(Thanks, KaninFamily!) 

The lovely Judy Holliday soars as a sort of ditzy but shrewd former girdle model who ends up becoming an instant celebrity thanks to a few simple billboards with her name on them George Cukor’s 1954 gem that shows off some fantastic looks at the New York City of the era. This film is also famous for being the movie debut of Jack Lemmon and here, he’s perfectly cast as Pete Sheppard, a documentary maker who shoots Holliday’s Gladys Glover in Central Park and of course, falls in love with her after some amusing assorted ups and down.

There are plenty of laughs in this classic to spare, many at Gladys’ expense as her sudden celebrity goes other head and she thinks her new found fame means all that attention is positive. While some elements are dated, the film does a very good job at foreshadowing today’s fame-crazy celebrities who do a heck of a lot more than simply toss their names up on a billboard to get attention…

Although she’s ambitious to a fault, Gladys isn’t the sharpest stick in the tool box. However, her determination to make it big after two years of struggling in the big city get her brain cells activated and have her shelling out a good chunk of her savings in order to buy a billboard just to put her name on it. That billboard was supposed to go to a big soap company and she eventually wrangles a deal with them that gets her name placed on six billboards around NYC and *Boom!*, she’s the next big thing once people realize it’s her strutting around town. Anyone who’s spent time in Hollywood has seen those “Angelyne” billboards advertising the “famous” lady who’s pretty much only known for her shameless self promotion which I think she got from watching this film. Of course, she’s notoriously private about her life, so I could be wrong and she won’t even correct me.

Anyway, this one’s light and fluffy and funny as heck, Peter Lawford has a nice part and overall, this is one of those old flicks that will get you smiling early ad often. Yup, this is a shorter than usual RFOTW look back, but this is one of those sweet films that doesn’t need a ton of words scribbled about it. just go poke around and find this somewhere. TCM runs it from time to time, so that’s a good bet if you’re not in the mood to watch this on some dinky device. It works better on a bigger screen anyway…