JUDY HOLLIDAY TAKES A SINGING LESSON
(No writing credit listed)
From "McCall's" magazine July, 1957
Millions know Judy Holliday’s speaking voice as the small, slang-filled sounds of Billie Dawn, the dumb but redeemable blonde of Born Yesterday. As of a year ago, Judy acquired a respectable singing voice, which can be heard nowadays in the Broadway musical Bells Are Ringing or on a record album of songs from that show. Three months before Bells Are Ringing opened Judy couldn’t sing a note with anybody watching her, we were told. How had she done it? Judy confessed that she had been taking singing lessons three times a week for over a year. Would we like to go along on the next session?
We rendezvoused at the studio of Herbert Greene, a stocky thirty-five year-old musician and “vocal director”, who has coached such nonmusical actors and Henry Fonda and Rosalind Russell.
Judy, naturally shy and comic, stood in a corner. She wore a gray skirt, a black sleeveless blouse with a broad black belt which traced her slender waist. Greene sat at the piano, smoking a cigar through a holder.
“Judy’s the only pupil I’m keeping on,” Greene volunteered. “My career is shifting away from voice coaching. But I can’t let Judy go. She’s a genius! I get too much out of these lessons. She brings as much to these lessons as she takes away. What an imagination! What a talent!”
“What a line, gee,” said Judy, dimpling with a smile. “The first month with Herb I lived in this corner with my face to the wall. I wouldn’t let anyone but Herb hear me and I didn’t want him seeing me try to sing.”
“Perfectly natural,” put in Greene. “People aren’t used to their voices being powerful. They’re quickly embarrassed. Once Judy got used to her power she found physical satisfaction in roaring like a lion. Listen!” Greene jumped up, seized Judy’s neck, one hand on either side, thumbs on her chin, and hummed a note. Judy rolled her brown eyes toward the ceiling and roared like a lion, roller-coasting up and down major and minor runs. Finally Greene let go of her and looked pleased.
“Judy,” he said, “I wanted you to explain what I was trying to do there.”
“Choke me to death,” said Judy, who was lighting a cigarette. “Herb says smoking doesn’t hurt a singer’s voice. He is like a TV commercial.”
“I force muscles involved with the voice to do their best work,” Greene said, taking over the explanation. “Judy, you do it this time.” Greene plumped himself down at the piano and struck a chord. Judy placed her thumbs on her chin, her fingers on her cheeks and went through another (what Greene called) “vocalese.” “Certain muscles,” said Greene, “neither needed nor wanted, if not inhibited by physical force, would take over.”
“He means if I didn’t hang onto my jaw it would get rigid.” said Judy.
“I’m trying to develop those muscular reflexes,” continued Greene.
“Like Pavlov,” said Judy. “When Herb strikes a note, I bark.”
“I can’t give her up, ever,” said Greene, looking at Judy fondly through his cigar smoke. “Few pupils would respond this well to my dealing simultaneously with volume, size, sound, color and variety of voice. She’s as psychic dame. She knows what I think and mean without my having to say it. When she learns something it’s hers forever.”
“That’s life,” said Judy casually, fussing with her hair. “I have a matinee today; don’t ruin me with all this talk.”
“Give me a mood piece,” ordered Greene, bouncing back to the piano. ”’Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’. There’s emotion in that one that you can’t avoid. Passion, a sexy woman, unashamed, unafraid, ready to speak on the subject musically, with the vigor of a tiger.”
You kill me,” said Judy. She closed her eyes as Greene struck a note, tilted her dimpled, smiling face backward and began to sing. It sounded fine and there wasn’t a tiger in sight.
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