Born Yesterday

Directed by GEORGE CUKOR

Starring JUDY HOLLIDAY, BRODERICK CRAWFORD, WILLIAM HOLDEN

1950

Released 21 JAN

Blu-ray

udy Holliday would grace us with no more dazzling a movie star, directed by George Cukor, from a screenplay by Garson Kanin, but the spectacle could only have been predicated by this 1950 comedy from the same trio. , Columbia’s top earner that year, found itself an awards finalist alongside such feted classics as and . Its oblique angle on shopworn material took familiar archetypes (fathead gangster, bleach-blonde gun moll, handsome man of learning) and shifted the registers of power and agency, resulting in an acutely angular, fable-like thing that’s mostly wholesome Americana and almost street-smart, the progeny of a cinematic era still under the influence of Frank Capra, and an American generation that was clearing the way for an Eisenhower presidency.