TALK WITH THE STAR

Written by Richard Lemon
From "Newsweek" magazine June 27, 1960

“You don’t have to look so holy,” Judy Holliday warned NEWSWEEK MOVIES editor Richard Lemon, putting one of her own records on the phonograph in her large, sparsely decorated New York apartment. Then, looking owlishly serious beneath a wayward mop of blond hair, she perched on the edge of her chair and listened to the opening bars of “Loving You”, words by Judy Holliday, music by jazzman Gerry Mulligan. (Each is divorced and their mutual romantic interest extends beyond songwriting.) Suddenly from the record player her melodic voice issued” “Loving you”—ba-dum-de-dum—“makes the grass grow, makes the…”

“Don’t know where to look, do you?” the real-life Miss Holliday whispered, as her visitor’s gaze wandered casually across the ceiling. “I used to laugh at song pluggers who played their music all the time — you came in the door and your arms were pinned at your side and you had to listen.”

New Life:

The record ended, and Miss Holliday was roundly complimented. “It’s a whole new life,” she said, fervently. “Gerry and I are working on an album, with his arrangements and me singing and two of our songs, It makes me feel like Ira Gershwin — I mean for one reason only: Because George wrote things like” — she hummed a few bars of the rapid-fire “Fascinating Rhythm” — “ and then said, ‘OK, Ira, put words to it.’ “I’ve also started taking flute lessons,” she went on, “because it’s about time I learned to read music. I know a lot about music and I have a good ear but I don’t read a note. My mother is a piano teacher, but it never took with me, because this is the same voice that said ‘Darling, eat your spinach’.”

Having conquered comedy and music, Judy Holliday’s next assignment will be in the stage version of the late stage star Laurette Taylor’s life, scheduled for the fall. Miss Holliday looked somber when the subject came up. “I get very nervous whenever I think about it,” she said. “I’ve never done a serious play, and I have such awe of the woman—she’s really my only idol. It’s going to be a big stretch—certain people come out on stage and your face muscles automatically tense and you get ready to smile.”

Pretty Pictures:

“I can’t accept this idea you run across sometimes in Hollywood, that a pretty picture is more important than the content,” she went on. “But generally I’ve loved making movies. The close up is about the most beautiful thing that ever happened to an actor. The first time it happened to me I kept lowering my eyes, like in modesty, and George [Cukor] kept yelling at me ‘What do you think I’m in here for, a picture of your lids?’ This is an old story, but if you’re thinking right, it projects. Greta Garbo didn’t think she was beautiful, and that denigrated her beauty. When she thought she was beautiful, she became beautiful. Well, for ‘Born Yesterday’ I had to be thinner, and George told me: ‘You’re going to have to think thin.’ And by God I did it, and the shot was all eyes — and I was thinner.”