It’s been a rather sober week here at Word and Song, so we’ve decided to go for a comedy for our Film of the Week. It’s George Cukor’s Born Yesterday, the story of a ditzy young blonde named Billie Dawn (Judy Holliday, who won an Oscar for her tour-de-force of a performance) who comes alive intellectually and morally, under the unlikely influence of a down-and-out journalist, Paul Verrall (William Holden, so oddly underrated; we’ve featured him here for The Country Girl and The Bridge on the River Kwai).
The situation is this. A boorish and violent-tempered junkyard magnate, Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford, cast here as a man whose two forms of speech are growling and shouting), has come to Washington, D. C., to be nearer to the economic and political action. He’s got a Congressman in his pocket, and he wants more — power, money, and then some more power, and some more money. He’s been using his girlfriend, really his “moll,” Billie Dawn, to sign papers and contracts under her name to hide his involvement, and she’s never given a passing thought to it. In other words, he’s been up to his neck in graft. Now that they’re in Washington, though, Harry’s got the idea that they should try to make themselves a little more presentable. So he hires Paul to teach her some manners and give her a little veneer of sophistication. I think here of Hamlet’s line, when he turns an instrument of treachery meant for him against the carriers of the instrument: “‘Tis great sport to see the engineer / Hoist with his own petard.” An “engineer” there is a man in charge of a military engine, and a “petard” is a bomb. So he blows himself sky-high with his own incendiary device. Billie Dawn isn’t the one who brings Paul into the picture. It’s Harry — and that’s rich!
You see, Billie Dawn seems — but perhaps only seems — as dumb as a bag of rocks. She doesn’t believe in anything, not because she’s rejected every high principle she’s ever encountered, but because she’s never encountered any at all. Judy Holliday gives her a heavy working-class New York accent that is immensely entertaining, yet we suspect she’s got some brains somewhere in there. And of course she is beautiful, and Paul falls in love with his pupil, and so what we’ve got here is a form of the Pygmalion (or My Fair Lady) story. Harry half suspects it, but only half, as Paul slowly teaches Billie Dawn that she’s not worthless, she doesn’t have to lead the rather hopeless and benighted life she has been leading, there are more things in the world than the strong taking advantage of the weak, and in fact there’s a great world of knowledge out there, and beauty, that she can begin to enjoy and be a part of. Once she sees that, we understand that the break with Harry is inevitable. The questions are when, and how, with how much ruin, and who’s going down with him.
The film’s a romp, of course, and it is not a religious film — the “salvation” that Paul brings to Billie is to awake her to a higher and purer way of life. But it is a film of conversion even so. Conversion means what the Latin suggests: you turn around. We don’t have any saints here, but we do have that fundamental movement from a life that is just vanity in perpetual motion, to a truly human life — and of course, as in almost all of Shakespeare’s comedies, we have to end in marriage. But you suspected that, no doubt. The fun of the film is in how you get there — with a good lot of dramatic irony at the final turning point!
So this one’s more than Rex Harrison teaching Audrey Hepburn to say after him, “The RAIN in SPAIN falls MAINLY on the PLAIN.” We’ve always found it a lot of fun at our house. Judy Holliday steals every scene she’s in, yet we never feel that she’s overdoing it — she just simply IS Billie Dawn. She had played the role on Broadway, opposite Paul Douglas as the junkyard millionaire, where the play was a smash, and she won her Oscar over Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard and, more of a coup in my view, over Bette Davis in All About Eve. The political angle was a tad controversial at the time, but the real heart of the film is purely human.
Word & Song bthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well as a Friday podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. To support this project, please join us as a subscriber and please do share our posts.
This is one of my favorite movies. Broderick Crawford is sensational in the role. I think that the scene where Billie and Harry are playing gin rummy is one of the best bits of screen writing and directing to say nothing of acting. Judging by comments on YouTube, I think a lot of people see it as merely humorous, especially Billie’s little tics—her humming, eye movements and finger tapping. Instead, I think it shows us that she is a highly intelligent person, making rapid and correct calculations. I also think that Harry realizes that she is a lot smarter than he, and this disconcerts or even frightens him. Up to that point it hadn't entered his mind. Years ago, I participated in a group chat with Michael Dirda, the book editor of the Washington Post. The topic was novels and/or movies that took place in Washington, DC. “Advise and Consent” (the book) and “Born Yesterday” were my contributions. People had forgotten about the film and seemed glad to be reminded. Washington looks beautiful in the film.