Working my way through '50s cinema these past few months, there haven't been many films that I've really enjoyed for their pure entertainment value. Then I watched my first Judy Holliday film in roughly a decade, and I was promptly swept off my feet. Written by Garson Kanin and directed by George Cukor, "It Should Happen to You" is a sparkling screwball comedy featuring Holliday paired with Jack Lemmon in his screen debut.
After a long string of Marilyn Monroe movies, it was so good to see Holliday again. Like Monroe, her screen persona is that of the sweetly naive and silly blonde, but the difference is that Holliday is shrewd and street smart in spite of this. Here, she plays Gladys Glover, an unemployed New York model who decides to spend her hard-earned money to rent a billboard and put her name in giant letters over Columbus Circle. Her passion for fame puts her on a rapid ascent to celebrity, to the exasperation of her would-be boyfriend Pete Sheppard, played by Lemmon. She's also being pursued by hot shot executive Evan Adams, played by Peter Lawford. Gladys's choice isn't really between Pete and Evan, but between Pete and her dreams of fame.
And it's so much fun to watch Holliday in the first act, stubbornly negotiating with the ad executives and the billboard company, refusing to be steamrollered or sweet-talked into giving up her billboard. She refuses to justify herself to Pete, who views her whole scheme as ridiculous, and holds her own during their many arguments about the subject. Of course, Pete wins her over in the end, but Gladys is no pushover. She decides for herself, after witnessing the phoniness and hypocrisy of various ad campaigns, that the business isn't for her. The argument scenes between Holliday and Lemmon are fantastic, with just the right amount of absurdity. One sequence has Holliday running up and down a flight of stairs as she keeps trying to get in the last word.
It's also great to see Jack Lemmon here, his screen presence already fully formed after years of work on television. Pete is a documentarian, and has a lot of fun bits of business with his 16mm camera. I can't help wishing that we could have seen more of the action from his point of view. However, it's the vulnerability that comes through, despite his fast-talking and bluster, that really sells the romance. There's a film-within-a-film segment that is one of the most charming things I've ever seen him do. Poor Peter Lawford is awfully stiff by comparison, even when having drinks spilled on him. I suppose that makes him perfect as the symbol of Gladys's disillusionment with fame and fortune.
One thing I really appreciate about the romantic comedies from this era is that they're fairly light on sentimentality. Nobody mopes. The pace never flags. The big romantic gestures made by both parties function as punchlines as much as emotional beats. A modern take on the same story - and couldn't you just see this one being remade so easily with a vlogger and an influencer? - would emphasize the romance over the comedy. "It Should Happen to You" tilts much more toward the comedic side, and doesn't waste a moment. Like most comedies of its time, it runs a brisk 87 minutes and doesn't feel short at all.
I liked "It Should Happen to You" so much that I went and found "Phffft," the Lemmon and Holliday romantic comedy that they made later in the same year, directed by Mark Robson. It does not compare, but it did cement my opinion that Holliday and Lemmon are great together, and I wish we had more pictures with them paired. Judy Holliday's list of credits is depressingly short on its own, but I have at least three more of her films I haven't seen. I'll be saving them for a rainy day.
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