A Little on Padiddle




Also: Padaddle, Pididdle, Pediddle, Piddiddle, Piddidle, Perdiddle, etc.




US slang term for car with one headlight. Origin unknown. After a little Googling I've seen it attributed as a term from the mid-1940's, early 1950's, the 1960's, the LATE 1960's, and originating from (or being current in) Maine, Mississippi, Tennessee, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Western New York, Connecticut, and the NYC suburbs. Seeing one and saying "padiddle" entitles you to get some good luck, make a wish, touch your car roof, get a kiss, give a slap, or make someone take off an article of clothing, depending on the company with you in the car. The earliest version, however, was not STRIP padiddle, but kissing padiddle. Today you can call "padiddle" if you see a woman with one erect nipple.

• 
  A very serious introduction to the game of Padiddle in its traditional form.
  
  
  
  
  
• The rules for "extreme padiddle."

One linguist thinks it goes along with the host of candle-related superstitions that originated with carriage travel, when candles were the headlights.

If a candle suddenly goes out by itself, it is an omen of a death in the family.




It seems possible that a passing coach or carriage with an extinguished flame might have required an antidote (the kiss). On the other hand the tradition that an accidentally snuffed candle means an impending wedding might have prompted a kiss for a entirely different reason.

Another linguist went to TOWN trying to figure out the correct (or most correct) way to spell padiddle, which is uniquely suited to many spellings:

How to spell a lax vowel (which, in my /f/ environment, after a fricative and before a stop, may actually devoice or disappear) in a "nonwritten" item is an interesting question. When I stress every syllable, I get an "uh" (the vowel of "nut") in the first syllable. No help for the spelling at all.

In the end the vote went to "padiddle" because it had the most hits on Google. Oh Google, how you've shaped us.




I won't even get into the different words for cars with a broken taillight. OK, OK, I will. It's either "padungle" or "paduncle."




I used to see a car with a headlight out and make a wish. Now I just see a dead light and shudder to think that this driver is someday certainly going to come racing up invisibly on my right at 90 mph in one of the Bay Area's Darwinian Merge Mazes on some rainy night and make me One with My Gods in a big steaming pile of twisted burning metal and rubber. I tried going back to making wishes, and the only one I could articulate in that heartbeat is "oh god let them drive safely and steer clear of me until they get that headlight fixed." California city driving has made me into a total basket case on the road. Being in a slow-speed low-impact 5-car pile up on Highway 80 coming off the bridge at rush hour two weeks ago didn't help.





The American Dialect Society - my source for most of this stuff- has investigated the origins of Padiddle-- their discussion list has a completely and delightfully searchable archive, for hours of entertainment. From the ADS archives:





A collection of "padiddle" references in texts, including an article posing the idea that padiddle comes from "perdido" (Spanish for "lost").





Another collection of links, including a Washington Post article, and another article that links padiddle with perdido, specifically the 1940's song by Duke Ellington of that name.

It's Official: The War is CANCELLED!



Today the Lake Merritt lighting authority mostly completed taking down the red, white and blue lights from around the lake. They were rainbow colors (sort of) for East Bay Gay Pride in August, and then about a week later they changed the lights to red, white and blue for September 11. Then they were red, white and blue for Thanksgiving, then they were red, white and blue for Diwali, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Solstice, and Christmas. The whole time I was guessing that they were up to support our troops in their unheroic swoop into Iraq, but today THEY WERE BACK TO THEIR OLD COLOR. A nice off-white. So, the authorities have spoken. The war must have been cancelled. They wouldn't take down this three and a half mile long "necklace of lights" involving twelve thousand or more bulbs unless it was so. Tomorrow they will finish turning it peaceful white, which it will remain until August when it will probably turn rainbow again.



I love Lake Merritt. The brown pelican are a bit pushy around the small black sea birds (cormorants, I think), but mostly it's the geese causing problems with the joggers who wipe out cutting across the goose-poop-laden grass. But it's all worth it when I see traffic slow to a stop next to the lake to let a long train of geese floppyfooting their way across four lanes of blacktop. And though the pelicans are big and splashy there's only 5,000 mating pairs left, so I won't resent their taking up some space.



From Databay:



This is the only salt water lake in the center of an American city, perhaps in any city in the world. As far back as 1870, Lake Merritt was declared America's first state game refuge and today is home to leopard sharks, striped bass, different types of ducks, sea anemones, mussels, herons, egrets and a resident population of Canadian geese. The lake is flushed twice a day by the tidal action of Oakland Inner Harbor and San Francisco Bay.



