HOLLIDAY, JUDY

HOLLIDAY, JUDY (Judith Tuvim; 1922–1965), U.S. actress. Born in New York, her father, Abraham Tuvim (1894–1954), was executive director of the Foundation for the Jewish National Fund. Holliday made her professional debut in 1938 as part of the nightclub act The Revuers, which also starred aspiring playwrights betty comden and adolph green . She made her Broadway debut in 1945 in Kiss Them for Me. A year   later she starred in the comedy Born Yesterday as the "dumb blonde" Billie Dawn. Her subsequent Broadway roles were in Bells Are Ringing (1956–59) and Hot Spot (1963). In 1957 she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for Bells Are Ringing. She then played in the film version of Born Yesterday and won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Actress in 1951. She appeared in several other films as well, which included Adam's Rib (1949), The Marrying Kind (1952), It Should Happen to You (1954), Phffft\! (1954), The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956), Full of Life (1957), and Bells Are Ringing (1960). Although she was an accomplished actress, she was mainly cast as the effervescent airhead. But, as Holliday was once quoted as saying, "You have to be smart to play a dumb blonde over and over and keep the audience's attention without extraordinary physical equipment." She put that skill to good use when, in 1952, she was summoned to testify during the McCarthy Communist witch hunt. Playing her "ditzy blonde" character to the hilt on the witness stand, she so confounded the House Un-American Activities Committee that she ended up being the only person ever called before HUAC not to be blacklisted or forced to name names. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: G. Carey, Judy Holliday: An Intimate Life Story (1982); W. Holtzman, Judy Holliday, Only Child (1982). (Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)