Movie Review: Born Yesterday (1950)

A romantic comedy bundled into an anti-corruption civics lesson, Born Yesterday boasts a stellar Judy Holliday performance but is otherwise loud, stage-bound and simplistically trite.

Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford) is an unsophisticated and loudmouthed New Jersey-based scrap metal tycoon. He arrives in Washington DC with his lawyer Jim Devery (Howard St. John) to arm-twist corruptible congressmen into bending upcoming legislation in his favour. Accompanying Harry is his long-time girlfriend Billie (Holliday), who is attractive but uneducated enough to allow herself to be used by Harry and Jim to hide questionable business transactions under her name.

Journalist Paul Verrall (William Holden) interviews Harry, and then at Jim's suggestion Paul is hired to improve Billie's level of sophistication and her conversational skills to help her better integrate into higher social circles. Billie starts to read the newspaper and absorb all that Washington DC has to offer, while getting crash lessons from Paul on democracy, the law and the ethics of the founding fathers. With her awakening she begins to dislike her role in Harry's questionable deals, and at the same time an attraction evolves between her and Paul, threatening Harry's entire business empire.

Broderick Crawford barks his lines with the uncouth manner of a junkyard dog, Judy Holliday deploys the high-pitched, heavily accented tone of designated trashy airheads, and William Holden sleepwalks through the film with the air of straight arrow righteousness. As directed by George Cukor, this play adaptation is loud, shouty and stage-bound, with a few good chuckles that hit the mark. Billie's education and growth holds some interest, but once it starts her transformation is a singularly linear and predictable journey.

Recreating her on-stage success, Holliday's performance saves the film. She demonstrates a deft comedic touch and impeccable timing, with tiny gestures and pauses to convey Billie's limited brain whirring away at maximum speed to catch up with her surroundings. She nabbed the Best Actress Academy Award ahead of Bette Davis and Anne Baxter (both for All About Eve) and Gloria Swanson (for Sunset Boulevard). Her costars suffer in comparison. Crawford's schtick gets tiresome quickly and Holden almost disappears into the wallpaper.

Stylistically Born Yesterday generally settles for being a well-filmed play. Most of the events take place in the spacious multi-suite hotel wing occupied by Harry Brock. Cukor attempts to break the monotony by inserting some outdoor scenes of Billie exploring the capital, but these never rise beyond the perfunctory and come across as a tourism campaign.

Eleven years after Mr. Smith Goes To Washington exposed movie audiences to what the world of politics is really like, Born Yesterday somehow tries to hang on to a quaint idealism. The film's key message is that government is mostly good, and while there may be a few loose elected officials who can be corrupted, the real problem lies with scoundrels like Harry Brock. It's a fanciful stance that both hampers the film and dates it into a bygone era.

Born Yesterday offers decent enjoyment thanks to a terrific central performance, but it is also shallow in content and confined in location.

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Movie Review: It Should Happen To You (1954)

A featherweight romantic comedy, It Should Happen To You benefits from a vibrant Judy Holliday and takes a few perceptive shots at the shallow world of fame, but otherwise has limited substance.

Free-spirited New York fashion model Gladys Glover (Holliday) has lost her job, but still dreams of being famous. Wandering through Central Park she meets budding photographer Pete Sheppard (Jack Lemmon), who has a down-to-earth view of life and cares little for the celebrity culture. Pete immediately falls in love with Gladys, but she is pursuing her dreams of fame and fortune. Gladys then spots an empty billboard in Columbia Circle and invests all her savings into buying the space and putting her name up in bold letters.

The Adams Soap Company usually rents that advertising board, and company executive Evan Adams III (Peter Lawford) attempts to negotiate with Gladys, offering her money and several alternative billboards around the city to free up the lucrative Columbia Circle location. Evan also starts to fall in love with Gladys, and as her dream of becoming famous suddenly becomes real, it's up to Pete to try and keep her feet on the ground while trying to win her heart.

It Should Happen To You predicts the ever increasing obsession with celebrity for the sake of celebrity, Gladys literally buying her way to notoriety and gaining fans, and then a contract, simply by emblazoning her name on billboards. Her stunt is the most crass form of marketing, and it works, an indictment of the industry and the public's fascination with a familiar name.

With a limited, one-idea premise, the film's appeal resides with Holliday, and she delivers with a deft comic touch. Holliday keeps Gladys on an even keel, mixing starry-eyed determination with large doses of naivete as she strides towards her goal of being a somebody. Her eyes are only opened when she gets close to the success she craves, and unfortunately the Garson Kanin script saddles her with a sudden and unconvincing awakening to the hazards of her ambition.

Lemmon, in his first credited role, quickly establishes his screen persona as normal man happy to be the voice of reason and one of the crowd, but still marching to the beat of a slightly peculiar drummer. His role as Pete is the straightforward conscience of Gladys, and although there are traces of chemistry between them the romance remains a stretch. Overall, the love triangle between Gladys, Pete and Evan plays second fiddle to the commentary on Gladys' fascination with fame.

Director George Cukor keeps the pacing brisk and wraps up the movie in 86 minutes. It Should Happen To You lingers just long enough to deliver it's simple message, then moves along like a time-limited ad campaign.

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Movie Review: Phffft (1954)

A divorce comedy, Phffft boasts smooth chemistry between Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon, but otherwise offers little in the way of crisp content.

