Actress. Born Judith Tuvim in New York City, the only child of Russian Jewish immigrants, she graduated from high school in 1938, first in her class, and proceeded to a job as a telephone operator at Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. That same year, she was one of the founders of the nightclub act, the Revuers, a troupe of five writer-performers that included Holliday, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, John Frank, and Alvin Hammer. By the spring of 1940, the Revuers had their own radio show on NBC. On tour in 1943, the group was offered provisional contracts by 20th Century Fox who then required that Judy change her name. The group's movie debut in Greenwich Village was, for the most part, cut from the film and they disbanded in early 1944. Holliday remained with Fox and was given a one-line part in the movie musical Something For The Boys and a slightly larger part in Winged Victory, both released in 1944, but Fox refused to pick up her option and she went back to New York where she made her Broadway debut in March 1945 in Kiss Them For Me. The part won her the Clarence Derwent Award for best-supporting player. Following her success, she won the female lead in Garson Kanin's Born Yesterday, a role she played for almost three years and won her Broadway stardom. She first appeared on television in She Loves Me Not on the Ford Theater program in November 1949, just before returning to Hollywood to appear in a supporting role in the Hepburn-Tracy film Adam's Rib. She then signed with Columbia Pictures, who cast her in the film version of her Broadway success, Born Yesterday, which was released in 1950 and is probably the role most closely associated with Holliday. She won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Billie Dawn. Other films included It Should Happen To You and Phffft, both released in 1954 and 'The Solid Gold Cadillac' in 1956. She returned to Broadway in 1956 to star in 'Bells are Ringing,' a musical written by her former Revuers partners Green and Comden, for which she won a Tony Award. She remained with the play for its entire run and then starred in the film version, which was released in 1960. Later that year she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent treatment. In the spring of 1963, she opened a new Broadway musical, Hot Spot, which closed after only two months. A recurrence of her illness kept her from any more work and she died just weeks before her 44th birthday. Her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6901 Hollywood Blvd.