Great Entertainers

Judy Garland Judy Garland Judy Garland was a little Mozart of song and dance who led a dazzling and extraordinary life. Though forever remembered as the wistful little Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz going up The Yellow Brick Road and singing ‘Over the Rainbow’, it was her plaintive quality, her humour, her ability to be dramatic and send herself up that made her a unique artist. Tender love songs, torrid torch songs, quiet songs, noisy songs, songs with a swing to them, songs with a sentimental strain to them, she could do them all. She hoofed it with Mickey Rooney, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire whilst belting out some of Hollywood’s greatest songs. She was a natural. Her abilities came so easily, so naturally, that she came to doubt them. Suffering from stage-fright and emotional problems, she exasperated everyone around her with her ab- sences and lateness, but she needed little rehearsal time and all would be forgiven when she produced a moment of magic. On stage she was a tiny, stocky figure, so where-in lay the magic? Innocent of any artful management, she sang directly to her audience, able to convey the joy and heartrending pathos of human existence: “She sang, not to your ears, but to your tear ducts.” And with her gift for self-mockery and sense of the ridicu- lous, she had an ability to rise above adversity and carry on. Her highly-publicised life of suicide attempts, broken marriages and neurotic battles with weight and sleep seemed to draw affec- tion from her audiences, yet it was her gaiety, passion, and huge, warm dramatic voice that seized her audiences and filled theatres around the world. She never gave an audience short measure. Often compared with Al Jolson, she was known as ‘Little Miss Show Business’ but stand-up comic Alan King generously opined: “I saw Jolson . . . he would have opened for Judy Garland.” The Career of Judy Garland Judy Garland, whilst not actually born in a trunk, made her first appearance on stage as Francis ‘Baby’ Gumm at two years of age. For the next 11 years she played with her two elder sisters as ‘The Gumm Sisters’ in vaudeville before signing a contract with M-G-M. Her playing of wistful Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz with her loveable friends, the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, won her a special Oscar and the film skipped into several generations of hearts. Overdosed, overworked and underfed for stardom, she starred in films with Mickey Rooney, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire before, at the age of 28, her contract was scrapped by M-G-M because of her health problems and unreliability. During the fifties and sixties she forged a new career on the concert stage, appearing at the London Palladium and playing a record-breaking run at New York’s Palace Theater. After starring in the film A Star Is Born, for which she was nominated for an Oscar, she played Carnegie Hall in what was described as the greatest night in show business history. A two- record album of the show sold two million copies and received five Grammy awards. She starred in her own series of TV shows for CBS. Though she knew how to hold an audience, she could not hold a husband. Married five times, she always felt she was a failure in her private life, and in debt during the latter half of her career, she had to sing for her supper, playing theatres, night clubs and giving concert performances. Her career spanned nearly five decades and when she died in 1969 from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, there were huge demonstrations of public affection. She had worked for nearly 45 of her 47 years, made 32 feature films, received a special Academy Award and nominated for two others. Musical Medleys

54 Medley

The Boy Next Door - (Martin & Blane) Come Rain or Come Shine (Mercer & Arlen) Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - (Martin & Blane) How About You - (Freed & Lane) Over the Rainbow - (Harburg & Arlen)

55 Medley

On the Sunny Side of the Street - (McHugh & Fields) I'm Always Chasing Rainbows (Carroll & McCathy) Meet Me in St. Louis (Mills & Sterling) You'll Never Walk Alone - (Rodgers & Hammerstein) Chapter One: Sisters The Gumm Sisters Judy Garland came into the world as Francis ‘Baby’ Gumm. Whilst not actually born in a trunk and nourished on a diet of grease paint, her family did have a theatrical background. Both her parents were besotted with show business - Frank Gumm pos- sessed his fair share of southern charm and a baritone voice well-suited to sentimental ballads of the day, and Ethel Milne was a skilled accompanist and arranger with a reasonable voice. They formed a duo act calling themselves ‘Jack and Virginia Lee, Sweet Southern Singers.’ Looking for some security when they married in January 1914, Frank Gumm took over management of a movie theatre called the New Grand at Grand Rapids, Michigan. In the pit, Ethel played piano accompaniment to the movies. Their first daughter, Mary Jane, was born in 1915, and Virginia came along in 1917. Ethel’s third pregnancy in the fall of 1921 was unwelcome - she didn’t want another child. Marc Rabwin, who was a friend of her husband’s and studying medicine at the University of Minnesota, was consulted on termi- nating the pregnancy. He counselled against abortion - it was not only illegal but dangerous. Ethel agreed though Judy laughingly commented many years later: “She did everything to get rid of me by rolling down stairs and jumping off tables.” When a girl came into the world on 10 June 1922, Frank and Ethel were disappointed - they wanted a boy. ‘Frank’ became Frances Ethel. Pearl Sieben: “God made Al Jolson, then he made Judy, and then he broke the mould.” Judy Garland: “Certainly my first sort of large, blurry memory is of music, music all the time, all over the house.”

