This Day in Entertainment History (Judy Holliday and Fellow “Revuers” in Show-Biz Start)

August 28, 1939—Attendees at the Westport County Playhouse saw The Revuers, a satirical musical act that had been together less than a year, but were already performing with a wit and skill that would play out over the next several decades.

Two of the five-member group would become songwriter partners in Hollywood and on Broadway: Adolph Green and Betty Comden. Another was an 18-year-old who perfected a dumb-blonde act that was exactly the opposite of her frighteningly talented and intelligent real-life persona: Judith Tavin, better known to vintage-film aficionados like myself as Judy Holliday.

The group—whose members also included Alvin Hammer and John Frank—got its start in December of the prior year at the Village Vanguard. Its owner, Max Gordon, had no liquor license but thought the youngsters’ satirical skits, dances and songs (with words and music by Comden and Green, since they couldn’t afford to pay for anyone else’s) would give his place the bohemian ambiance that had existed in Greenwich Village only a few decades before.

For the next five years, the Revuers went on a whirligig of engagements—uptown theaters, nightclubs, and radio—where they performed their collaboratively created material. They even managed an extended run at Radio City Music Hall. Sometimes they were even joined by recent Harvard alum Leonard Bernstein, a friend of Green’s from summer camp a few years before, who got into the spirit of the enterprise by playing the piano for the hell of it.

The group was infused with a sense of camaraderie. Even the most serious obstacle in the face of their progress—Frank’s heavy drinking—was resolved as amicably as could be expected, with Frank leaving the group but still retaining a financial interest.

That mutual loyalty stood the group in good stead in their brief Hollywood stint, and in the sometimes-troubled years beyond. Agents tried to sign Holliday separately from the rest of the group, but she refused, until a compromise was worked out: the Revuers as a whole would be cast in one picture, but only Holliday would be granted a standard multi-year contract.

The group’s single scene in its single film—Greenwich Village—ended up on the cutting-room floor. The contracts for Hammer, Comden and Green were not renewed—pretty amazing lack of foresight, when you consider the incredible contributions the latter two made to the movie musical within the next 16 years (e.g., The Barkleys of Broadway, On the Town, Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, It's Always Fair Weather, and Bells are Ringing).

Holliday wasn’t used in much better fashion, making only three films before she, too, had to decamp back east. Her breakthrough came on Broadway, when she replaced Jean Arthur—afflicted with an attack of the nerves—before the opening of Garson Kanin’s Born Yesterday.

Stefany Anne Goldberg has a fascinating take on Holliday and her Born Yesterday character Billie Dawn as the epitome of “the dumb broad,” as opposed to the “dumb blonde” epitomized by Marilyn Monroe. I think that comparing the two women yields these interesting similarities:

* Both experienced difficult childhoods (the mental illness of Monroe’s mother meant that Marilyn was sent to an orphans’ home, while Holliday’s parents split);

* Both were afflicted at points with depression (Monroe’s, obviously, far more disabling than Holliday’s);

* Both had film careers that lasted for roughly the same period, 1949-1960;

* Both died young, in the 1960s.

And yet, Marilyn has become an American icon, celebrated in song (Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind”), while Holliday—possessed of looks, talent, and intelligence (an I.Q. of 172!!!!)—does not have anywhere near the same mass recognition. What a shame.

Back to the Revuers. I mentioned that the group had some troubled years. One of these came in the midst of one of the high points of Holliday’s career, her Tony-winning Broadway triumph in Bells Are Ringing. (The character—an employee at a telephone answering service—was one that she could identify with, since she’d worked as a switchboard operator for Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater before she took up with The Revuers.)

Holliday’s love affair with co-star Sydney Chaplin provided a year’s worth of backstage drama. Early on, she championed Charlie Chaplin’s son—a charmer who, unfortunately, did not have much of a singing voice—when everyone else (starting, but by no means ending, with Comden and Green) insisted he would not do.

Later, when their affair ended and she made clear she not only she wanted no part of him but also no part of anyone who continued to socialize with him, her two longtime songwriting friends found their relationship with Holliday sorely tested. After all they’d been through, Comden and Green had come to like Chaplin, and wouldn’t hear of disinviting him to parties.

Holliday bristled at Green about her feelings of betrayal, but continued with the show's run—as well as the movie, the last one she would make. She died after a horrific struggle with breast cancer, at age 43.

Once you’re done looking at some of the best of Holliday on film (I’d recommend the hilarious card scene with Broderick Crawford in Born Yesterday or her emotionally lacerating discovery that her son has just died, in the incredibly underrated The Marrying Kind), go back a little further in time, and listen to these audio clips of her with the other Revuers, and see how she got started. After you've stopped laughing, wipe away a tear for what we've all lost.