Judy Holliday might be best remembered as a movie star, but theatre is what she loved most and theatre was what she was most successful at. Remarkably, she only appeared in four Broadway productions, but two of those four were monster hits. A career .500 batting average on Broadway is better than most performers can claim. Just the combined stage productions of Born Yesterday and Bells Are Ringing alone consumed six years of her life and would see her give close to 2,500 performances.
In 1957, She won a Tony award for Bells Are Ringing beating out Julie Andrews and Ethel Merman. Her upset victory echoed her startling Oscar win over Bette Davis and Gloria Swanson six years earlier. To this day, there are still a great number of people who begrudge Judy's Oscar and Tony award victories, dismissing them as flukes or even mistakes.
Subsequent revivals of both Born Yesterday and Bells Are Ringing have quickly folded. Fans and critics alike find it very difficult to accept anyone other than Judy Holliday in the role of "Billie Dawn" or "Ella Peterson." She set the bar so high that any actress who undertakes the role, no matter how talented they may be, is certain to fall short by comparison. That indefinable "essence" of Judy Holliday that made her so unique just cannot be replicated.
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