The Birds of Lake Merritt


Here's the vital statistics for Lake Merrit from the Lake Merritt Institute web site.


And click here for entertaining Oakland and Lake Merritt factoids by Nonchalance.



P.S. The Slacker Stalker Low-Down on Adaptation



Lesbian Movie Standard Score: zero (i.e. no two female characters have any one conversation at all, let alone a conversation about something other than a man).



The Gay Character: Nicholas Cage as the main character is working out a narcissitic relationship with himself through his twin brother, and since narcissism has long been considered the root of homosexuality, I'm making him the gay character.


The Jesus Figure: Also the character(s) played by Nicholas Cage. I don't want to say too much, but he suffers, has the passion in the garden the night before the execution, dies and rises again and is redeemed by love.



And my recommendation? See it. See it at least twice. See it alone and then see it with friends. Or see it with a date, then alone, and then with friends.



This movie completely rocked. I didn't remember anything from the reviews or previews, and so I didn't see anything coming. I, and many of the San Francisco Thursday night audience, laughed a lot, and laughed AND clapped at some points. At very subtle, good humor, too, not just the crazy action that happens later on. This movie was seamless, except for having the Nicholas Cage character drive out of the parking garage at the end in the lane that ends in tire-spikes. I don't think they meant those signs to be visible to the camera.

Blogger Pot Luck

The first dish: OUTRAGE- at the perception of popular approval of Bush, with a side dish of what did I expect. My office is hosting a Quebecois human rights researcher who has lived for many years in Western and Eastern Europe. She is astonished (pleasantly) to find out that there is actually an anti-war movement, and that the US is not 100% behind our Oily Shrub and his campaign to piss off the whole world. I was privately outraged that a researcher, someone who is smart enough to read non-mainstream news and know that network TV doesn't illustrate the average US American's life, would somehow believe that we didn't have an anti-war movement. What I'm saying to my non-US readers (if there happened to be one, ever) is that OF COURSE THERE IS AN ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT you idiots. We didn't elect this guy and I don't know where they are getting his approval statistics except out of a range of questions like "answer a or b: A) I want to kill the president and be executed in turn for treason, or B) The president is performing adequately at this time." Read your Indymedia and this wonderful pamphlet "5 Things You Can Do to Make America More Secure" -a parody of Homeland Security literature- if you need reassurance that we're pissed at our president, too.



The second dish: WONDROUS RESISTANCE- did you ever think about the verb "to maroon"? Does it refer to the color of your skin when you are left out on an island to die? The Smithosonian published this short article describing the Maroon tribal society, formed by escaped slaves in the mountains of the West Indies and South America, spreading among the lands of Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Mexico and Suriname. One source (a modern annotation to a 1790 sermon criticizing the French Revolution as a bunch of Maroons) connects the name with the tribes via the French marron, from Spanish cimarron meaning "wild," from cima- "a mountain summit." Another article on the Maroons from the Smithsonian says that the name became equated first with runaway cattle in Spain before it was applied to the runaway African slaves. They waged war for their independence and in 1739 signed a treaty in their own favor. "To maroon" someone at one point in history meant leaving a sailor behind on an island where the fierce Maroons might find them. Their culture, retaining African music, weaving, and matrilineal descendency, remains today in small rural villages. Read the side-bar articles on Encyclopedia.com or "Slave Resistance: A Caribbean Study" for more scholarship on these breathtaking rebels.



The third dish: A POINT WITH A VIEW- a tasty castle on the Croatian peninsula. At the moment I'm actually stalking Slovenia to the point of planning an overnight in a hotel built in this 18th century castle 30 minutes' drive south of the border before taking on the land-of-my-dreams. I'm starting Croatian lessons with a tutor in preparation. I'm saving Slovenian lessons for when I find a Slovenian to teach me. It's such a great country that there isn't a much of a Slovene immigrant community here in the US to provide language tutors.



The last dish- dessert!- SPONTANEOUS HEROS: the Automatic Crime Fighting Duo Generator The answer to the dry inkwell of the aspiring mainstream screenplay writer: "He's a suave Jewish librarian with a secret. She's a violent out-of-work former first lady with a knack for trouble." They Fight Crime!