Frances ‘Baby’ Gumm At Christmas 1924, between the showing of Mary Pickford’s tearjerker Thru the Back Door, a two-and-half years-old Frances ‘Baby’ Gumm made her debut on the stage at the New Grand. She joined her elder sisters in singing ‘When My Sugar Walks Down The Street’, finding no difficulty with the lyric, and did a nimble tap-dance. When her two sisters bowed out, ‘Baby’ sang her solo ‘Jingle Bells’, ringing the dinner bell that she held in her hand at every phrase, and not stopping until Frank came on stage to unceremo- niously carry her off. The tearful protest from behind the curtain, “I wanna sing some more!”, was drowned out by thunderous ap- plause. Judy: “The roar of the crowd - that wonderful, wonderful sound - is something I’ve been breathing since I was two years old. I’ll never forget the first time I heard it.” “Let’s Go to the Grand Show!” New Grand 26 December 1924 Thursday and Friday Mary Pickford in one of the prettiest pictures she has ever ap- peared in, entitled: “Thru’ the Back Door.” A two-reel comedy “Motor Mad” completes the program.. Special for Friday Night; The three Gumm children in songs and dances; featuring “Baby Frances”, two years of age. Baby Frances’ song: ‘Jingle Bells’ Quick to pick up a dance or a lyric, Francis soon became a ‘ham’ and it wasn’t long before she made her solo debut performing ‘a descriptive song and dance’. Judy explained years later: “If I had any talent in those days it was inherited. Nobody ever taught me what to do on stage. Like the words of the famous song, I just did ‘what came naturally’.” Both parents wanted to see if the family could make it as vaude- villians and the five Gumms began to perform in nearby towns. Ethel, a small woman, solidly built, was a competent pianist and agreeable singer with a mind of her own. Frank, handsome with an attractive mischievous smile and an easy laugh, had the ability, like Judy, to seduce people into enjoying themselves. Though never betraying any hint of homosexuality, there were stories and rumours that Frank was bisexual. Virginia Gumm: Francis was always a very determined little girl and never had any trouble making her mind up about anything.” Independent: “A hatbox, larger than usual, was carried out on the runway. The lid opened and out came little three-year-old Frances Ethel Gumm, who looked cautiously around and gave a lively performance of the Charleston. This was the hit of the evening and a round of applause greeted the little dancer as she went through her antics like a seasoned ‘Follie’.” The family was thrown into panic when Francis suffered a severe case of acute acidosis and was rushed to Duluth hospital. Her recovery was slow and Frank began to think about a warmer, more gentle climate for his family. Marc Rabwin, now qualified as a doctor and resident physician at Los Angeles General Hospital, wrote to Frank, saying that Los Angeles was an ideal place for him to be - at the centre of the movie industry. He invited Frank and his family over for a vacation to view the lie of the land. Two days before Frances’ fourth birthday, the Gumm family set off by rail for California, playing vaudeville theatres in towns on their way and earning $300 extra in pocket money before their arrival in Los Angeles. Not one to allow truth to spoil a good story, Judy later embroidered their tour: “It was a lousy act . . . After Mother and Father’s act, she’d dash into the pit to play piano, and he would dress us in our costumes backstage. I did those horrible Egyptian bellyrolls in an Egyptian outfit with those big balloon pants and a lot of ankle bracelets and spangles.” As guests of Frank Rabwin and his son Marc, they stayed for ten days in a small hotel on Sunset Boulevard. Visiting several movie studios, they watched scenes being filmed, shook hands with Lon Chaney, met Marion Davies, saw Lillian Gish at work on Annie Laurie, did the traditional tour of movie stars’ homes, and ‘rubbernecked’ at the famous Cocoanut Grove. Frank joked: “Gloria Swanson was in New York so couldn’t invite us to dinner.” The future in Hollywood looked bright so the Gumms returned to Grand Rapids to make preparations for a permanent move. On their return to Grand Rapids, Frank sold his interest in the Grand Theatre and the Gumms returned to California three months later. “What Frank and I really loved was the climate,” Ethel explained later. “Roses and balmy skies in the middle of winter. This was the place, we decided, this was it.” After months of searching Frank bought the dilapidated Valley Theatre in Lancaster, a small town seventy miles north-east of Los Angeles on the edge of the Mojave Desert. Renovation of the theatre was needed and new seats and a cooling system were installed, the interior renovated, and after the Gumm sisters had completely won the hearts of the audience with their songs and dances, Frank began to have some success with the theatre. But within a short time of their arrival Frances took ill again with acidosis. Marc Rabwin admitted her to Los Angeles General Hospital where she was put on the critical list. Given the best care and treatment supervised by Dr. Oscar Reiss, a promi- nent paediatrician, she soon recovered. John Wayne, raised in Lancaster: “If you can live through Lancas- ter, Judy, you can live through anything.” Billed as ‘Baby Gumm’, Frances made a dozen appearances at her father’s theatre during 1927 and 1928, and with her sisters began to broadcast from Santa Monica on a radio programme called ‘The Kiddies Hour’. They even received a request from the great cowboy star William S. Hart to sing ‘There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding’. The Gumm sisters began special studies with the Ethel Meglin Dance School and over the Christmas season they played at Loews State Theatre as part of Meglin Kiddies Revue. They sang, danced and posed, but it was Francis who knew how to sell a song. Shortly after Frances’ seventh birthday, the Gumms made their screen debut in a talkie short called The Big Revue featuring ‘Ethel Meglin’s Famous Hollywood Wonder Kids’. Vivacious and as- sured, Francis out-shouted her sisters and showed considerable screen presence. Frances Gumm: “I’m going to be a movie star some day.” On 8 November 1929 the Ledger-Gazette reported that the Valley Theatre was to begin showing talkies, and that the Gumm sisters were in Los Angeles rehearsing with an organisation known as the Hollywood Starlets. On their weekly radio show the girls were now billed as ‘The Hollywood Starlets Trio’ and in July 1931 they featured in Stars of Tomorrow in a theatre on Wilshire Boulevard. This ‘juvenile extrav- aganza’ was staged by Maurice Kusell, who ran a talent school. Ethel, delighted with her daughters’ early successes, directed the eight piece orchestra. Maurice Kusell: “Ethel felt no need to push the children, because it was obvious they had talent - especially Francis - and she was confident this talent would speak for itself.” In the summer of 1932, The Meglin Kiddies Revues booked the Gumm sisters into a dozen theatres that culminated in an appear- ance at the Los Angeles Paramount Theatre where Francis Gumm received her first review in Variety. Though only ten years old Francis’ voice was rapidly maturing. As Virginia remarked: “She didn’t sound like Shirley Temple.” Variety: “Gumm Sisters, harmony trio, socked with two numbers. Selling end of the trio is the ten-year-old kid sister with a pip of a low-down voice. Kid stopped the show, but wouldn’t give more.” The Gumms had been a very close family but that was changing. Whilst Frank Gumm looked after the theatre in Lancaster - no longer doing so well because of the Depression - Mrs. Gumm and her daughters now spent most of their time in Los Angeles. Enormously proud of their success, Frank would visit his daugh- ters in Los Angeles and travel to watch them perform whenever he could. Judy: “My parents were separating and getting back together all the time. It was very hard for me to understand those things, and of course, I remember clearly the fear of those separations.” In the autumn of !933 Frances and Virginia enrolled at Mrs. Lawlor’s School for Professional Children. Child stars were in demand. A tot called Shirley Temple, recently graduated from ‘Mom’ Lawlor’s academy, had become a star overnight with her rendering of a song, ‘Stand Up and Cheer’. It was here that Francis met Mickey Rooney, already a star from dozens of Mickey McGuire short comedies and the couple struck up an instant friendship. So far, Ethel and the girls had been playing at show business, but early in 1934 Ethel began to take her daughters’ show busi- ness career seriously. Embarking on a tour of the Pacific North- west, the Gumm Sisters opened in Portland, Oregon, and played Seattle, Vancouver and several small towns. In May they played in the Movie Star Frolics, starring Eddie Cantor, at the New Gilmore Stadium where their act was a solid hit; and the following month, Ethel and the girls set off on a road trip to Chicago that was to last for four months. Despite his initial opposition, Frank finally relented to the trip and gave Ethel several hundred dollars in traveller’s checks. Judy: “My mother is a strong-minded woman, but she was never a ‘stage mama’. She was part of an era that was hard on women . . . mother had to succeed at whatever she undertook . . .” Chicago was holding the World’s Fair and the Gumms were booked for four weeks at the Old Mexico Cafe within the fair- ground. In the middle of the second week the Cafe closed and when Ethel remonstrated with the manager she was threatened: “Forget about the money owed or you might end up at the bottom of Lake Michigan.” Ethel was shaken but later began to laugh about it and couldn’t stop. The ability to laugh in adversity was one trait that Francis inherited from her mother. With the aid of Mary Jane’s trumpeter boyfriend, Jack Cathcart, they found work filling-in at short notice at the Oriental Theatre. George Jessel, topping the bill, introduced them as the Glumm Sisters as though they were a comedy act and got a big laugh. Nevertheless, they stopped the show and George Jessel, horrified that his first introduction had produced a laugh, suggested they call themselves after a friend of his, Robert Garland, drama critic of New York World-Telegram. Jessel advised them to capitalise on Frances’ magnificent voice which needed no microphone and their act was moved up to second closing. George Jessel: “But she would be able to make you tingle when she sang, make you laugh and cry with her, if her name was Frances Gumm, Minnie Ha-Ha, or Algrena Handelpotz.”

The Garland Sisters The girls were taken up by the William Morris Agency. The act was becoming polished. Francis did torch songs, wrapped in a shawl and partially hidden by her sisters, and at the end of her song would reveal herself as a diminutive twelve-year-old. The audience, already won over by her mature, powerful voice, would be bowled over at this revelation. The Garland Sisters returned home to a tearful Frank and an engagement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. George Jessel: “Even at the age of twelve, Judy Garland sang like a woman with a heart that had been hurt.” With the expenses incurred by his girls’ career and keeping two separate residences, Frank fell behind with his payments, and lost his Valley Theatre. Re-joining his family in Los Angeles, he took on another theatre in Lomita, an isolated suburb twenty miles away, and as if wanting to cut off his past, also changed his name to Garland. There were other name changes: Mary Jane became Suzy, Virginia became Jimmy, and not to be outdone, Frances became Judy taken from the line of a song by Hoagy Carmichael - ‘If you think she’s a saint and you find out she ain’t, that’s Judy.’ Marc Rabwin had married Marcella Bannett, an assistant to studio chief David O. Selznick, and both were friends of Joseph L. Mankiewicz, a young but respected writer on the M-G-M lot. After hearing Frances sing at one of the Rabwin’s parties, Mankiewicz arranged a screen test at M-G-M. Nothing came of it. Judy acquired a new agent after a chance encounter after an engagement at the Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe. At the close of the season the Garlands started for home but returned because of a forgotten hatbox belonging to Suzy - she was a hat freak. Ethel was asked by the manager to bring Judy to the bar where some important people were waiting to see her - Harry Akst, songwriter and Al Jolson’s accompanist; Lew Brown of the song writing team of De DeSylva, Brown and Henderson; and agent Al Rosen. Surrounded by slot machines, Harry played his own number ‘Dinah’ on the piano while Judy sang and was impressed enough to say: “Terrific! Why isn’t this little gal in pictures?” The captivated Al Rosen: “the greatest discovery of my career” - became her agent. Harry Akst: “I was three feet away. The volume nearly knocked me flat. Her pitch was perfect, her breathing and timing naturally flawless. And she had those saucer-shaped, brown eyes swim- ming with anxiety and love.” Henry Pleasants: “Her voice was open-throated, almost bird-like vocal production, clear, pure resonant and innocent.” Lew Brown later arranged an audition for her at Columbia Stu- dios but Harry Cohn, president of Columbia, felt she was too young for pictures. Neither did any of the other studios know what to do a twelve-year-old girl with such a mature voice. Joe Mankiewicz: “Her voice was something incredible even then and you knew that you were in the presence of something that wasn’t going to come around again in a long time.”

