Today we decided to do a deep dive into the life, career and food of actress Judy Holliday.
The Recipe
I found this recipe on the website www.silverscreensuppers.com It is run by UK film archivist Jenny Hammerton. She's been cooking celebrity recipes for over 15 years and has really inspired me! The recipe originally comes from the book "Paul Denis' Celebrity Cook Book Recipes by Famous People" from 1952.
Ingredients
4 tomatoes
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
2 tablespoons chopped onions
1 cup grated American cheese
1/4 cup bread crumbs
salt
pepper
Directions
Wash tomatoes. Cut slice from stem end and scoop out centers. Chop centers and put aside, to be used in stuffing. Invert tomato shells and drain. Melt butter in saucepan. Add onions and cook until soft.
Remove from heat. Add dried, fine bread crumbs, then cheese, salt and pepper and chopped tomato. Fill tomato shells with mixture and bake in shallow dish uncovered at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes.
*Note: We doubled the amount of bread crumbs to 1/2 cup & replaced the 1 cup American cheese with 1/2 cup cheddar cheese.
Special Guests
Mary Stanford is a Los Angeles based singer who celebrates the music, stories and style of the Golden Age of musical theatre and the American Songbook. Her Facebook and Youtube "quarantine cabaret" series, The Mary Stanford Show, has raised $2,000 for charity since the pandemic began. Visit maryjstanford.com for more information.
Lara Gabrielle is a writer and film historian. Her new book Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies from UC Press is slated for release in 2022. She writes book reviews, festival coverage, and pieces on the history, theory and culture of film on her blog Backlots.
The Final Result
Lara can't eat tomatoes, so she used a red bell pepper instead. Mary opted to make several small tomatoes that can be popped in your mouth as appetizers, while I opted to make one large tomato. These were tasty, easy to make and highly adaptable. What's not to love? We all think that Judy would be happy with the results.
These are Mary's appetizer style tomatoes surrounded by her grandfather's Pantry Parade pottery line.
By the way, the two biographies out there on Judy Holliday aren't very good, so Lara recommended reading the profile of Judy that ran in LIFE Magazine 1951. Make sure to read Lara's post entitled "Judy Holliday and the Hollywood Blacklist".
We suggest checking out the book "They Made Us Happy: Betty Comden & Adolph Green's Musicals & Movies" by Andy Propst. To learn more about Judy Holliday's experience with the Blacklist, we recommend the book "Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theatre and Film in the McCarthy Era" by Milly S. Barranger.
If you aren't familiar with Judy Holliday, plenty of her films are available on DVD, Turner Classic Movies and Amazon Prime.