Spirited Away from Berkeley to Japan to Russia



I knew I had to see this latest movie by Hayao Miyazaki on the big screen. I have never gotten to see My Neighbor Totoro on the big screen, and only got to see Princess Mononoke once in a theater, and then in a big empty cold cheap-seats theater with bad sound in Santa Cruz, the last place playing it in the Bay Area. It cost me a $30 Berkeley parking ticket in a loading zone (in front of an abandoned building!): 2 pm on Saturday is when the entire surrounding three hundred miles of suburbs all drive in to shop and see movies. But luckily that $30 plus the $6 at the California theater door got me and a tightly clustered bunch of fans all the way from Berkeley to Japan to Russia.



You see, Spirited Away is a transporting film. I won't give it a real review, because it is in it's own genre, it's own category, unless you compare it with Totoro or Mononoke. It compares well with them. So how did we get from the Japanese bath house full of Japanese spirits and gods getting their cleansing sweats on to Russia? The elevator to the top floor. Yu-Baba, the mistress of the bath house, is Baba -Yaga! The guardian of the waters of life, prone to hiring young girls to do impossible tasks, and often depicted as having twin sisters, Yu-Baba even looks Russian, in a charicatured way. Her living quarters look royal, a mix of rich red and gold that could be just as easily Russian as Japanese.



Being a fan of this oldest of old Slavic mythic characters-- even believed to be a vestigial form of an ancient water-guardian spirit-- I went on-line to find the discussions that must be taking place about the link between Yu-Baba and Baba-Yaga, just in case other people saw more correspondences to Russian myth in this wonderful tapestry of characters. I didn't find much discussion beyond people pointing out that the Babas are similar, but I DID find this:


The Sor LaLune Fairy Tale Pages --- "A portal to the realm of fairy tale and folklore studies featuring annotated fairy tales." Including the histories of popular fairy tales! I found the discussion board where published authors were directing high school students to chapters on the anti-semitic roots of Rumpelstiltskin, and a discussion on the usage of "female cruelty" to enforce the cultural norm for women to be passive.



In that latter conversation someone pointed out how Miyazaki- who doesn't have purely cruel female characters- is writing for an Eastern (i.e. Pacific/ Asia) audience, people who are more comfortable with ambiguously good/ evil mixed characters. It's possible to have sympathy for almost any character in a Miyazaki story. Baba Yaga and Yu-Baba share this ambiguity, floating between generous and greedy, forgiving/ loving, and defensive/ vengeful. This makes me again think that Russia is more Asian than most people would expect. Their oldest mythic character may even have roots in Siberian or Near-Eastern places, where the myth tellers for centuries past the birth of Jesus still saw (still see) the forces of nature as negotiable, instead of Earth Spirit = BAD, Sky Spirit = GOOD as Judeo-Christian-influenced culture would usually have it.



Since you are ALL wondering, I won't leave you hanging. Spirited Away most definitely and easily meets the Lesbian Movie Standard (once more, the LMS requires a movie to have at least two women characters who have at least one conversation about something other than a man).

Why Didn't Anyone TELL Me That American Football is as Gay as a Judy Garland Memorial in Greenwich Village?



I mean, it is gay, gay, gay. Flamboyantly, lip-puckeringly, feather-boa-flippingly gay. Violent but gay. Like the Stonewall Riots but televized. I had no idea. I stopped watching TV sports when I moved away from home and didn't have my mother around making me watch it (as well as learn to catch and throw). So this weekend I was sitting around with a lezzie friend and her mother, who raised HER to love football, and had the biggest blast watching these beefy guys in reflective spandex manhandling eachother with SO MUCH obvious affection and pleasure. And the TATTOOS! Somehow I don't remember either the shininess of the stretch fabric OR the body decoration from the TV football of the 1970's and 1980's.



So now I can wholeheartedly root for my hometown Raiders as they strut their shiny boy stuff all the way to the top of a writhing pile of Tennessee punk-ass Titans. Hint to the Titans: they seem to like to BURY PEOPLE under big mounds of themselves. They do it with affection, but really, you could get hurt, so strap on your extra thick butt protectors!



Here is all the LGBT American Football team information you need to go have yourself your own big gay puppypile of overstimulated muscular sweaty bodies in spandex. Yum.

