All-TIME 100 Movies

Judy Holliday, Bells Are Ringing

She had a little, kewpie-doll voice and a large frame; the 5ft.10in. comedienne would have bought her gowns at the Big & Tall Ladies’ Salon. Judy Holliday was also the most dynamic, engaging musical comedy star of her generation. That makes her only movie musical, Bells Are Ringing, one to treasure. Adapted by her old Revuers pals Betty Comden and Adolph Green from their Broadway hit, with tunes by Jule Styne and direction by Vincente Minnelli, the film casts Holliday as Ella Petersen, an answering service operator who brightens her customer’s lives but has no control over her own. Dean Martin is the wrong guy who becomes Mr. Right, and Eddie Foy Jr. a bookie with a scheme to take phone bets disguised as orders for classical records (“Who is Handel? Hialeah! Hialeah!”). But it’s Judy’s show, and she’s a pearl: sweet, vulnerable, totally winning. Her farewell song (“I’m goin’ back / Where I can be me / At the Bonjour Tristesse Brassiere Company”) has an extra poignance because this was Holliday’s final film. She died of throat cancer five years later, at 44.

Next: Bill Murray, Groundhog Day

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