Judy: “Al towed me all over California. I think I had an audition at every studio and everyone kept saying: ‘She isn’t any age. She isn’t a child wonder and she isn’t grown up.’ Harry Cohn: “What can we do with a little Huckleberry Finn?” In the autumn of 1935, a phone call from Rosen summoned Judy to Culver City for an audition. Ethel was out and Frank took Judy as she was, dressed in slacks and sneakers. Judy sang for Ida Koverman, Louis B. Mayer’s executive assist- ant, and Frank’s nervous piano accompaniment impressed no one. Roger Edens, an elegant Southerner and M-G-M’s pianist and vocal arranger, was sent for. Louis B. Mayer came down from his office to listen to Judy’s rendering of ‘Zing Went the Strings of My Heart’. At the end he said: “Very nice. Thank you very much.” At this platitude, Frank got angry and protested: “This is all ridiculous. My child is tired.” Judy said later: “Daddy and I thought it was a great big nothing.” A fortnight later Judy signed a contract at $150 a week. Roger Edens: “I knew instantly in eight bars of music - the talent that was inbred . . . She was just so high and chubby, wearing a navy blue middy blouse and baby-doll sandals, with lots of hair and no lipstick. It was like discovering gold at Sutter Creek.” Roger Edens and Judy took to each other straightaway. For two hours every day they worked together. From their first lesson she trusted and listened to him, and he, knowing her voice was loud like Ethel Merman’s, realised that she must learn to use it with discretion. The only thing she did not do at M-G-M was make movies. Alongside M-G-M’s youthful star Jackie Cooper, she was intro- duced on the air in NBC’s The Shell Chateau Hour radio show and naively told host Wallace Beery: “I want to be a singer - and I’d like to act too.” Judy: “I was born at the age of twelve on the M-G-M lot.” Roger Edens: “She had the perfect anatomy for a singer, built round a super muscle of a diaphragm. She had a wonderful memory. What could I teach her? How to sing a lyric, how to get the meaning across.” A few weeks later Judy returned to the Shell Chateau show to sing, ‘Zing Went the Strings of My Heart’ which was all the more impassioned because she knew her father would be listening at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital where he had been taken suffer- ing from a painful ear infection. The following morning the family were informed by Marc Rabwin that his condition was serious - he had developed spinal meningi- tis. He died at 3pm that afternoon. Judy had always been his favourite and was shattered. Treated as the baby of the family, Judy was a warm-hearted little girl with an affectionately demonstrative nature and said years later: “I think my father’s death was the most horrible thing that ever happened in my life.” At M-G-M studios she found two old friends in the studio schoolroom - Donald O’Connor and Mickey Rooney, but none of the films released in 1936 by M-G-M featured Judy Garland. The studio had signed another girl of the same age, Deanna Durbin, and the two girls were brought together for a one-reeler called Every Sunday, shown at an M-G-M exhibitors convention. Deanna sang classical, trilling away in the upper registers, while Judy sang jazz, belting out a song in her usual style. Judy ex- plained: “I had an apple in my hand and a dirty face, and she was the Princess of Transylvania.” The studios decided it did not have room for two young singers and Deanna was dropped, though quickly signed up by Universal. After recording ‘Swing Mr. Charlie’ and ‘Stomping at the Savoy’ for Decca with Bob Crosby’s orchestra, she was loaned out to 20th Century Fox to feature in Pigskin Parade. Singing ‘The Balboa’, supposedly the latest dance craze, with great gusto and two other songs, she impressed several critics. Judy: “I’d thought I’d look as beautiful as Garbo or Crawford . . . My freckles stood out. I was fat. And my acting was terrible.” By the end of the year, seven-year-old Shirley Temple was the top box office draw and it looked as though Judy Garland had missed the boat by seven years. To add to Judy’s frustration, Deanna Durbin became an instant star when Three Smart Girls was released by Universal Studios. Judy did become a hit when she appeared as a guest on ‘Jack Oakie’s College’ radio show and she became a regular for the rest of the season. Judy: “I’ve been in show business ten years, and Deanna’s starred in one picture and I’m nothing.” Preparation for stardom turned out to be being ‘half-starved all the time’. Tiny and a little plump, Judy had huge eyes and mouth that stretched into a grin at the slightest provocation. Often she became so pent up she appeared to be out of breath. Already with a gift for self-mockery and a highly-developed sense of the ridiculous, she had a knack of taking everyday incidents and twisting them to display the absurdity of life that she found all around her. She was a brilliant mimic with an immaculate sense of timing; her voice would dissolve into an infectious laugh, so self-deprecating, you could believe whatever she had just told you - no matter how preposterous. Judy did begin to lose weight and while Roger Edens worked with her everyday, there was still no screen part for her.

Early in 1937 a surprise thirty-sixth birthday party was planned for Clark Gable on the set of Parnell. Roger Edens arranged for Judy to deliver a monologue portray- ing her as a besotted fan of Clark Gable and singing ‘You Made Me Love You’ to his photograph. Introduced by Roger Edens, Judy was trembling like a leaf, stage frightened for the first time, but her performance was received with tremendous applause, a few tears, and a big hug from Clark Gable Judy: “Looking at him close up, my knees almost caved in. and then I cried, and it was simply heavenly.” M-G-M decided that Judy Garland would sing ‘Dear Mr. Gable’ to a photograph of ‘the King’ in Broadway Melody of 1938. Judy also sang a snappy, jazzy number called ‘Everybody Sing’ and though seventh in the cast list, people began to take notice of Judy Garland. Two songs from the picture that she recorded for Decca both sold well and pictures of her began to appear in fan maga- zines. Hollywood Reporter: “A certain new picture star.” Judy began work on two pictures at once. In Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry starring C. Aubrey Smith as a grandfather and Mickey Rooney as a jockey, Judy was billed as ‘The girl you loved in Broadway Melody’. It was her first film with Mickey Rooney and she later remembered how much he helped her: “He would tell me how to walk into a scene off camera and he would suggest to me how to get the best out of a line.” Judy was cast as a swing-singing daughter of a theatrical family in Everybody Sing, and at the preview of the film with Mickey Rooney, she planted a kiss on the cheek of Louis B. Mayer when the audience liked it. To promote Everybody Sing, M-G-M sent Judy, accompanied by her mother Ethel, on a six-week, seven-city tour appearing before live audiences. Opening on Broadway at Loew’s State, she was accompanied on piano by Roger Edens who later recalled that she had the sensitivity to be petrified at her New York opening though he “never heard such an ovation for an unknown as she got.” After a brief triumphant interlude in the real world of her home town Grand Rapids, she returned to Hollywood one step nearer stardom. Judy Garland was on the verge of being one of M-G-M’s brightest stars but a Hollywood studio was hardly a healthy envi- ronment for an insecure teenager. Too busy to attend the statutory schoolroom, she had a tutor to teach her in between making films and studying with Edens. As a property in which millions of dollars were invested, the studio had to keep their investment neat and photogenic. From the start, studio executives advised that Garland simply did not have the shape for stardom. The voice and eyes - yes, but she was not slim enough. Accomplished designers tried to disguise the fact that she had no waist but the strict diet she was obliged to follow took a heavy toll. No one saw any wrong in using pills to control her weight so diet pills were prescribed. The pills killed her appetite for food but increased her hyper-activity so that she was wide-awake when she should have been going to bed. Then taking pills to help her sleep, she woke drowsy and was given pills to wake her up - Judy always wanted to cram a hundred minutes into every hour. She was overdosed, overworked and underfed for stardom. Frances Marion: “She had all the characteristics of a chipmunk: she hated to sit still for moment, her bright eyes always on the alert for fun or the threat of danger . . . forever greedily searching for something tasty to eat.” Judy: “My life was a combination of absolute chaos and absolute solitude. I’d be alone with my teacher for ten minutes reciting my French lessons, then some assistant director comes along and says: ‘C’mon, kid, you’re wanted on set.” Katherine Hepburn: “I thought Metro was like a wonderful school from which you never graduated . . . Your problems were taken care of. It was a wonderful sensation.” The successful, low-budget Andy Hardy films with Mickey Rooney had begun a year earlier and the third offering entitled Love Finds Andy Hardy featured Judy Garland as Betsy, a sort of visiting-girl next door. She helped Rooney out of his domestic and romantic troubles and was close to taking the film’s honours out of Rooney’s hands. Listen, Darling took over two months to complete because Mary Astor was laid up after a fall from a horse. The Christian Science Monitor summed it up as “a little laughter, a little tears, a little singing by the fair Judy.” Mary Astor: “She got the giggles. ‘There goes Judy!’ would be the cry. And we just had to wait till she got over it.” Chapter Two: Rainbow Over The Rainbow