Fainting with Frida



You just never know how you internalize someone else's pain experience when you are so close to them that their nausea makes you throw up. Well, my partner died in October, 2001, and for a while I misspoke and said that I died, or we died, because I couldn't accept the truth of the words "she died." She had breast and bone cancer. Her long bones didn't crumble first, so she could still walk until the end. But her neck, hips, and pelvis were starting to crumble, and when her pain medication wore off, well, you wouldn't want even your lover to be alive in that condition. The pain meds weren't enough and she overdosed on tranquilizer to end the pain. I have rare moments of being really glad that her pain is over. Watching the movie Frida, about Frida Kahlo, brought on one of those moments. And a fainting and nausea spell in me, and an epileptic spell in someone else. I made it through The Hours- with its terminal illness sufferer's suicide- because of the awful droning Philip Glass soundtrack that kept me from getting wrapped up in it too much. I cried, but I didn't get dizzy and have to go sit on the floor in a bathroom stall (shaking & sweating) like I had to after the scene where Frida tries to walk without a cane despite her multiply fractured pelvis and spine. If only Salma Hayek had given up a little intensity to a droning weird soundtrack.



So, soes Frida meet the Lesbian Movie Standard? (See yesterday's blog for the lowdown on the LMS.)

Barely barely. Salma trails off to another scene twice with a conversation between Frida and another woman (her sister and Diego's ex-wife) FINALLY turning away from Diego or the sister's abusive husband to the matter of work or money. The mother being asked if the melons were ripe by the sister and the mother saying to give them a few more days- this might count if this weren't a movie about a bisexual artist who had lots of women in her life. Mind you, I really should recuse myself from judging this movie, since I had to leave the theater for about fifteen minutes. But really, if Frida wasn't fucking women she was talking with them about Diego.



The Jesus Figure in Frida? Duh, Frida. Suffered, redeemed (remarried, at least) and rose from the dead.



The Gay Figure in Frida? Duh, Frida. Bi to the bone, actually. But there's a sea of straightness around her. You'd think she didn't know any lesbians. Unless there was a happy lezzie scene when I was in the bathroom.



Should you go see it? Absolutely, if only for the puppet sequence by the Brothers Quay.


Now I know what's nagging at the dark corners of your mind...
How About the New Pedro Almodovar Movie Talk To Her? Does that meet the LMS?



I'm happy to say YES, yes it does. The dance teacher having a scene alone with coma girl, talking with her, helping her do stretches, saves this movie from a negative LMS rating.



The Jesus Figure of Talk To Her? Coma girl Alicia. Died, suffered, and born again.



The Gay Figure? Actually, I'd say our protagonist Marco, because of his love for the antagonist. I don't want to spoil this movie for anyone. This is a very gay movie all around. Not very lezzie, but gay gay gay.



Now everyone go see The Hours. Viva La Lezbiance!

Tallying Up With The Lesbian Movie Standard



Yes, I've had a slow holiday season, and I've watched a lot of movies. As long as I brought up the Lesbian Movie Standard (at the tail end of yesterday's stalking Judy Holliday report-back), I might as well catch you up with the running tally. But first, about the Lesbian Movie Standard. From the top.



Q. What is the Lesbian Movie Standard?


    A. To have at least two women characters who have at least one conversation about something other than a man.


Q. Why ask this of a movie?


    A. Because the movie marketers did a study and found that females identify as easily with male and female protagonists with nearly equal intensity; males, however, have been shown to exclusively identify with male protagonists (at least so far as they will admit on a marketer's survey) so movie makers have no financial incentive to A) have any female roles, much less B) have TWO female roles. And two females having a serious non-boy-centered conversation on the screen is a rarity. You would think females' lives revolved around men. Or that there are no female actors who need jobs. Even Meryl Streep (according to an interview I saw a few years ago) has trouble getting work in mainstream movies. She makes very little money and works hardly at all compared to the actors with penises. So, the Lesbian Movie Standard, which might seem ludicrously easy to meet, is something modern mainstream movies almost never fulfill, I have found. Think for a minute, how many all-male movie casts have you seen? The Shawshank Redemption was an excellent movie with no women in the cast, unless non-speaking extras. I could go on- they are rather easy to find. Now, how many all-female casts have you seen on a movie screen? Outside the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival? Me, outside the festival, I think I've seen none.


Q. Who came up with the Lesbian Movie Standard?


    A. I picked it up from a movie reviewer from some lezzie rag like Lesbians on the Loose (from Australia). Or maybe Curve. I hate "Girlfriends" for being all fluff and for Ed in Chief Heather Findlay editing Kris' obituary shittily (even meanly), so if I got it from there I'd still give Curve the credit.


