Where has Judy Holliday been all my life? Thanks to (what else) a Criterion Channel collection of her films, we have been introduced to her charms, and they are manifold. As the film unfolded we found ourselves speculating what she would have been like in, for example, Some Like It Hot, and what a crime it was that she never made a film with Cary Grant. While she's not the sex-bomb that Marilyn is (and is hampered by some seriously silly hairdos in this movie), she has superior comic delivery (and Marilyn's no slouch, certainly in SLIH) and is just a unique presence. She also has very expressive eyes and a smile that is radiant. I thought that maybe it would be fair to call her somewhere between Marilyn and Lucille Ball, but in this film she's a bit more like the Gracie of George-Burns-and- fame: in some respect happily oblivious. However, she's not ditsy so much as slightly off-kilter. It took a little bit of the film to get accustomed to her oddness, but once you do, you find yourself captivated. And there are some great lines that she delivers perfectly. It's a measure of her star power that she completely overshadows Jack Lemmon (in his first major film role) - no easy feat. Anyway, on to the plot summary. The film opens in Central Park where Lemmon is a documentary filmmaker (an independent one, judging by his apparent relative poverty) shooting scenes of the park goers suffering slightly in the summer heat. His eye is caught by one of these who is a woman who is walking around in her stockinged feet, looking dreamy and throwing peanuts to the pigeons. She plops down next to a man lying on the grass trying to listen to a ball game on his radio and tries to strike up a conversation with him, but he gets peevish and then accuses her of trying to hit on him (patently ridiculous as she is out of his league) and they part in a huff. Lemmon ("Pete Sheppard") introduces himself and they chat, in the course of which she reveals that she's just lost her job as a girdle model because the girdle wasn't fitting and her boss bet with the designer that it was the girdle's fault, but the designer measured her and she was 3/4 of an inch larger than usual, and because he'd lost $50 in the bet, her boss got mad at her and fired her. She also reveals that she came to New York City trying to make a name for herself, and also that her name is "Gladys Glover," a name she's not too fond of. Pete tries to cheer her up and assures her that things will work out, but that he has to get going. However, he gets her address so that he can show her the finished documentary in which she features. Pete leaves Gladys with a rather confusing self-coined aphorism: "where there's a will there's a way, and where there's a way there's a will."
Then, as she's leaving the park, Gladys sees a big billboard for rent in Columbus Circle and gets an idea.
The next day, she plucks up courage and heads to the Pfeiffer advertising company and plops down her savings to rent the billboard for 3 months, just to have her name on it. Things start to get complicated when the head of the company that usually rents the billboard, the Adams Soap Company, discovers that the billboard his father always insisted on renting when he ran the company has already been taken. (The man at Pfeiffer tried to contact him several times, but Evan Adams III, it is clear, is a bit of a playboy.) They call Gladys in, expecting to buy her off very easily, but she loves her billboard (seriously: she gazes at it in rapt adoration) and refuses. Adams comes up with a solution: he offers her six other billboards, one of them outside Grand Central Station in exchange. Gladys is very pleased. Meanwhile, Pete has taken an apartment in her building and she is happily hanging out with him,
but he is bewildered and in fact rather enraged by her billboard fixation. He gives her a little speech about how better that your name stand for something and be known by nobody than for nothing and be known by everyone. She is not to be discouraged, however, and while taking him to see one of her signs, they pop into Macy's opposite to buy towels, and when she gives her name to the saleslady, she is besieged by autograph-hunters. Then a man comes on the TV later wondering who this Gladys Glover is ("some relative of Killroy?") she phones in and gets invited on. She is initially stiff, just reading off the teleprompter (at increasing speeds as they chivvy her along), but then when she is asked a question (something like "are you glad to be on the show?") she grins hugely and says something to the effect of yes, especially as they're paying her). The crowd thinks she's great, although it's not clear if they're laughing at her or with her. She goes from strength to strength, and Adams Soap hires her as its endorser - "the average American girl" - and she is plastered everywhere, doing everything from posing in the bath to posing on skis. Meanwhile Evan Adams becomes increasingly intrigued by her and pursues her (his following her up her stairs after dropping her off after a night of dancing, as she tries to lose him repeatedly manages the difficult task of being very funny rather than creepy, something that is entirely down to Holliday's substantial comic gifts). And Adams keeps up his pursuit, used as he is to his charms (and wealth) ensuring conquests.
Of course Pete is watching all this and decides that he's lost her, and leaves her with a little film conveying his feelings for her called "Goodbye Gladys".
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