After the success of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, M-G-M bought the screen rights of Frank L. Baum’s book The Wizard of Oz. The story had previously been filmed as a silent movie with Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man but this new version was going to be a musical starring Judy Garland. Mervyn LeRoy was to produce the film, assisted by songwriter Arthur Freed who wanted to produce musicals and to work specif- ically with Judy. Mervyn LeRoy: “I wanted to make a movie out of The Wizard of Oz from the time I was a kid.” Arthur Freed: “I bought Oz for the studio with only one person in mind for Dorothy. It was finally decided by all that Oz should be used to establish a good box office reputation for Judy.” At least five directors were assigned to the film: Norman Taurog did tests before being replaced by Richard Thorpe. Two weeks later George Cukor took over and turned the blond baby-doll look and frilly wardrobe so far applied into a more believable Dorothy. Victor Fleming, with whom Judy enjoyed a special rapport (“I had a terrible crush on him - a lovely man”), replaced Cukor who had left to take over Gone with the Wind. Fleming then directed most of The Wizard of Oz before he also left to take over Gone With the Wind from George Cukor who had been sacked by David Selznick. King Vidor completed The Wizard of Oz by finishing the mono- chromes scenes that open and close the picture. The film was a troubled production and it became the third longest shooting and third costliest in Metro’s history. Only Ben Hur and The Good Earth were more expensive, neither of them making a profit on their release. Whatever its troubles, the time- less quality of The Wizard of Oz and Judy’s entrancing Dorothy, along with her loveable friends, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion (played by Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr) became one of the best loved pictures of all time. The song ‘Over the Rainbow’, almost cut from the film for rea- sons of length, was fortunately retained and won the Academy Award for best film song of the year, and became a best-selling single record and a theme song for Judy. Ray Bolger: “Judy was a child who never had a childhood.” ‘Yip’ Harburg: “Judy was an unusual child, with an ability to project a song and a voice that penetrated your insides . . . As a child, she sang with all the naturalness and clarity of a child . . . Honesty, not phoniness moves people. Judy Garland was to singing what Gershwin’s music was to music.”

The Wizard of Oz did quite well in the big cities but with children allowed in at half-price it didn’t make a profit and the outbreak of the Second World War meant European markets were closed to it. At a cost of almost $3 million the film accounted for a consider- able amount of red ink in M-G-M ledgers. When the film opened in Britain, Graham Greene, writing in the Spectator, approved of Garland ‘with her delectable long-legged stride’ and critics were impressed by the lavishness of the produc- tion but pointed out the absurdity of giving it an ‘A’ certificate so that children had to be accompanied by an adult. The song ‘Over the Rainbow’ came to take on a new meaning and a special significance in Britain during the dark days of the war and the song was accorded the same reverence as ‘Rule Brittania’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. To the British, Judy Garland came to be more than just a Hollywood star. Before The Wizard of Oz had been released, Garland teamed up again with Rooney in their new film musical, Babe in Arms. Written by Rodgers and Hart, the show had been plucked from Broadway by Arthur Freed for his first film as a producer. Near enough the same age, Garland and Rooney blended well. Though both were full of pep and vitality the director, Busby Berkeley, insisted on shooting the musical numbers in one take after endless rehearsals and the two stars found it exhausting. Berkeley, director of 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, was a highly respected film talent but a regimented taskmaster. Judy, with a wide smile: “They worked us so hard that neither of us grew to be very tall.” Mickey Rooney: “Busby was impossibly demanding . . . He was always screaming at Judy: ‘Eyes! Eyes! Open them wide! I want to see your eyes! When the cameras started grinding away , he wanted us to do the numbers from beginning to end - non-stop!”

Babes in Arms was scheduled to be released after The Wizard of Oz but to promote both films at the same time Mickey and Judy were sent to New York to appear between showings of the film at the Capitol Theatre. On their first day at the Capital Theatre, New York, the 37,000 cash customers overflowed and sixty police officers were needed to control the crowds. At one point Judy collapsed off-stage but recovered in time for her next performance. Heralded as ‘the Garbo and Gable of Hollywood High’, their two-week engagement broke every attendance record. Rooney: “Sing, Judy, while I get a cold root beer or something.” Judy guested on Fred Waring’s radio show to find the whole programme was dedicated to her. Judy said later: “I sang all the songs from The Wizard of Oz and a good time was had by all - most especially by me.” After ten days at the Capital, Rooney returned to Hollywood to start a new Andy Hardy picture. Having been joined by Bert Lahr and Ray Bolger, Judy stayed on for a further week before returning to Hollywood and pressing her hands and feet into the cement outside Grauman’s Chinese. Oz and Babes in Arms were in the list of top ten pictures for 1939 and Bette Davis and Judy Garland were the only women in the list of top ten stars. Babe In Arms broke box-office records everywhere and estab- lished Arthur Freed as M-G-M’s foremost movie musical producer. He and his associates became known as the ‘Freed Unit’ and Judy Garland was now a major movie star. Romance in Hollywood, on and off the screen, is an absolute essential and Garland had to be seen with a beau. Jackie Cooper dated her for a time, but while in New York, Judy was seen out with Artie Shaw to the annoyance of Betty Grable who was madly in love with the band leader. When Shaw brought his band out to California he renewed his acquaintanceship with Judy despite her mother’s disapproval, and the couple met secretly with the connivance of Jackie Cooper who was a fan of the clarinettist. Whilst Shaw was amused by Judy and thought of her as “a moonstruck girl”, he was unhappy at being separated from Betty Grable who was in New York. Lana Turner then appeared on the scene. At twenty-eight, Shaw already had two broken marriages behind him and as Phil Silvers described it: “Lana Turner made for Artie like a bee making for the honey.” Both Betty Grable and Judy were astonished when Artie and Lana eloped to Las Vegas. It didn’t help that Judy envied Lana’s looks - Judy was constantly dissatisfied with her own. Judy: “I’m so ugly. Look at Annie and Lana Turner.” Maxine Marx: “But they have none of your talent. You’re the one who has it all.” Judy: “Who cares?” The following day Judy turned up at NBC studios in tears to rehearse for The Bob Hope Show and threatening not to go on. David Rose, a musician and close friend of Shaw’s, consoled her with the help of a slice of chocolate cake. Afterwards, Judy con- sulted David about her recording sessions and they began to see each other regularly. Rose was married, though separated, to Martha Raye and under Californian law Judy was still a juvenile. Louis Mayer warned Rose: “If you do anything to harm her, I will ensure no radio station or studio will employ you again.” Bob Hope: “I learned to love Judy so much her mother met her after each programme.” Will Gilmore and his wife Laura were friends of the Gumms back in Lancaster and when Laura died, Will began to court Ethel. None of Ethel’s daughters approved of Mr. Gilmore, and Judy was not impressed by her mother’s explanation that the reason she had become attached to Will back in Lancaster was that Frank not only drank but was also a homosexual. It increased Judy’s antipathy towards her mother and there was nothing Judy could do when Ethel and Will eloped to Yuma, Arizona. To Judy’s chagrin, the couple were married on the fourth anni- versary of Frank’s death. Their marriage was not a success. Garland was awarded a special juvenile Oscar for The Wizard of Oz which she later described it as ‘the Munchkin Award.’ Fittingly, Mickey Rooney presented it to her, and because ‘Over the Rain- bow’ had won an Oscar for the best song, she had to sing it at the Awards ceremony. Believing that she wasn’t sufficiently appreci- ated at the studio, she began making demands about the roles she played and the clothes she wore - the studio had made her wear clothes more suited to a hick-girl at a college dance than a movie star. Making little impression, she was rushed into another film with Mickey Rooney, Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, playing a nice, fifteen years old, old-fashioned girl. The best part of the film was her song, ‘I’m Nobody’s Baby’, which became her second best- selling record. Judy: “Even after The Wizard of Oz they treated me like a poor relative at the studio. They convinced me I wasn’t very good. They kept telling me I wasn’t very good as a performer.” In her next film, another jolly Mickey-and-Judy musical treat called Strike Up The Band she was cast as a vocalist in a high school band. It was the second Freed-Berkeley production and featured band leader Paul Whiteman. The best song in the movie was Judy’s touching version of ‘Our Love Affair’. Hollywood Reporter: “Metro was praised for at last developing a leading woman who didn’t remind you of your mother.” Her first adult role in Little Nellie Kelly was a double-role as mother and daughter, despite Louis B. Mayer’s protestations: “You can’t let that baby have a child!” Arthur Freed had impulsively taken an option on the Broadway hit of 1922 in the belief that Judy had more to offer than merely being one-half of a juvenile partnership. But neither Judy nor her co-star George Murphy could overcome the sluggish plot. The highlight of the film was Judy leading St. Patrick’s Day parade and singing with maximum gusto, ‘It’s a Great Day for the Irish’. Though the song became a standard, the reviews were luke- warm. Judy, before her first romantic clinch: “Unaccustomed as I am to public love-scenes . . .”