Robert and Nina Tracey (Lemmon and Holliday) have been married for eight years, and have just about had enough of each other. He's a tax lawyer, she's a television writer, but their relationship has deteriorated to the point of constant bickering. They quickly agree to get divorced. Through flashbacks, Robert remembers the origins of their relationship: his best friend Charlie Nelson (Jack Carson) introduced Robert to Nina just after the war, the attraction was mutual, and he offered tax filing advice to get closer to her.

Now both single again, Robert crashes at Charlie's apartment, and Charlie is quick to set up dates for his friend with younger women, including a night out with Janice (Kim Novak), a first class airhead. Meanwhile, Nina dates conceited television actor Rick Vidal (Donald Curtis) and gets advice from her mother Edith (Luella Gear), the woman blamed by Robert at least partially for the breakup of the marriage. But for Robert and Nina, finding happiness with new partners will prove surprisingly difficult.

Phffft, which represents the sound of air escaping a relationship according to a newspaper gossip columnist, enjoys one terrific scene on the dance floor. Robert and Nina both try to reinvent themselves by taking dance lessons after their break-up, and they subsequently have a chance encounter at a club which turns into an energetic and prolonged dance duel. Comedy mixes with determined sassiness as Lemmon and Holliday let loose, attempting to both impress and out-do each other. It's an original, well-executed moment in a film that otherwise struggles to overcome a relatively predictable George Axelrod script.

In only his third film role, Lemmon is already establishing his screen persona as an unimposing typical man facing life's challenges with humour and false bravado. Lemmon has sympathetic presence, and easily portrays his problems as representative of society, his clumsy attempts at solutions only slightly more pronounced than real. Holliday is all about comic timing, and she nails her role as Janice with perfect pauses, expressions and reactions. Janice is written as a slightly less realistic character than Robert, but this allows Holliday to shine bright without descending into farce.

Together, Lemmon and Holliday are by far the best thing about Phffft. The film only threatens to sparkle when they are on screen together, and otherwise drifts into predictability. Carson is his usual strong presence but is undermined when his character takes a ridiculous detour towards the end of the movie. Kim Novak, in only her second credited role, attempts to purr herself into busty brainless blonde breathlessness, but her character is thinly written and quickly freefalls into repeating the same jokes to poor effect.

Filmed in rather bland black and white, director Mark Robson is unable to inject much in the way of style. While the escapades of this divorced couple provide harmless entertainment, Lemmon and Holliday at least ensure Phffft doesn't fully deflate.

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Movie Review: Adam's Rib (1949)

A serious comedy about the battle between the sexes, Adam's Rib examines the changing status of women through the story of married lawyers who face off in court. The sixth teaming of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy finds the couple in top form, playing off each other at home and at work.

Adam Bonner (Tracy) is an Assistant District Attorney married to Amanda (Hepburn), a lawyer who represents defendants. When Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) is arrested for shooting and injuring her cheating husband (Tom Ewell), Adam is assigned what seems to be a straightforward prosecution case. But Amanda is sympathetic to Doris' humiliation, and to Adam's horror decides to defend her.

Amanda bases her defence on equality between men and women, presenting Doris as a woman who was defending her family and marriage. Amanda argues that had Doris been a man defending his household, he would be perceived as heroic. As the case garners hysterical media attention, Amanda's well-articulated courtroom rage against inequality befuddles Adam, but also severely stresses their marriage.

With World War Two over and women beginning to feel empowered to seek a new role in society, Adam's Rib throws open the debate about changing societal attitudes about the roles of men and women. Written directly for the screen by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin and powered by a fearless Katharine Hepburn performance, Adam's Rib foreshadows a seismic shift towards feminism that would only come to pass some 15 years later.

Amanda is a confident professional, opinionated, eager to take on a case that appears doomed, and willing to risk the relationship with her husband to better the status of women. In the courtroom she is a formidable opponent, not above resorting to humiliating tricks to weaken Adam's case. She can also be coquettish and irresistible, but her charms begin to fall behind her determination. How far Amanda is willing to go to prove her point while inflicting increasing damage on Adam's ego becomes the central question in the movie.

Spencer Tracy brings his typical principled everyman persona to Adam, creating an impressive male role model. He has strong values, loves his wife and believes in the justice system, which makes Amanda's incessant barrage on her husband's position resonate with so much more poignancy.

While Adam will fight to the end to prove that his time-tested principles are not subject to Amanda's gender warfare arguments, in contrast other men are ready to fall down and die at the feet of Amanda's coming revolution. The Bonners' neighbour Kip Lurie (David Wayne) is openly in love with Amanda, and will worship the ground she walks on regardless of which metamorphosis she is advocating. Kip is a music composer and piano player, and so gets to warble the Cole Porter song Farewell, Amanda to express his unashamed devotion to his neighbour.

Director George Cukor keeps the pacing brisk and the mood light-hearted despite the serious subject matter.  He makes good use of some interesting editing and camera placements, keeping many scenes long between cuts and allowing the camera to sit and rest, a silent observer of a loving couple arguing their way towards a new society.

Adam's Rib pushes the pendulum of harmony between men and women sharply in one direction before nudging it back a bit, careful to ensure that one courtroom battle victory is not earned at the expense of destroying the foundations needed for a new and better relationship to thrive.

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