Holiday Response

Response Paper – “Holiday”

Johnny Case

When evaluating the performance of Johnny Case in “Holiday,” I found a very believable character portrayal. Johnny Case is a happy-go-lucky lawyer who has good financial prospects. More than that, however, Johnny has a passion for living life to what he considers the fullest. He wants to make a little money, and then explore the world until that money runs out. This does not sit well with his new fiancée Julia. What made Johnny so believable was his constant smile and laughter. There were times during the performance that I could not honestly tell if he was laughing as his role required or laughing while messing up his scene. While this generally has a negative impact, it made Johnny’s character seem much more believable as the constantly happy person he is.

The relationship that struck me while watching “Holiday” was the relationship between Johnny and Linda Seton, Julia’s sister. From the very beginning, before we ever knew that they would end up falling in love, the actor portrayed a bubbly personality whenever he shared the stage with Linda. The audience could truly feel the growing passion between the two actors who shared the same ideals. While Johnny was engaged to be married to Julia and desperately wanted to impress her father, he never lost his objective. The audience knew during the entire performance that Johnny would not stop at his goal of living life the way he saw fit. Even though he promised to change at times to make Julia and her father happy, he still made comments such as wanting to give it a couple years of work and then go back to his plan. Throughout the entire relationship of Johnny and Julia, we could see his relationship with Linda growing. Not only was it evident in the way Linda spoke about Johnny when he wasn’t around, but it was also clearly growing more intense inside Johnny every time he shared the stage with Linda. With the exception of Julia and her father, who for lack of a better term,...