Judy was given her most glamorous wardrobe yet in Ziegfield Girl, but she still felt outshone by Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr. While these two stars were greeted with wolf whistles by the studio technicians, all Judy got was a friendly: “Hi, Judy.” Unlike the other two, Judy had no proper love scene in the film and sang, ‘I’m Always Chasing Rainbows’. Judy still continued to demand the ‘glamour treatment’ but as a mere girl-singer she couldn’t compete with the allure of Garbo, Loy or Crawford, and rushed into Life Begins for Andy Hardy, shot in the Spring of 1941, she didn’t even sing. Joe Pasternak: “She wanted to be Lana Turner and it didn’t occur to her that Lana Turner might have liked to be Judy Garland. She didn’t realise how much talent she had, or that she had more to offer than Lana Turner or Joan Crawford . . . She felt she was a failure in her private life.” By June 1941, Garland was in pre-production for Babes on Broadway, again with Mickey Rooney in another Freed-Berkeley production. A Berkeley musical number demanded athletic prow- ess and military precision. The camera’s movements were re- hearsed every bit as carefully as the movements of the dancers, and Berkeley’s method was to rehearse a sequence over and over again, then shoot it in one or two takes. It could be tedious for performers who alternated between exhaustion and boredom. In between filming and appearing as an occasional guest on Bob Hope’s weekly radio, Judy pursued a lively social life and began to rely on what she called “nuts and bolts” - amphetamines and barbiturates. Doctor’s prescriptions were not necessarily required - pills were readily available from people working in the studio. Judy: “They had us working days and nights on end. They’d give us pep pills to keep us on our feet long after we were exhausted. Then they’d take to the studio hospital and knock us cold with sleeping pills - Mickey sprawled out on one bed and me on another. After four hours, they’d wake us up and give us pep pills again, so we could work for another 72 hours. That’s the way we worked, and that’s the way we got thin. That’s the way we got mixed up. And that’s the way we lost control.” Ann Rutherford: “The kids worked and worked and worked, and hurry right back.” David Rose was genial, cultured, interested in his career, his elaborate model train set, and Judy Garland. He had been con- ducting Judy’s recording sessions and benefit performances, and had escorted her to the Academy Award ceremony where she sang ‘America’ after a radio address by President Roosevelt. Rose’s divorce decree had not become final till May 1941 and Louis Mayer had asked him to wait two or three months before marrying Judy, in view of her age. Judy’s engagement to David Rose was announced at a ‘tea and cocktail’ party on 2 June, a week before her nineteenth birthday. The wedding would be after she had finished work on the film Babes on Broadway. Some of her friends thought she only wanted to marry in order to be independent of her mother, Ethel. In the middle of shooting Babes on Broadway, Judy and David suddenly eloped to Las Vegas. Garland cabled Mayer and Freed: “I’m so happy. Dave and I were married this a.m. Please give me a little time and I will be back and finish the picture with one take on each scene - Love Judy.” Louis Mayer was furious that the studio had been robbed of any chance of cashing in on the publicity. The Roses were informed that under no circumstances could shooting be held up and the bride was back in the studio within 24 hours. Ethel Gumm to her daughters: “I wish you girls would find some- one who digs a slide rule instead of a slide trombone.” Judy had a remarkable memory and would drive Busby Berkeley crazy by her apparent inability to listen to anything he was saying. She would stare off into space and he would scream and shout that she was not listening, whereupon Judy would repeat his instructions word for word and wonder what had provoked his outburst. Veteran vaudevillian Elsie Janis said of Judy: “She can be anything she wants to be, and it will be very interesting to watch her heart and head battle it out. The former is enormous - the latter surprisingly small, considering the crowns and laurels it has to hold up. Judy has gone farther, faster than anyone I know - and she has not yet started.” When Babes on Broadway, the third Rooney-Berkeley trilogy of ‘backyard’ musicals, was released a month after Pearl Harbour, critics were overwhelmed by the sheer energy, length, and occa- sional corn of it all. Pen-picture: “Judy, off-duty, is a softly spoken, though vital person. There is fire in those large, shining dark eyes which tell one she is the kind of girl who could indulge, if the occasion demanded, in a rare old flare-up. There is kindness there, too, unmistakably deep, real; sympathetic.” The war galvanised Garland into touring the Mid-West with a USO troupe entertaining troops at training installations. Rose accompanied her on piano, averaging four shows a day, though the tour did include a belated honeymoon in Florida. To Judy, the Los Angeles mansion that the Roses took a lease on with its gilt, brocades and satin, was exactly what a movie star’s home should look like, and big enough to accommodate David’s 780 feet of model railway. Unfortunately, Judy had never learned domestic skills, nor the discipline of keeping an engagement diary - Ethel had done everything for her - and in a house containing two people with busy careers, the result was chaos. David’s attempts to improve her musical knowledge and voice only increased Judy’s feelings of inadequacy and caused David to become not so much angry, as bewildered. It wasn’t too long before he joined the army. Judy: “I found myself in a big house and it was frightening. I didn’t know anything about cooking or keeping house. My mother had always been the most wonderful housekeeper; she never asked me to do anything.” In February 1942, Garland began work on For Me and My Gal, a story about vaudeville players set in the First World War, topical now that America was again at war. Fresh from his Broadway success in Pal Joey, co-star Gene Kelly teamed up wonderfully with Judy Garland, though neither were happy with their director Busby Berkeley. Amazingly, this was Garland’s fifteenth feature film and Kelly’s first, and Kelly later recalled that Judy was a tremendous help, teaching him dozens of little tricks. Judy’s dance technique was limited, not having received much training, but Kelly found her able to pick up dance routines as quickly as most professional dancers.

