“Forgotten Hollywood”- Breaking the Silence…
Manny P. here…
“`A mega-producer engages with a beautiful blonde actress for an afternoon meeting. It turns out to be a ruse, which includes the executive to unzip his pants and force the budding star on the couch. She will not cooperate with any of this encounter and storms out of the office. The year was 1943. The parties involved… Producer Darryl F. Zanuck and Judy Holliday (below).
“`Holliday helped pave the way to this current moment by standing up to sexist, entitled bullies. She was not the first. However, Judy’s story will be told in a new production entitled Smart Blonde; a reference to Holliday’s IQ of 172. The project screenwriter Willy Holtzman acquired the rights to share her personal life from her son Jonathan Oppenheim. He optioned it to producer Gene Kirkwood. Holtzman is an executive producer of the film and Kirkwood will finance and shop it.
“`No director is attached. Yet, given the subject matter, it seems fitting for a woman to helm the project. It wouldn’t feel right if only men collaborated on a tale about a woman standing up for herself and fighting sexual harassment, no matter the professional cost.
“`Holliday won an Oscar in 1951 for Born Yesterday, an adaptation of the Broadway play. She also appeared in Adam’s Rib, Bells are Ringing, and It Should Happen to You. An early champion was Katharine Hepburn. She spoke before the House Un-American Activities Committee, testifying about her communist connections in 1952. Judy died of breast cancer, two weeks before her 44th birthday in 1965.
“`I was inspired to write this blog by today’s reveal by Time Magazine that the 2017 Person of the Year are The Silence Breakers; people who have globally shared collective experiences of sexual harassment and assault. TIME got this selection right in my humble estimation.
Until next time> “never forget”
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2017 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
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