The Big Idea Behind IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU

The basic idea for the story of It Should Happen to You occurred to playwright Garson Kanin one day when he was driving on Columbus Circle in New York City. He was attempting to cheer up his wife, actress/writer Ruth Gordon, by telling her that he'd put her name up on the biggest billboard on the block if it would make her happy. This notion became a story in which the hero rents a billboard - not as a gift, but for his own self-aggrandizement. Kanin had Danny Kaye in mind for the comedy, but Gordon convinced him that a female lead would be more sympathetic. They no doubt instantly pictured Judy Holliday as that female ¿ the actress had established a dizzy blonde persona in her previous three movies, all of them written by the Kanin-Gordon team or by Kanin solo.

The Broadway hit Born Yesterday was the vehicle that catapulted the careers of both Holliday and playwright Kanin in the late 1940s. Holliday had to learn the complicated part in a mere four days after Jean Arthur left the show during tryouts, but she immediately wowed critics and audiences. The play opened on Broadway on February 4, 1946, and ran for almost four years. Holliday left the role, in fact, only when Kanin recommended her for a supporting role in George Cukor's film Adam's Rib in 1949.

It Should Happen to You was the fifth and final collaboration between George Cukor and Judy Holliday. Cukor had been virtually the only director Holliday had known. In 1944, she had her first billed appearance - a small part in Cukor's Winged Victory, a wartime drama about the Army Air Corps written by Moss Hart. Following years on the stage, Holliday next had a plum supporting part in Cukor's Adam's Rib, the sparkling Katharine Hepburn - Spencer Tracy vehicle, which was written by Kanin and Gordon. This was followed in 1950 by Holliday's signature role, as Billie Dawn in Cukor's adaptation of Born Yesterday. Two years later, the team of Cukor, Holliday, and Kanin-Gordon was reunited for The Marrying Kind (1952), a quirky comedy-drama co-starring Aldo Ray.

by John Miller