JohnHowardReid A hit in New York, a reasonable success in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, Baltimore and other big cities, but a flop almost everywhere else in the U.S.A., It Should Happen To You poses some interesting questions not only about picture tastes from capital to capital and city to country, but also about fame/notoriety and personal satisfaction/fulfillment.To deal with the former questions, this is a movie that could aptly be described as sophisticated. Often this word is loosely used to mean sexy or voyeuristic. To me sophistication implies a mental or physical activity that has little if anything to do with eating, dressing, fighting, loving or surviving. Most movies primarily concern themselves with at least one of these essentials and are therefore unsophisticated. The Cruel Sea, surviving. Breakfast at Tiffany's, loving. Gone With the Wind, all five.It Should Happen To You is not primarily concerned with loving, although romance enters into its plot and affects its outcome. Nor is it concerned with physical survival. Its heroine wants more than house and home, clothes and husband. She wants success, not the sort of success recognized by a farmer or businessman, but simply recognition.It's been my experience that people who live on the land or are immersed in their work or the simple daily struggle to raise a family or earn enough money for necessities, have great difficulty coming to any sort of terms with, let alone appreciation of the need for recognition, outside of an immediate family or close community level. As for an artistic viewpoint regarding life and living, this is beyond their ken altogether. Writers, artists, composers, sculptors, even scientists, researchers and inventors are necessarily "mad", unless what they are about has a close commercial application. A writer of best-selling pulp novels or a discoverer of cheap, non-polluting fuel who has sold his patents to a suppressing oil company, would be regarded as rare examples of artists and scientists fit to join the human race. The concept, "Art for art's sake", is incomprehensible.Having no sympathy with, or understanding of the heroine of It Should Happen To You, much of the rural or working-class audience cannot understand the plot's basic premise, let alone appreciate the sly digs at television and "fame". A pity because Judy Holliday as usual gives a great performance, virtually carrying the acting burden of the movie entirely on her own demure shoulders. True, she does receive good support, and Lemmon makes an appealing hero in a debut that is somewhat removed from his usual characterizations.As we might expect from Cukor, his handling is both fluent and culture-conscious. The most memorable sequence is that in which the typical TV panel show is mercilessly pilloried. When I saw the movie at a weekday matinee, few members of the largely shopping housewives audience laughed. Yet the manager told me that the opening Saturday night crowd had "rolled in the aisles".

Goodbye_Ruby_Tuesday IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU! is perhaps the most ironic film title ever in cinema, since the film examines the downside of being famous. I suppose it makes a good marketing ploy, directly addressing the audience, but it's so false that the only way it could ever work is either 1. as a satire or 2. referring to having the amazing Jack Lemmon (in his film debut) as a boyfriend.IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU! follows down-and-out model Gladys Glover who wants to be "somebody" at whatever cost, so she splurges her savings to rent a billboard just to put her name on it. After some entanglements over who gets the space, she becomes a celebrity over ludicrous circumstances. Her sweet documentary-filmmaker boyfriend Pete just wants her anonymous, wonderful self, and is understandably hurt when Gladys turns down dates in order to advance her "career." It is at the peak of her fame that she realizes that her celebrity is everything she's never wanted.This is a film that could've fallen apart with so many other directors, but George Cukor was a master at that light comedic touch that keeps the movie sparkling, and also shows an early promise of the sharp look at celebrity that would be even more piercing with A STAR IS BORN only a year later. This was his third collaboration with Judy Holliday, and they seem to be among that elite group of a successful bonding between actor/director. The role of Gladys could so easily come off as unlikable (and she is at times in a naive way) during her determined rise to fame. The reason why the character is so endearing is because of Holliday's childishly wondrous performance, which captivates and enlightens. Her scenes with Jack Lemmon are magical, especially in that scene where they're both at the piano, he's talking, she's singing. It's marvelous and even exciting to see two actors with such an easy cadence interacting together, and those two had a very effortless chemistry. One of the main characters that I'd doubt will stir up much is attention is the provincial village of New York City itself, which is so beautifully photographed by Charles Lang it's as though you've walked into a postcard. From the opening romantic scene in Central Park to even the second-unit shots of Columbus Circle, this is a great example of a city becoming so integrated with a film it's impossible to imagine one without the other.Andy Warhol once predicted that "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU! deconstructs the mystique of celebrity and also accurately confirms Warhol's statement, which continues to be true with every new season of "American Idol." While many other films may have been sharper and harsher in their aim, few were this funny and warm-hearted with their characters.

evanston_dad Judy Holliday struck gold in 1950 withe George Cukor's film version of "Born Yesterday," and from that point forward, her career consisted of trying to find material good enough to allow her to strike gold again.It never happened. In "It Should Happen to You" (I can't think of a blander title, by the way), Holliday does yet one more variation on the dumb blonde who's maybe not so dumb after all, but everything about this movie feels warmed over and half hearted. Even Jack Lemmon, in what I believe was his first film role, can't muster up enough energy to enliven this recycled comedy. The audience knows how the movie will end virtually from the beginning, so mostly it just sits around waiting for the film to catch up.Maybe if you're enamored of Holliday you'll enjoy this; otherwise I wouldn't bother.Grade: C

theowinthrop Judy Holliday was very lucky that she and Garson Kanin worked together so frequently. He had written the Broadway play BORN YESTERDAY that made her a stage star. He wrote the screenplay for her first major film, ADAM'S RIB, with his wife Ruth Gordon. Aided immeasurably by the directing of George Cukor, their success record continued in 1954 with IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU. While BORN YESTERDAY dealt with political corruption, and ADAM'S RIB with the equality of the sexes in the law (in the extreme case of the use of the so-called "unwritten law"), IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU is about the nature of fame and notoriety in modern society.Gladys Glover (Judy) gets the idea of renting a large billboard near New York City's Columbus Circle, and having her photograph put on it. She's not afraid of doing such a nutty idea - she is a professional model. But her billboard would be advertising just her - not a product or company. The billboard has traditionally been used as the central ad-board for a soap corporation, owned by aristocratic and handsome Peter Lawford. He proceeds to try to romance Judy to get her to give up her lease of the board (which will end in a few months). But the huge degree of notice the board brings to Judy turns her life around. Although she has no message for the public, the public embraces her.The one active critic she meets is a good looking young documentary maker, who can't see what she is gaining by this. It is not that Judy needs fame - she seems quite level headed. Moreover, the young man is growing jealous at the attentions showed by Lawford to her. He's a really nice young fellow (who would appear in another film with Judy shortly afterward). His name was Jack Lemmon. Usually people thinking of Lemmon's long career recall MR. ROBERTS as his first role. His performance as Ensign Pulver did win an Oscar, but he had made about three movies before that film, and his first role is here.Michael Shea is also in the film, as a critic who first dismisses Judy as a fiction, like "Kilroy", but subsequently becomes an evil genius to her - becoming her overly forceful agent. And Judy does have to go through some real soul searching here as she determines whether notoriety and fame is worth the trouble it brings.The film is funnier than this description may suggest. It ranks behind THE SOLID GOLD CADILLAC and BORN YESTERDAY as her best comic performance, completing an interesting trilogy commentary on society in the U.S. at mid-century.