The other night, we watched the 1954 film It Should Happen to You via the Criterion Channel. Jack Lemmon’s major film debut, it’s a gentle satire of fame-seeking, but even in that mildness, it presents a prescient critique of…everything we see around us today.
Screenwriter Garson Kanin and director George Cukor presciently satirize the rise of “famous for being famous” celebrity culture in this irresistible romantic comedy. With her career going nowhere, unemployed actor and model Gladys Glover (Judy Holliday) puts all her money into renting a prominent Manhattan billboard that quickly brings her some much-needed exposure. But Gladys’s overnight fame also comes with a host of romantic complications as she finds herself torn between her documentary-filmmaker boyfriend (Jack Lemmon, in his first major film appearance) and the advances of a playboy soap-company executive (Peter Lawford).
And her billboard?
Just her name. That’s all! Nothing about her, who she is, what she can do – she just wants her name out there!
Wow, this never happens today. Never.
And of course, it happens, and then there are Consequences, and Hard Truths Must Be Faced – and, as I said, it’s a gentle 90-minute journey through 1950’s New York City – always fun – and a reminder that things just don’t change that much at all.
If you wanted to offer young people (who are open to it! Black and white movies! Oh, no!) a little mini-course in the truth that Human Nature and Social Dynamics Don’t Really Change, you might show them this, Ace in the Hole, His Girl Friday (or The Front Page) and Sweet Smell of Success.
They’re a useful mirror – to see people acting in misguided or outright terrible ways sixty or seventy years ago, shake our heads at it, but then have the mirror held up to us – and to see that we’re no different, and in fact it’s worse, since, like nuclear weapons and the human urge to dominate – we can do so much more damage with the tools we have today.
Progress!
Jack: What’s the point of it? Where’s it getting you? No place.
Gladys: No place? I started out with no signs, so then I got one sign… so then I get six. So where do you get “no place”?
Jack: I don’t know what it is, honey, but I don’t seem to get through to you. Let me put it this way. What most people, real people, want is privacy. That’s about the best thing anybody can have.
Gladys: Not me.
Jack: What is this craze to get well-known?
Gladys: Why craze?
Jack: Do you think everybody is so anxious to be above the crowd?
Gladys: Yes.
Jack: But what’s the point of it? (Beat.) In the first place, everybody can’t be above the crowd, can they?
Gladys: No. But everybody can try if they want to.
Jack: But why isn’t it more important to learn how to be a part of the crowd?
Gladys: Not me.
Jack: It isn’t just making a name. Don’t you understand that? It’s making a name that stands for something. Different names stand for different things.
Gladys: So who said not?
Jack: You want my opinion?
Gladys: No…
Jack: My opinion is this. It’s better if your name stands for something on one block than if it stands for nothing all over the entire world.
Gladys: I don’t follow your point.
Jack: I sure wish you could…
The film wasn’t a laugh riot, but it was amusing, and of course Holliday is fascinating to watch as she layers her performance of this maybe-not-so-dumb-broad. The one exchange that made me laugh out loud was between Holliday and Peter Lawford as she muses whether or not he should get a parrot to alleviate his self-announced loneliness.
But the most charming scene is in a bar, with Lemmon (who could play) on the piano and Holliday (who had a good voice) singing a bit with him – and they’re talking and he’s playing and sometimes they sing a little and then they talk some more . This writer did an excellent analysis of the film, and she aptly describes that scene:
In direct contrast, Holliday and Lemmon retain the dynamic of a real, long-married couple, with a rhythm that includes their romance and petty fights and unfinished thoughts. This is never more obvious than in a small scene where the two are together in a bar, with Lemmon on the piano and Holliday close beside him, half-engaged in conversation, half-singing along. Both actors playing up a musical gift they had in real life (Lemmon a gifted pianist and Holliday a delightful chanteuse with theater training) brings an exceptional harmony to the film that sinks into the reality of the moment: Pete and Gladys might ascend into a light quarrel at any wrong note, but they are also just as able to fall back in tune with one another. Despite this being their first time working together, Lemmon and Holliday bring their authentic selves to It Should Happen to You, which relaxes both actors into an unforced rhythm that is all at once romantic, hilarious, and real. What they achieve is of the tremendous sort, the perfectly balanced seesaw, the kind of quick workability that can’t be replicated or expounded; it’s terrific and endearing as it is.
*
Charlotte was Both 