Judy with George Murphy and Gene Kelly in finale that was deleted

During one strenuous dance routine she collapsed and a doctor gave her some tablets. Unable to sleep that night, she arrived on set “feeling like a wreck” and was given more tablets. She missed sixteen days of filming due to illness. This marked the beginning of her addiction to pills. Later she said: “From that age on I’ve been on a sort of treadmill.” For Me and My Gal grossed $4 million proving Judy Garland was a star in her own right. Presenting Lily Mars was originally intended as a straight dra- matic part for Lana Turner but producer, Joe Pasternak, softened and musicalised the story for Judy Garland. Norman Taurog directed and labelled his star “the finest girl-actress of my whole experience”. Every effort was made to have Judy look glamorous, but the film was not on a par with the previous lavish productions with the Freed Unit, and Pasternak, who specialised in inexpensive pro- ductions, worried that he had let Judy down. Joe Pasternak: “Once she had read her script, Judy knew every speech and cue in it, and would be able to record it . . . an authentic cinema genius, born with what might be called perfect theatrical pitch . . . an accomplished artist from the first day I knew her.” Hollywood marketed glamour and promoted itself as a commu- nity of hard-working folks but social life in Hollywood presented plenty of opportunity for affairs and liaisons. Appearances in night clubs and restaurants were just photo opportunities and most preferred to pursue their entertainment, in private, in their own homes. There were parties of all kinds at which inhibitions were freed by drink and drugs. By now Judy had out-grown her screen image of the girl next door, and thoroughly experienced in sexual techniques, she en- joyed the company of gay men, succeeding in seducing one or two, and even had an affair with Tyrone Power, though she later had to admit that she had fallen in love with ‘a magazine cover’. Judy: “I’m intensely feminine. I don’t think there’s any other way to be a woman. It’s nice to be that way. You can be hurt but you can have children and still love and make a man feel important. There are more advantages to be a woman. But if you’re half-man and half-woman, you’re nowhere.” Charles Walters: “Judy got around. She had the frustration of not being a Lana Turner or Elizabeth Taylor. She tried to make people fall in love with her and she was quite successful at it.” When David Rose came home on weekend leave from the army he would find Judy surrounded by new friends and their marriage became ‘a casualty of the war’. A separation was announced in February 1943. Judy had already begun an affair with Joseph L. Mankiewicz whose wife, Austrian actress Rosa Stradner, had developed a nervous instability. Mankiewicz had a reputation as a ladies man and worked for M-G-M as a writer-producer. With a formidable intellect he had already produced several important pictures including The Phila- delphia Story. Joe introduced Judy to literature, and she called him ‘Josephus’, serenading him with the song, ‘Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe’. They were obviously deep in love and told the Rabwins that they were going to get married. Louis Mayer did not like it and told Mankiewicz not to concern himself with Garland’s career, or pri- vate life. Concerned about Judy’s emotional state and pill taking, Mank- iewicz suggested that Judy should see a psychiatrist. Judy didn’t take the sessions too seriously and just made up stories. Ethel believed the analysis was turning Judy against her and a serious rift opened between mother and daughter. Mankiewicz had an argument with Mayer and Ethel in Mayer’s office and finally said: “Look, Mr. Mayer, the studio is not obviously big enough for the both of us. One of us has to go.” Within a week Mankiewicz was working for 20th Century Fox where he later produced such milestones as A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve. Joseph L. Mankiewicz: “Judy was then twenty and we were very good friends. She was beginning to show those signs - not show- ing up on time and taking too much benzedrine, that sort of thing . . . She was just the most remarkably bright, gay, happy, helpless and engaging girl I’ve ever met . . . the girl reacted to the slightest bit of kindness as if it were a drug . . . She was treated by most people, including her mother, as a thing, not a human being.” Jimmy, Judy’s sister: “You couldn’t tell her what Joe said was wrong without getting your head chopped off.” In the film Thousands Cheer, a topical army story featuring half the stars on the M-G-M lot, Judy was paired with classical pianist Jose Iturbi in a boogie-woogie number written by Roger Edens, ‘The Joint Is Really Jumpin’ Down at Carnegie Hall’. Despite Mankiewicz’s belief that Garland should be given more adult roles, she was once again teamed up with Mickey Rooney in the Freed Unit’s production of Girl Crazy. The shooting of the big number, ‘I Got Rhythm’, directed by Busby Berkeley with extraneous chorus, whip, blasting-gun and canon effects, stretched into nine days and Garland became ill. She told columnist Hedda Hopper: “I used to feel he had a big black bullwhip and he was lashing me with it.” Dr. Marc Rabwin ordered Judy not to work for six weeks and Berkeley was replaced by Norman Taurog and Chuck Walters. Despite her health remaining precarious and missing a dozen days of shooting during the Spring, Judy was in full bloom in the film and eclipsed her co-star, Mickey Rooney. Busby Berkeley: “Cut! Let’s try it again, Judy! Come on, move! Get the lead out!” Judy Garland liked to sing, whether professionally, or at parties, or in her home, or simply riding in the back of a car. Even when she was not singing, she was performing, mimicking someone, telling a raunchy story, or camping her way through an interview. Her wit and intelligence were committed to entertainment and nothing else. On 1 July 1943 Garland made a rare live appearance on stage at the huge outdoor Robin Hood Dell auditorium in Philadelphia accompanied by André Kostelanetz and the Philadelphia Orches- tra. Filling the amphitheatre were 15,000 people and another 15,000 sat on adjoining grassy knolls. Nervous at first, Judy gradually gained confidence and wowed them at the end with ‘The Joint Is Really Jumping’. On her return to Los Angeles she was asked to join a dozen other stars on the Hollywood Bond/Third War Drive and in a sixteen-city, three-week tour, the stars raised over a billion dollars in war bonds. Judy: “I thought that they were probably thinking what was I doing there, so I just sang louder.” Chapter Three: St. Louis ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’

Impressed with his talent for mounting shows on Broadway, Arthur Freed invited Vincente Minnelli to Metro without any spe- cific assignment. When first choice George Cukor was conscripted into the army, Freed appointed Minnelli as director of Meet Me in St. Louis. Judy was not too keen to play in the film since she would be playing an adolescent again. Mankiewicz also felt she should be playing sophisticated comedy because of her wit, and Vincente Minnelli only convinced Judy to take the part after she was prom- ised a dramatic role in her next film. Though the film would be in Technicolor, Minnelli decided that there would be no gleaming sets for dancers, not even a theatre, but the film would emphasise naturalism in reproducing the atmos- phere of Mid-Western bourgeois comfort around the turn of the century. An entire new street was built with sloping lawns, a gothic villa with porches, gables, bays and gingerbread trimmings. Used to flippant, wisecracking dialogue, Judy was uncomfortable with the script. Unsure whether she could carry the film, Garland complained about her role. Looking at Minnelli “as if he was planning an armed robbery against the public”, she asked ques- tions like: “This is awful, isn’t it?” and “This isn’t very good, is it?” When Mary Astor advised her to just go along with it, Judy retired to her dressing-room with a migraine. Mary Astor: “Judy, what’s happened to you? You were a trouper - once.” Judy: “I always have to be my best in front of the camera. You expect it of me too. Well, sometimes I don’t feel my best. It’s a struggle to get through the day . . . I use these pills. They carry me through.” Late more often than not for production - some days she failed to show at all - the film became a contest between M-G-M and her psyche. The atmosphere on set only improved as shooting pro- gressed and Garland began to understand Minnelli’s approach. The ice gradually melted between the couple and they began to get on extremely well. They even began to meet socially. Arthur Freed insisted on a song about a trolley and inspiration only came to songwriters Blane and Martin when they saw a picture of an old St. Louis trolley with the caption underneath: ‘Clang, Clang, Went the Trolley’. They had no trouble with the ‘The Boy Next Door’ and ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ which later made the charts. Minnelli had made a new kind of musical and Garland had never looked better on film. Meet Me in St. Louis broke box-office records - M-G-M’s top money-maker after Gone With the Wind. Variety: “Miss Garland achieves true stature with her deeply understanding performance.” Kay Thompson: “Do you want a rehearsal, Judy?” Judy: “We’ll run it through once.” Kay Thompson: “It was a perfect take . . . when she worked, she worked.” With the film’s shooting completed, Garland filed for divorce from David Rose on the grounds of ‘incompatibility and clash of ca- reers’. She began to live with Vincente Minnelli but the affair only lasted a few weeks - she really wanted to marry Joe Mankiewicz but he wouldn’t leave his wife. Judy appeared with Bing Crosby and Jimmy Durante in a radio sketch for the troops entitled: ‘The Groaner, the Canary and the Nose’; and she also appeared several times with Frank Sinatra on his radio show. Judy: “Joe was the greatest love of my life. I almost had his child, except that I wasn’t pregnant by him.” For the film Ziegfield Follies, Kay Thompson and Roger Edens had written a satirical number for Greer Garson called ‘Madame Crematon’, the inventor of the safety pin. The idea was to show that Greer Garson, who had played Madame Curie, was not as starchy as was generally perceived. When Garson turned it down, Garland jumped at it and Minnelli filmed it over three days in July 1944.

