With stories about workplace harassers breaking every day, it’s important to remember the women who helped pave the way to this current moment by standing up to sexist, entitled bullies. Oscar-winning actress Judy Holliday is one of them. And, according to The Hollywood Reporter, a biopic about Holliday and the abuse she withstood from mega-producer Darryl F. Zanuck (“All About Eve”) is in the works. The film is entitled “Smart Blonde,” a reference to Holliday’s IQ of 172.
According to the project’s screenwriter Willy Holtzman, Holliday refused Zanuck’s “aggressive sexual overtures” when she was 22. “Her agent scheduled her for the notorious ‘4 o’clock meeting’ and ordered her to stuff her bra,” Holtzman said. When they met, Zanuck locked the door, unzipped his pants, and forced Holliday on the couch. “He said, ‘You belong to me.’ Judy reached into her blouse, removed the pads from her bra, threw them at him, and shouted, ‘These belong to you. I don’t,’” Holtzman revealed.
“Sexual harassment was as common back then as orange juice,” added “Smart Blonde” producer Gene Kirkwood. “Judy just didn’t have the camaraderie that the girls have today.”
Holtzman previously wrote a play about Holliday, also called “Smart Blonde,” but it did not focus on the incident with Zanuck. He acquired Holliday’s life rights from her son, Jonathan Oppenheim, and optioned them to Kirkwood. Holtzman will exec produce the film and Kirkwood will finance and shop it.
No director is attached yet but 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 story about a woman standing up for herself and fighting sexual harassment, no matter the professional cost.
Holliday won the Best Actress Academy Award in 1951 for “Born Yesterday,” an adaptation of the Broadway play she toplined in 1946. She also appeared in films like “Adam’s Rib,” “Bells Are Ringing,” and “It Should Happen to You.” She was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify about her communist connections in 1952. Holliday died of breast cancer in 1965, two weeks before her 44th birthday.
