Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 15-October-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium

It Should Happen to You (1954)

Whenever I review a movie from the 1950s I always find myself analyzing the culture of the time, as if back then cinema was more expressive of its context than now. Or maybe it's just that the hallmarks of the '50s make for interesting viewing. There seems to have been a simultaneous desire to enforce the family values of clean, cheerful living and to illustrate how naive these values are. Female stars like Doris Day were both wholesome and overtly sexual. In their quest for home and husband they were perfectly capable of acting independently and engaging in randy hijinks. I like the thought of society at a crossroads smack dab in the middle of a century, with the post-wartime homemaker making way for Betty Friedan, and Hollywood capturing it all on film. That's primarily why I like "It Should Happen to You."

This comedy is even more dichotomous than most, sending messages that are almost contradictory. The movie centers around a dreamer named Gladys Glover (Judy Holliday), whose hope of becoming somebody in the Big Apple appears to have bit the dust. Struck by inspiration, she spends her last savings to rent a downtown billboard on which she has her name painted and nothing else. This immediately leads to her feeling good about herself and her place in the world. Then it leads to her being courted by a soap company heir (Peter Lawford) and achieving a state of celebrity which shows every indication of snowballing.

At first, Gladys' stab at making a name for herself is portrayed in a Capraesque light as an eccentricity that's justified because it satisfies. With great charm, Holliday sells the notion of a ditzy blonde who has a wellspring of wisdom and integrity; she's sweet and humorous and engagingly idealistic. (Her sex appeal is initially expressed in bare feet and subtleties like begging the sign painters to go "faster, faster" ... which might exist solely in the smutty mind of the modern viewer.) But practicality beckons in the form of a documentary filmmaker ("and introducing Jack Lemmon") who wants Gladys to settle down both psychologically and physically. He cannot understand why she needs to see her name in sky-high letters and regards this as a character flaw impeding his matrimonial plans. His side of the story gradually takes over, changing the whimsical tale into a standard injunction against the pitfalls of ambition, materialism, and nonconformity. At this point, the sexual aspect comes out in the open.

"It Should Happen to You" has a strange tempo, with its moral shifting halfway and some scenes running on too long. (Gladys wanting to drive around and around Columbus Circle to gaze at her billboard is cute; actually watching it is not.) But the movie works, for the most part. Holliday shines in both quirky and traditional mode, and it's intriguing to consider the 1950s female through Hollywood's glamorizing lens.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.