What was the plot line of the 1950 film Born Yesterday?”
Over fifty years ago, Judy Holliday won the Best Actress Oscar in this comic fable, confounding her competition, Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. She plays Billie Dawn, the unruly mistress of millionaire junk dealer Harry Brock. Afraid she’ll embarrass him in front of the congressman he is planning to bribe, Harry hires a tweedy tutor (William Holden) to smooth her rough edges.Of course, everyone gets the education they deserve. Comedy heroines can get away with plenty that dramatic heroines cannot. But, unlike the madcap heiresses of 1930s screwball comedy, the wacky behavior of the 1950s dumb blonde is linked to dimness, rather than a liberating eccentricity. Holliday was a comedienne of shrewd intelligence and exuberant talent. Her not-so-dumb blondes enjoy a superior detachment from the world and were a model for the slightly later comic characters of Marilyn Monroe. Holliday’s Oscar win is considered one of the great upsets in Academy Award hist
Born Yesterday is a 1950 film based on the play of the same name by Garson Kanin and directed by George Cukor. The screenplay was written by Albert Mannheimer with uncredited contributions from Kanin. A corrupt tycoon brings his showgirl mistress with him to Washington when he tries to buy a Congressman. He hires a journalist to educate his girlfriend, and in the process, she learns just how corrupt her boyfriend is. Plot: Uncouth tycoon Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford) goes to Washington, D.C. with his brassy mistress, Emma ‘Billie’ Dawn (Judy Holliday), and his crooked lawyer, Jim Devery (Howard St. John), to “influence” a politician or two. The lawyer also presses Harry to marry Billie on the grounds that a wife cannot testify against her husband. Harry becomes disgusted with Billie’s ignorance and lack of manners (though he himself is much worse) and hires a tutor for her, journalist Paul Verrall (William Holden). Blossoming under Paul’s encouragement, Billie turns out to be much s
