This is the film that Judy Holliday beat out Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard - also featuring William Holden, of course) and Bette Davis (All About Eve) to win the Oscar for, and it was the "Marisa Tomei for My Cousin Vinny" of its day. But Holliday is peerless in this film, which is occasionally clunky (particularly towards the end) but otherwise a very refreshing re-working of Pygmalion. Holliday is Billie Dawn, fiancée of the brutish junk king Harry Brock (played flawlessly by Broderick Crawford - he doesn't look like he's acting at any moment). They (along with Brock's entourage, chiefly his cousin Eddie, who is his general dogsbody, and Jim Devery, the brains of the outfit, his disillusioned lawyer (Howard St. John, who manages to play perpetually slightly tipsy without any of the usual actorly tics)) arrive at a fancy Washington DC hotel as the film opens to take over an entire wing for the duration while Harry tries to acquire political influence. Brock's first task, presented him by Jim, is to grant an interview to a reporter who is a bit of a king-maker, according to Jim, viz., William Holden's Paul Verrall. Verrall tags along while Brock heads upstairs in his suite for a shave and a shoeshine (harder, because he always takes off his shoes first thing when he comes into his suite,
a fact Billie comments on later), and we and Paul witness Brock at his most obnoxious: bossing around everyone, boasting about his rags-to-riches story while openly admitting the thievery it took. Paul is very quickly sickened and makes his exit, but not before he's seen Billie waft through the room. Brock's next task is to chat up "his" congressman, Norval Hedges, and his wife.
He insists Billie be there for this, but she is sulky and reveals that she doesn't know what the Supreme Court is. (Holliday is great here - slipping out of the room to sing along in her fractured helium voice to the radio.) Even Brock knows she has embarrassed herself, and mutters about cutting her loose. But there are two problems with that: first, he has made her a co-owner of his businesses (for whatever nefarious reasons, I wasn't quite clear), which is why Jim keeps bringing her stacks of papers for her signature, and second, "I'm crazy about the broad". So his solution is to call Paul back and give him the task of improving Billie. So here's the Pygmalion angle.
But there are important differences. First, Billie is perfectly comfortable - she's not doing this in search of a better life. And second, pretty much instantly she hits on Paul and makes it clear she's A-OK with a roll in the hay, and it won't be the first time. (What with the Hayes code, you'd think this wouldn't be make so evident, but it's pretty crystal clear.) Paul politely declines, and the education begins. The point of her education is so that she "fits in" in Washington, so most of it involves visiting things like the Capitol
and reading people like Thomas Paine. And this is where the film seems quaintly old-fashioned (along with a speech later about how rare and hard it is to buy off United States Congressmen) or perhaps a bit naïve, but Holliday is just so gifted and natural a performer that it never once grates. Somewhere in here (I think after the first meeting between Billie and Paul) is perhaps the best scene in the whole movie: a Gin Rummy game between Billie and Brock. Brock boasted to the congressman and his wife that he taught Billie and now she beats the pants of him, and we witness this in action. It's just pure physical comedy, from Holliday's shuffling, to her counting while moving her lips, to her singing tunelessly to herself, with Crawford steadily getting more and more irate, as she quickly and easily demolishes him. Apparently, in Rummy, when one player finishes, the other has to count up the score of his remaining cards and add that to his total, so that, like golf, the higher score is the loser. And it's obvious both to us and Billie that Brock is undercounting. Anyway, do yourself a favor and just watch it. Actually, the scene could be touching. This is obviously a regular event - Billie walks in from her room in the suite knowing that Brock will be coming from his, and they sit down and start without having to say a word - and Brock clearly wants to be here with Billie rather than out on the town. But Brock just can't get over his massive self-regard. This scene reveals that Billie has keen natural intelligence, and as her knowledge grows,
she becomes more dissatisfied with her lot. Meanwhile Jim keeps pestering Brock to marry Billy so that if their shenanigans becomes public Billie can't be made to testify against him. Also meanwhile, Paul bends her ear with egalitarian manifestos. (Although this is not developed, there's also a nice scene where Paul is cut down to size a bit: he asks Billie if she's read his column and she says she did, and while she loved it, she didn't understand a word of it. And as we go through it, we see it really is purple-prosed, and when he explains what it means, she says "well why didn't you say that?" and he is taken aback. As the film goes on, Brock becomes more and more restless as it becomes clear that his one congressman isn't enough to get laws passed that he wants and things come to a head such that Billie refuses to sign some papers, and Brock hits her. You can see this coming, but it's still a shocking moment, particularly as both people involved act it so perfectly. From then on, it's a race to the finish as Billie and Paul conspire to bring down Brock and make good Billie's escape. So in conclusion: while the plot verges on Capra-esque corn in places, this is still damn close to a perfectly done movie, and Holliday is sublime.
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