear Playhouse drama The Huntress on February 14, 1954; she appeared in the NBC special Sunday in Town on October 10, 1954; Phffft reached theaters in November 1954; The Solid Gold Cadillac arrived in October 1956; and Full of Life, her final Columbia release, premiered in February 1957.
To promote Full of Life she cut a single of the title song for Decca Records, her first solo disc. Although she had sung with the Revuers, on radio, and informally in certain films, her next major vocal undertaking was the full-scale Broadway musical Bells Are Ringing, written for her by longtime colleagues Comden and Green with music by Jule Styne. The plot followed a telephone receptionist at an answering service who becomes entangled with her clients. The part suited Holliday perfectly; the November 29, 1956, premiere became the season’s biggest success and earned her a Tony Award. Columbia Records’ Original Broadway Cast album reached the Top 20, prompting the label to sign her for the solo LP Trouble Is a Man, issued in 1958. She stayed with Bells Are Ringing through its entire 924-performance Broadway engagement ending March 7, 1959, then completed a 17-week road tour before traveling to Hollywood to film the screen version, which opened in June 1960 accompanied by a Capitol Records soundtrack album.
She next accepted the title role in Laurette, a biographical play about actress Laurette Taylor, but withdrew during out-of-town tryouts because of failing health. Back in New York she received a breast-cancer diagnosis and underwent a successful mastectomy. During recuperation she collaborated with jazz musician Gerry Mulligan, her companion in her final years, on songs intended for a musical adaptation of Anita Loos’ Happy Birthday. The project never reached the stage, yet in April 1961 Holliday and Mulligan recorded four original numbers plus standards; the tapes remained unreleased until DRG Records issued the LP Holliday with Mulligan in 1980.
She starred in the new musical Hot Spot, with songs by Mary Rodgers and Martin Charnin, which opened on Broadway April 19, 1963; the production failed after 43 performances. No cast album was made, though Blue Pear Records released a live recording in 2004 that had previously circulated as a bootleg. Cancer recurred, ending her work after this final effort—a collaboration with Mulligan on the title song for the film A Thousand Clowns, heard only briefly in the finished picture. She died June 7, 1965, two weeks before her 44th birthday.
Albums
