HOPE HOLIDAY: Wild and Wilder

Hope Holiday, with the inimitable scratchy voice, in a scene-stealing Christmas Eve bar pickup moment with Jack Lemmon, in the Oscar-winning picture THE APARTMENT (1960)
Hope Holiday plays Lolita, a wildly offbeat, bubble gum-popping prostitute and nemesis to Shirley MacLaine who is pursuing former policeman Jack Lemmon in IRMA LA DOUCE (1963)

Classic Images,
Issue Number 482,
August 2015

“To my detriment, I was reckless, foolish and self-centered, but I was also young, impatient and impulsive. I didn’t always appreciate what easily came my way.”

In a madly erratic career that encompassed stage, film, TV and radio, the feisty, ribald and highly opinionated HOPE HOLIDAY (1930- ) had a sexy comedic talent and inimitable “dumb blonde” screech that immediately made her identifiable. Her hilarious and ineffable casting as the Brooklynesque barfly Mrs. Margie MacDougall, the straw-blowing dame who picks up Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder’s Oscar-winning picture THE APARTMENT (1960), secured her a permanent place in the Hollywood annals. While her musical theatre background was solid in the early years, her later years involved producing low-budget films overseas.

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