The Tally
In No Particular Order

NEW MOVIES FIRST:


The Two Towers: duh, no.

The Hours: beaucoups conversations on serious topics between many different women characters. An orgy of female verbage.

Maid in Manhattan: surprisingly, yes. The management position discussions. Go, J-Lo! Out Of Sight didn't meet the LMS but it showed how J-Lo can rock and roll on the screen. So it's still one of my fave movies. ("You wanted to tussle, we tussled." ~~sizzle~~)



NEWISH MOVIES:


Magnolia: surprisingly, no. If the mother and daughter had made two sentences of conversation after the "Mommy!" exclamation... but no, it was almost as though the director was making a statement by omitting any direct interaction between females throughout this long and exquisite movie.

The Shipping News: unsurprisingly, no. I would give it props for having a scene with Julianne Moore playing the accordian, though.

Men In Black 2: again, unsurprisingly, no. But please do rent the DVD if you ever have an entire day to kill. Many hours of extras.

Y Tu Mama Tambien: no. But props for NOT showing the heroine becoming decrepit, throwing up and snowed under by morphine drip. If they were more conservative, they could have gone that extra shitty mile to underline the plot's punishing outcome that allows us to excuse/ suspend judgement of the heroine's remarkable steps towards self-determination. But why couldn't they have let her thrive, or even start a brothel for the under-twenty set on the coast?

Josie and the Pussycats: okay, it's kinda old now. But YES, thankfully, yes.

Legally Blonde: duh, yes. Go Reese!

Election: again, kinda old, but as long as we're watching Reese fill the prodigious boots of Judy Holliday, yes. She discusses election strategy with her mom.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding: read my review of this one. Yes, by a hairsbreadth, it meets the LMS. Her grandma telling about HER wedding, passing on the story of the family. I have to give it props for as of the end of November 2002 becoming the highest earning romantic comedy of all time (beating Pretty Woman), and being a production made on a low budget and under the control of the female protagonist, who was telling a fictionalization of her own life.



NOW THE REALLY OLD ONES:


Every Judy Holliday movie listed in my blog yesterday (except The Marrying Kind, which was stolen from my local video store so I haven't seen it yet) has been approved as meeting the Lesbian Movie Standard. Rock on, wherever you are, Judy!

Stalking Judy Holliday Over the Holidays: The Smartest Dumb Blonde in 1950's Hollywood



If you like Reese Witherspoon today, try checking out her smarter and more political 1950's counterpart.



This holiday season I have been stalking the dear departed genius of the dumb blonde comedy gag, Judy Holliday, who was reputed to have the highest IQ in all of Hollywood (172, actually a genius), subtly advancing a proto-feminist progressive democratic (lower-case "d") and populist politic within disarming self-deprecating humor. Thanks to typecasting, blacklisting, and breast cancer, she is less well-known than she should be.



Before I delve into Judy, I give special thanks to blogger Laura of Interesting Monstah for turning me on to the Holliday thrill (and inspiring me to start blogging, by the way).



Laura has fished out a poignant Judy quote circa June 15, 1951, on conflict and Amercanism:



    We are going through a period of tension and conflict, during which we must soberly and carefully analyze those forces which represent good Americanism as against those which do not.



    -- From Judy Holliday's sworn statement to the FBI, when faced with charges of promoting Communism before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).



Judy Versus the Senators: How She Was Smart and Played Dumb But Still Got Herself a Little Blacklisted



Here is a little Judy Holliday biography at the JHRC (Judy Holliday Resource Center), including this about her testimony before HUAC (note: Billie Dawn is her dumb blonde character in the subversive Born Yesterday - which criticizes government corruption in Washington, DC):





  It became apparent that Judy used her dumb blonde image to her advantage, skirting a couple of questions and subtly mocking the outlandish proceedings in a Billie Dawn-like manner.



    Question: Are you sure Betty Comden and Adolph Green do not have Communist records?



    Answer: "I am as sure of that as I can be of anybody who isn't me."



    Question: What about the Communist-front records Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein?



    Answer: "I am sure that they got into it the same way I did, because I am sure none of them are Communists. I mean if you are a Communist, why go to a Communist-front? Why not be a Communist? Whatever you are, be it."



    Question: Did any of your friends ask you to have that photo taken with the strikers?



    Answer: "They must have because I wouldn't wander off over to strikers and ask to have my picture taken."