Fred Zinnemann was brought in to direct The Clock featuring Garland in her promised dramatic role. Unfortunately, they didn’t get along. Once again Garland was worried about her part and Zinnemann couldn’t convince her that she could play an ordinary New York working girl. After everybody’s life on the set had been made a misery for twenty-four days, production was shut down. Despite walking out on their relationship, Garland asked Minnelli to take over produc- tion of The Clock and he agreed only after he had extracted a promise that she would do as exactly as he told her. Judy told an interviewer: “You take your life in your hands, but it’s fun to see what you can do. I like taking a crack at something different.” Zinnemann: “I thought her a great talent and looked forward to working with her, but she just didn’t like me.” Fred Astaire: “Vincente’s so good - if I just knew what he was saying.” Filming was not easy. Minnelli had to accompany Garland to make-up every morning to reassure her that she could play the part, and all his tact and patience were needed when she was nervous on set. If Minnelli was helping Garland, so Garland was helping her co-star Robert Walker who was in a far worse state. His marriage to Jennifer Jones had fallen apart and he was drinking heavily. Garland did everything she could to nurse him through the filming, even rescuing him from a bar when he was on a bender and getting him into shape for the next day’s shooting. The Clock received excellent reviews and surprisingly, despite Garland’s honest performance, didn’t receive a single Academy Award. New York Daily Mirror: “To say she is superb is an understatement in two syllables. She need never sing or dance again.” The Clock completed, Garland gave up her rented house in Beverley Hills and moved in with Minnelli. Vincente explained: “We both know that a marriage can be the most wonderful thing on earth, or it can gum up your life and spoil everything. We’re thinking it over.” Immediately the studio sent them both to New York for the premiere of Meet Me in St. Louis where Judy showed Vincente off to the Press, and he escorted her to the Metropolitan Opera House, to the musical Oklahoma!, and introduced her to his artistic friends including Richard and Dorothy Rodgers. Judy found New York an exhilarating place, full of important people in the arts and society but back in Los Angeles her interest in the arts soon waned. Not working she didn’t know how to channel her energies. Unable to cope on some days, she would resort to pills and Minnelli would return home “to find her speech and gestures going double time”. Minnelli: “I was ecstatic when Judy told me she wanted to marry me as soon as her divorce was final. I let go of my emotions, feeling needed for the first time in my life. We would face all problems together.” Oklahoma! revolutionised the musical. Liberated from its theatre settings, the show’s songs were sung by players other than the star performers and Arthur Freed envisaged The Harvey Girls, a vehicle for Judy Garland with music and lyrics by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer, in this new mould. During shooting, Garland was missing for eleven days and was late on forty other occasions. With the years her insecurities had grown, not lessened. Continually keeping people waiting on the set, she would then turn up as if nothing untoward had happened, laughing and joking, being the adorable Judy Garland most of them had long known. Her costume designer, Helen Rose, remarked: “She was slim and talented but strung like a violin string - quite different from the little roly-poly who sang her heart out at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.” Angela Lansbury: “What an education to work with Judy; I loved her. I was like a sponge in those days and picked up a lot of wonderful stuff from her. She was a total pro and her talent was the one thing that saw her through.” Judy: “I was a nervous wreck, jumpy and irritable from sleeping too little. I couldn’t take the tension of the studio. Everything at M-G-M was competition. Every day I went to work with tears in my eyes. Work gave me no pleasure.” Problems with filming abounded. Virginia O’Brien was pregnant and her scenes had to be rushed through; Ray Bolger was burned by steam from a train; John Hodiak and Preston Foster were hurt in a fight scene; and eight writers toiled on the script causing Judy to joke: “They couldn’t come up with one plot; we had seven plots - one plot per person.” Garland’s performance gives no hint of the trouble behind the scenes. The entertaining movie scored a suc- cess at the box-office and Judy’s recording of ‘On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe’ hit the charts. Liberty: “Move over, Broadway, and make room for a great, wide, wonderful musical comedy. It’s a certainty that if Judy gets any more talented, she’ll probably explode. .” On 15 June 1945, Judy Garland married Vincente Minnelli at her mother’s home. Ira Gershwin was best man, Louis Mayer gave away the bride, and the newly-weds left the same day for a New York honeymoon. Judy told her many fans in New York: “This is my husband. His name is Vincente Minnelli and he’s a very fine film director.” At 23 years of age, Judy Garland had already starred, or co- starred, in 12 films, made 75 radio appearances, cut 35 record sides for Decca, and performed in hundreds of benefit shows for the Armed Forces. Yet her increasing absences and lateness, fluctuating weight, and dependence on pills were a cause for concern. Some believed that the gentle, gifted Minnelli would assuage some of her insecurities. By the time the couple returned to Los Angeles in September, Judy was pregnant and Minnelli’s house in Beverley Hills was extended to include a nursery. If it was a boy, they decided, he would be called Vincente Jr.; if a girl, Liza, after the name of the song written by the Gershwins and sung by Al Jolson. Before her pregnancy became obvious, Judy began work on Till the Clouds Roll By, a fictionalised biography of Jerome Kern with an all-star cast and Kern played by Robert Walker. Minnelli had agreed to direct Judy’s sequences and wrapped up four musical numbers and three brief scenes within five weeks. Playing legen- dary Broadway dancer Marilyn Miller, Judy was much amused by her third number entitled ‘Who?’. She laughed as she said: “What a song to sing in my present condition?” Dancing up to most of the men, she sang: “Who - stole my heart away? Who?” One of M-G-M’s big successes of 1946, the film established box-office records everywhere. Hollywood Review: “It’s the greatest work Garland has ever done. she is radiantly beautiful, winsomely appealing and for twenty minutes, the picture is all hers.” Garland took on her new role of domesticity not too successfully. The house staff’s patience was sorely tried as they watched their new mistress’s attempts to clean the floor, or when her attempts to make a cake left the kitchen looking like a battlefield. Liza May Minnelli, born on 12 March 1946, had Judy’s petite, upturned nose and Minnelli’s large eyes and generous lips. Judy adored Liza, as did Vincente, and she applied herself to being a mother with some resolution. Determined to avoid overwork and dependency on medication, she decided to work independently, planning to do one picture a year and perhaps a radio series. Not wanting to lose their valuable asset, M-G-M went into action, offering Judy financial rewards, artistic control, continuing work with her husband, and films cre- ated especially for her. The studios persuaded her to accept their offer guaranteeing $300,00 annually for ten pictures over the next five years. She began work in December on The Pirate, a pet project of her husband’s and directed by him. Immediately she regretted her decision and her feelings of insecurity increased. Wracked with post-natal depression, she was unable to eat and lost weight. She dropped out of the Academy Awards ceremony where she was programmed to sing ‘On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe’ which won an Oscar for the best song. Vincente: “Judy’s desire for constant approval was pathological.”

The Pirate was a sort of fanciful, costume burlesque set in Martinique in the 1830’s. Co-star Gene Kelly did most of the choreography and Cole Porter wrote the songs. Despite being supported by some of the finest talent in show business, Garland feared that the film would not appeal to her grass-roots public. The frilly costumes could not hide the fact that she was woefully thin but her worst fear was that Gene Kelly, working like a demon on his dancing, would take the film away from her. Minnelli tried to assure her that he could bring her through if she would just trust him, but she grew paranoid about his close working relationship with Kelly. Gene Kelly: “Judy had periods when she didn’t show up. This was my first indication that something was wrong.” It wasn’t long before Garland resorted to pills, and as often as not, she was absent from the studio. No amount of warnings or surveillance could prevent her from getting pills and Minnelli found he had no control over her at all. Railing against Ethel and others, she repudiated those trying to help her and demoralised the whole crew. A psychoanalyst was called in by the studio to advise her and her colleagues. “I lied again,” she would confess after a therapy session. “I lied so much today I don’t know any longer what is true and untrue.” At home and at the studio, Minnelli’s patience was stretched beyond endurance, though the quarrels were kept from Liza who had her own room with a nurse. Judy even ‘had a go’ at Cole Porter whom she adored. Going way over budget, the film took 135 days to shoot, and for 99 of them Garland was absent. Judy: “I won’t be good enough today, I know it in my bones.” Vincente: “Just dress and make up and come down and see how you feel.” Cole Porter: “Judy pointed out that there were hardly any laughs where I had attempted an infinite number. It was very embarrass- ing to have it pointed out.” Hedda Hopper: “She was shaking like an aspen leaf and went into a frenzy of hysteria, shouting that everyone who had once loved her had turned against her.” Gene Kelly: “Judy only worked when she thought she was going to be good. If she wasn’t up to giving her best, she didn’t appear on the set.” Kelly later explained his enthusiasm for the film: “Vincente and I honestly believed we were being dazzlingly brilliant and clever, that everybody would fall at our feet and swoon clear away in delight and ecstasy.” The public did not. Too rarefied for the average taste, it was the only M-G-M Garland picture to lose money. Cole Porter: “A $5 million picture that was unspeakably wretch- ed, the worst that money could buy.” There was no question of Garland starting another film. Her erratic behaviour - paranoia, irrational fears and moments of remorse, were those of a classic drug addict. She herself declined to give up her vast assortment of pills and take a cure so the studio took advice from doctors and sent her to a sanatorium at Las Campanas in California. M-G-M Studios: “We have 14 million dollars tied up in her.” Judy: “It was dark when I arrived and these two burly attendants helped me across the grounds. I kept tripping over; I couldn’t control my feet; I kept stumbling and they kept picking me up. ‘This had to be the end of me,’ I thought. Next morning I saw that I had been tripping over croquet wickets in the lawn!” After two weeks and desperately wanting to see her daughter Liza, she was released from what she described later as “the first of my nuthouses”. She spent another two weeks at a sanatorium in Massachusetts before checking herself out and returning home. She easily and quickly completed re-shoots for The Pirate. Vincente: “Between the two of us, we shielded the unhappy truth from Liza until she was old enough to cope with it.” Undaunted with the failure of The Pirate, M-G-M contracted Irving Berlin to write a musical called Easter Parade with the same team of Freed, Minnelli, Garland and Kelly. Minnelli, unable to help his wife in what he described as “the reality of our often sweet, occasionally bitter, life”, was on the point of casting the supporting roles when Freed informed him that Garland’s psychiatrist, Dr. Kupper, thought it better all round if he did not direct the film. “He feels Judy doesn’t want you as director,” he explained. Judy hadn’t said a word to Vincente. Minnelli was replaced by Charles Walters, who had been friends with Judy since they worked together on Presenting Lily Mars. Walters knew Judy loved to growl and pretend and true to form she greeted him on set: “Look sweetie, I’m no June Allyson, you know. Don’t get cute with me. None of that batting-the-eyelids bit, or the fluffing of the hair routine for me, buddy! I’m Judy Garland and you just watch it.” One time in rehearsal, Irving Berlin offered Garland some advice on singing a song, so she backed him against a wall and waved a forefinger at him: “Listen, buster, you write ‘em. I sing ‘em.” Berlin howled with laughter.

