Born Yesterday (1950) on Netflix
Approved19501h 43mComedyDramaRomance
Junkyard tycoon Harry Brock comes to Washington, D.C., to buy political influence. His fiancée, former showgirl Billie Dawn, embarrasses him. He pays reporter Paul Verrall to educate her.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.5/1013,758 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes97%
Trailer
Plot summary
Harry Brock made his fortune in a junkyard and treats money as a way to get whatever he wants. He arrives in Washington, D.C., with his lawyer, Jim Devery, and his fiancée of seven years, the former showgirl Billie Dawn, intending to influence politicians. Devery pushes Harry to marry Billie, since a wife cannot be made to testify against her husband, and has Harry sign many of his holdings over to her. Billie's ignorance and lack of manners in front of a congressman's wife humiliate Harry. Impressed by the reporter Paul Verrall, he pays him to give Billie some culture. Paul finds her vocabulary tiny and her interests few, but he teaches her through newspapers and the city's history and politics.
Cast
- Frank Ottoas Eddie
- Larry Oliveras Congressman Norval Hedges
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Born Yesterday (1950)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- George Cukor disliked Albert Mannheimer's adaptation and asked playwright Garson Kanin to rework his own play for the screen. Legal entanglements meant Kanin's name was left off the finished film.
- Kanin said the bullying tycoon Harry Brock was modeled on Harry Cohn, the production chief of Columbia, the very studio making the film. According to Cohn's biographer Bob Thomas, Cohn knew about it and did not care.
- Columbia paid $750,000 plus a share of the profits for the rights to Kanin's Broadway hit in 1947, the second-highest sum paid for a play at that point, behind the $1 million for Harvey. Casting trouble then shelved the project for months.
- To persuade Harry Cohn that Judy Holliday could carry the film, Garson Kanin and his wife Ruth Gordon wrote her a part in the 1949 MGM comedy Adam's Rib. The acclaim she won there convinced Cohn to hand her Billie Dawn.
- Cukor rehearsed the screenplay for two weeks and then had the cast perform it before an audience of studio employees, timing where the laughs fell before a frame was shot.
- Censors forced Cukor and Kanin to disguise the fact that Billie and Harry lived together, inventing business such as Billie creeping into the apartment by the back way. Cukor recalled that the word broad could not even be spoken on screen.
- In 1951 the Anti-Communist Committee of the Catholic War Veterans picketed the film because Judy Holliday and Garson Kanin were tied to groups on the US attorney general's list of subversive organizations.
- Critics expected the Best Actress Oscar to go to Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard or Bette Davis for All About Eve, and were startled when newcomer Judy Holliday won for Born Yesterday.
