#ilka chase

[davidhudson]

Ilka Chase, April 8, 1905 – February 15, 1978.

1925 photo by Edward Steichen.

[redhairclara]

Ilka Chase photographed by Cecil Beaton for Vogue, 1929.

[letterboxd-loggd]

The Big Knife (1955) Robert Aldrich

April 1st 2026

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Actress (she was in the original cast of The Women on Broadway and appeared in the film Now, Voyager), radio host, and author Ilka Chase took a stroll by Delmonico's with her pet lizards, May 9, 1932.

Photo: Associated Press

[henk-heijmans]

Actress Ilka Chase, Vogue, November 1933 - by Edward Steichen (1879 - 1973), American

[gatutor]

Bonita Granville-Ilka Chase "La extraña pasajera" (Now voyager) 1942, de Irving Rapper.

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

It Should Happen to You

Pauline Kael used to say that screwball comedy was killed by pressure groups that didn’t want to see their demographics held up to ridicule. I don’t know how true that is, but certainly the more serious bent in American life following World War II helped create a world where nobody wanted to see themselves as screwballs. Then along came Judy Holliday. She had no trouble assuming Carole Lombard’s mantle as “the daffy Duse,” even if her films kept making us pay for laughing with her. For most of George Cukor’s IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU (1954, Criterion Channel, Tubi), she’s deliciously demented as a young woman determined to become famous for being famous. Unlike in BORN YESTERDAY (1950), where we’re asked to pay for all the fun by having her learn the error of her ways, this film’s resolution isn’t all that traumatic. In fact, she’s allowed to remain as screwy as she was at the start.

Gladys Glover (Holliday) originally came to New York to make a name for herself. When she loses her job as a girdle model, instead of using her savings to return to Binghamton, NY, to marry the second man who proposes, she rents a billboard on Columbus Circle and plasters her name on it. A big-time soap magnate (Peter Lawford), who wants the sign for his company, trades her six other prominent billboards, and suddenly she’s a celebrity. That doesn’t sit well with her boyfriend (Jack Lemmon, in his first billed film role), a documentarian who finds her thirst for celebrity distasteful, but it lands her an unscrupulous manager (Michael O’Shea) only too happy to make a fortune off her.

Garson Kanin’s screenplay is smart. He takes his potshots at celebrity culture, TV and advertising without lingering over them, and having written three earlier films with Holliday knows exactly the kinds of lines that work for her high-pitched, perpetually surprised delivery. Cukor directs all this gracefully. His tracking shots are almost musical. And he helped Lemmon adapt to film acting by showing him how to keep his performance grounded in reality. The two stars work beautifully (they’d reunite later that year for the very good divorce comedy PHFFFT). His offhand line delivery matches up with her pixilated line readings to give their scenes an improvisatory sense. Most of them feel lighter than air. Even Lawford comes off well, in a mostly thankless role. When he tries to seduce Holliday, his physical grace is sexy but also funny.

It's a curious thing, though. Holliday was typed as dumb blondes, but it’s really grating to hear her called “dumb” on screen. Broderick Crawford had to pay for it big time in BORN YESTERDAY, as do the crooked executives who don’t take her seriously in THE SOLID GOLD CADILLAC (1956). So, when her fight scenes with Lemmon lead to his calling her stupid, it feels wrong. She’s given us too much fun for us to accept that she’s merely stupid, particularly since she’s been smart enough to get what she wanted. It’s a major accomplishment that Kanin and Cukor get the film back on track quickly and regain the buoyancy of Holliday’s earlier scenes. With Connie Gilchrist as a wise-cracking landlady, Whit Bissell as an advertising executive, Jack Benny foil Frank Nelson as, what else, a floorwalker, John Saxon in an early bit as a teen in Central Park, and Constance Bennett, Ilka Chase and Wendy Barrie as themselves. It’s some kind of comment on celebrity that even cast as herself, Barrie can’t play a believable human being.

[jeanne-crains]