This was another very comfortable choice for me, a classic Hollywood era romantic comedy that I definitely knew about back when I was watching only classic Hollywood movies, but missed. In this case (unlike with April in Paris), I can probably guess why I skipped it – I enjoyed Judy Holliday in Adam’s Rib, but didn’t care too much for the two Holliday-led films I watched (Born Yesterday and Bells Are Ringing) all that much, so I think I likely pushed this to the back burner figuring it would be more of the same. I actually didn’t know anything else about it (like that Jack Lemmon is in it!) or what the premise of the story was.
Holliday is a Gladys Glover, a wanna-be actress in New York who really just wants to be famous. Her solution: use all of her savings to rent a giant billboard and just put her name name on it. A soap company wants the billboard, but she refuses every offer they make her, until they offer to put her name on several smaller billboards all over town in exchange. Soon, Gladys is famous for the mere fact of being famous. It’s a bit of a gentle satire, as well as an admittedly cliched reminder that fame comes at a cost.