  Her "performance" at the hearing only served to raise the ire of her detractors even more. Even though she was essentially cleared of all wrong-doing, the stigma of the scandal kept her name on the blacklist. Judy worked very little in the 2 years following her Oscar-winning performance {in "Born Yesterday"}.



They failed to get her to denounce a single other person, despite repeated harassment and investigation.



A little tiny memo started the beginning of her blacklist on April 7, 1951, nine days after she won the Best Actress Academy Award for "Born Yesterday"- her first starring role in a feature film, beating out other divas of the day at the peak of their careers, such as Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, one of the great upsets in Academy Award history. Her career never recovered its momentum after the blacklist.



Here is the list of alleged subversive elements with which our heroine associated. It includes the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions.



Judy died June 7, 1965, two weeks short of her 44th birthday (mistakenly reported as her 42nd due to her misreporting of her birth year). She died of cancer which returned after a mastectomy in October, 1960. She faced breast cancer in a time when the disease was so taboo that she kept the nature of her mastectomy surgery secret, and when her diagnosis became terminal, her doctors and family kept the dire prognosis secret from her. Her death's cause was reported to be throat cancer, because breast cancer was not then considered socially acceptable as a cause of death.



The Holidays Are Over But Judy Holliday is Always As Near As Your Video Store:

A Selection of her Major Films



Adam's Rib - her first major film role, a landmark 1949 feminist vehicle for Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn- Judy was handpicked for her role by the costars who had seen her stage performance in her comedy troupe The Revuers and other stage appearances.



Born Yesterday - the 1950 subversive comedy critical of political corruption in post-war Washington, DC. The highest peak of Judy's film career.



The Marrying Kind - a 1952 blue-collar comedy written specifically for Judy H.



It Should Happen to You - This 1954 movie presents a reversal of Jenny Holzer's 1980s anonymous billboard actions (which in part critiqued how women do, and don't, occupy public spaces), instead positing a situation where a woman puts only her name up on billboards-- and then has to battle the unfortunate manipulations of men when she tries to sell that name. Jack Lemmon's film debut, third billing behind our heroine, the headliner, Judy H.



Solid Gold Cadillac - a fabulous and more populist 1956 version of the Hudsucker Proxy.



Full of Life - to my eye nobody among the costars shines as brightly as Judy in this 1957 schlocky comedic piece, but it could be her most serious role- she gets to talk about birth control and religion from the perspective of a very pregnant but assertive, independent and mature woman. And she gets to sing a beautiful Italian aria with an opera star bass making his film debut!



Bells Are Ringing - her last movie, and a brilliant one too-- made in 1960 during her triumphant return to the theater stage. Some say this movie was her finest hour in film.



Some More Remarkable Tidbits About Judy Holliday



The most remarkable thing for me to observe is that every one of these movies that I've seen (which is all of these except The Marrying Kind) meet the lesbian movie standard, a standard that modern mainstream movies almost never fulfill. What is the lesbian movie standard? To have at least two women characters who have at least one conversation about something other than a man. A set of 1950's movies with a diva comedienne at the helm that meets the lesbian movie standard? If this amazes you too, it's time for you to put a little Holliday in your VCR!



Another surprise is that Judy has an amazing, sweet singing voice.. She fell in love with sax player Gerry Mullligan (who appears in Bells Are Ringing as Judy's blind date) and was happily involved with him until her death, reputedly one of her life's most satisfying loves. She made a record of love songs with him (including four songs written by Judy) in 1961 which was only released in 1980- Holliday With Mulligan. You can listen to a RealAudio clip off the album here.



Two other little surprises about our lady Judy: she was at least a little bit bisexual, having a romance with a woman at the age of 18 (although never self-identifying as bi, and partnering with men throughout adulthood), and she was also an inventor. LIFE magazine reported that she was working on a way to make edible teaspoons out of Bisquick pancake mix.



The Judy Holliday Resource Center (JHRC) is a great place to learn about this doe-eyed genius of the stage, if you have a hankering for some more Holliday.



The Reel Classics Judy Holliday site has a few more useful links to explore, good for folks who don't know where to begin searching in the JHRC archives. It also features an MP3 clip of one of Judy's song from Bells Are Ringing.



This little article gives more details and anecdotes about her early acting life, including a story about being chased and pawed by a Fox movie mogul, causing one of her falsies to pop out of her dress. She's reputed to have said "That's all right... it belongs to you."