Judy Holliday

Although her life was cut tragically short by cancer, actress/singer Judy Holliday managed significant accomplishments in a career that lasted 25 years and included both Academy and Tony Awards. Her body of work is relatively small: significant roles in eight feature films, three Broadway plays, and two stage musicals, plus occasional recordings, radio and television appearances, and nightclub performances. But she achieved major stardom in Hollywood and in the legitimate theater during her career, creating indelible characterizations of appealing women who turned out to be much smarter than they appeared at first. Audiences identified with these funny, down-to-earth portrayals and filled theaters to see Holliday whether she appeared onscreen or in person. Holliday's date of birth is widely cited as 1922, but her biographer, Gary Carey, reports that her birth certificate on file at the New York Department of Health shows that she was born on June 21, 1921. The name on that certificate is Judith Tuvim. She was the only child of Abraham Tuvim, a fundraiser and promoter, and Helen (Gollomb) Tuvim, a housewife who played and later taught piano. (Abraham Tuvim was something of a jack of all trades, with songwriting among his talents. He is credited for additional lyrics in the 1934 Broadway musical Africana.) Holliday took ballet lessons as a child and showed a youthful interest in the theater. When she was six, her parents separated, though they were never divorced, and she was raised by her mother. At the age of ten, she took a standard intelligence test that registered her IQ at an extraordinarily high 172; not surprisingly, she was a voracious reader and graduated from high school first in her class in 1938. But she did not go on to college, instead taking a job as a...