On Dec. 25, 1950, Columbia unveiled the George Cukor-directed adaptation of Born Yesterday at its Los Angeles premiere. The film went on to nab five nominations at the 23rd Academy Awards, including for best picture, and won best actress for Judy Holliday’s turn as Billie Dawn. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below:
Born Yesterday comes to the screen as the bright, infectious and delightful entertainment that it was when the play first took Broadway by storm several years ago. And for this feat of transforming what has become a stock and road show wheelhorse into 104 minutes of rollicking celluloid fun, the impresarios of Gower Street can begin drinking champagne from the dainty slipper of Judy Holliday. She’s only wonderful and without her triumphant performance of Billie Dawn, the honey-haired chorus girl who topples the power of a money-mad tycoon, Born Yesterday would be dead tomorrow.
In its adaptation of the original and in its physical appurtenances Born Yesterday, as conceived in the production of S. Sylvan Simon, is simply a stage play. Except for a few Washington street scenes the action is accomplished in just a few interiors. There is little variation of lighting and at times some of the lines are lost because of poor mixing of the different voice registers of Miss Holliday and Broderick Crawford.
One can see that director Cukor, under the circumstances imposed, chose to utilize Miss Holliday as the device by which to infuse movement and vitality into a static conversation piece. And the fact that the great lines from the show are retained is a tremendous help.
Not even the ineptness of the production can conceal the fact that the play is a great and funny work. Its wit is sharp; its satire, penetrating.
Born Yesterday, though, is all Judy Holliday. Cukor provides her with every leeway to make her slinky walk, squeaky voice and astonishing malapropisms count for every possible laugh. And still her inner-sincerity comes through when she wakes up and decides to do some civic housecleaning the best way she knows how — by becoming the prettiest chick who ever spoke five lines in a musical.
There are absolutely no alterations in the story line of Born Yesterday, which is the account of Harry Brock, who climbs to the top of the junk business and proposes now to form an international cartel with the help of his drunken lawyer and a crooked congressman. His fatal mistake is the employment of newspaperman William Holden to give his girl friend the “culture” necessary to make her acceptable in Washington. Holden instead fills her with notions of democratic action. She begins to realize that Harry is taking advantage of too many people and is a fit client for a federal clink. Because much of his property is in her name she is able to crumble his empire by the simple act of walking out on him.
The Harry Brock of Broderick Crawford is a big disappointment from an actor who won the Academy Award last year. It is shockingly overplayed and never convincing in the attitudes of affection for the chorine. Some shouting is necessary to the playing of Brock but not to the extent employed by Crawford, particularly on the screen. Holden’s sincerity makes more of the newspaperman than is actually written in the script. Howard St. John, as the corrupt lawyer, wins sympathy from the start and his drunken moments are done with admirable restraint. Frank Otto is excellent as Harry’s stooge. Supporting spots are capably filled by Larry Oliver, Barbara Brown, Grandon Rhodes and Claire Carleton.
The production design is by Harry Horner and Joseph Walker is credited with the photography. Charles Nelson’s editing succeeds in punctuating the laughs at the right spots. — Staff byline, originally published on Nov. 17, 1950.