Rehearsals were under way when Kelly fell playing touch football at home and broke his ankle. Fred Astaire was asked to replace him, Kelly didn’t object, and Astaire came out of retirement. Straightaway, Astaire and Garland hit it off together, sharing jokes and reminiscences of their childhood. Fred even managed to quell Judy’s fears about the enterprise. The movie was peppered with Irving Berlin songs, including ‘A Fella with an Umbrella’ and ‘A Couple of Swells’ which later became a high spot of Judy’s stage act. Easter Parade took record takings at the box-office. Hollywood Reporter: “Easter Parade firmly establishes Judy as the screen’s first lady of tempo and tunes. It’s her picture, and it’s to Astaire’s everlasting credit that he let it be that way.” Fred Astaire: “An amazing girl, Judy could do things - anything - without rehearsing and come off perfectly. She could learn faster, do everything better than most people. It was one of the greatest thrills to work with her.”

Famous tramp scene Before Easter Parade was released, Astaire and Garland went into rehearsals for The Barkleys of Broadway. Garland hadn’t been given the long rest she had been promised and it was not long before she was taking pills, at first to increase her weight, and then to reduce it. She often sought refuge at the home of agent Carleton Alsop who was married to actress Sylvia Sidney. When Judy failed to show up at the studios four days running, Freed consulted her doctor who advised: “It would be a risk for her to start work.” Freed replaced Judy with Ginger Rogers, restoring a partner- ship broken with Astaire in 1939. Suspended by the studio, Judy was at home and miserable on a steady diet of amphetamines and in a state where she could hardly make a decision to move from one room to another without bursting into tears, or throwing a tantrum. Believing she was being punished by the studio, she lashed out at whoever was nearest, usually Vincente, though never Liza. She told everyone that her marriage was over, and too kind to desert her, Vincente was at a loss as to what to do. She told her mother Ethel in no uncertain terms to keep away. Judy: “Hollywood is a strange place when you’re in trouble. Every- one is afraid it’s contagious.” Lee Gershwin: “If you hadn’t married Vincente, you wouldn’t have Liza.” There were plenty of people wanting to help her - close support- ive friends such as Humphrey Bogart and Laureen Bacall; studio allies such as Kay Thompson and Roger Edens; and old family friends like Marcus Rabwin. Closest to her were Sylvia Sydney and her husband Carleton Alsop who managed Judy’s moods better than most. Alsop acted as a go-between in the frequent disputes between Judy and her husband, and her disputes with the studio. Under doctor’s care, Garland was again gradually weaned away from medication. M-G-M had withheld $50,000 of Garland’s salary because of the difficulties incurred during The Pirate, and Mayer, looking for a way of easing her back to work, agreed to pay her $50,000 if she appeared in Words and Music, a film biography of songwriters Rodgers and Hart. She sang ‘I Wish I Were In Love Again’ in a duet with Mickey Rooney to such good effect that she was asked to return for an encore, ‘Johnny One-Note’. In between shooting the two numbers, she had gained over thirty pounds in an eating binge. Some of Garland’s confidence was restored after she appeared on two radio broadcasts with Al Jolson and Bing Crosby, and in September 1948 she informed M-G-M that she was ready for work. June Allyson, set to star with Van Johnson in the film In The Good Old Summertime, became pregnant and Garland replaced her. Despite being absent sixteen days with illness, Garland breezed through the shooting and the film was finished five days ahead of schedule. When asked by Mayer how this miracle had been wrought, Johnson answered: “We made her feel wanted and needed. We joked with her and kept her happy. There was never a word uttered in recrimination when she was late, didn’t show up or couldn’t go on. Those of us who worked with her knew her magical genius and respected it.” The young child seen in the final scene of In The Good Old Summertime was the first screen appearance of Liza Minnelli. Joe Pasternak: “A great artist is entitled to a lot more latitude.” When in full flow, Garland had a wonderful ability to learn quickly. By simply just glancing at a script, she could say the lines without fluffing; and after watching a stand-in go through a number once or twice, she could get up and do it herself. A second take was seldom necessary. Saul Chaplin: “To work with her was indescribable - like a Xerox machine. You played something to her, and she sang it right back the way you did. She ate up music like a vacuum cleaner.” Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun had completed a run of over a thousand performances on Broadway and plans were made for its filming with an unprecedented budget of $3 million. Garland would play Annie Oakley and Howard Keel, virtually unknown to American audiences, would play Frank Butler. Most people at the studio thought Arthur Freed was crazy appointing Busby Berkeley as director and Garland was furious. She had difficulty working with people she liked, let alone Berkeley with his brusque way of giving orders. She knew it would mean utter exhaustion and dependence on medication just to keep going. Judy: “I had seen the show on Broadway and had my heart set on doing it. Rehearsals started and I knew I wasn’t good. I was so very, very sick. I’d begged them to postpone the starting date but they wouldn’t. I knew I wasn’t going to make it. I hadn’t slept one night in fourteen.” Judy’s attendance on set soon became erratic, as did her perform- ance. Hopeless one day, she would deliver the next. Personal problems didn’t help. After fours years of marriage, Judy and Vincente had separated. The love between the two couldn’t over- come the shortcomings on both sides. Freed decided that Berkeley, who was shooting the film like a stage play, “had no conception of what the picture was about” and called in Chuck Walters as replacement. But Garland admitted to Walters: “It’s too late; I haven’t got the energy or the nerve any- more.” Things had gone too far. Suffering from insomnia and taking pills to control her fluctuating weight, she had difficulty in performing at all and the studio suspended her. Production was closed down and re-opened four months later with Betty Hutton as Annie Oakley. Charles Walters: “None of Berkeley’s footage was usable. The rushes were awful and Judy had never been worse. She couldn’t decide whether she was Mary Martin, Ethel Merman, Martha Raye or herself . . . Her nerves were shot, there was the weight thing, everything. We never knew what time she would come in - or whether she was prepared for anything when she did.” Howard Keel: “The studio should have waited for Garland. Let- ting her go was the only tacky thing I knew M-G-M do.” Judy: “I don’t believe it. After the money I made for the sons of bitches.” Chapter Four: The Palace ‘Playing the Palace’

Garland had to be cured of her addiction but she did not have the money to pay for treatment. She had never understood the value of money and her finances were in a mess. Taxes, doctor’s bills and maintenance were owing. A hospital in Boston closely associated with Harvard Medical School was recommended and the studios agreed to pay her hospital bill. “I’m learning to sleep all over again without medica- tion,” she told the Press but weaning her off drugs was not easy and withdrawal symptoms were painful. Minnelli, Mayer and Freed visited her. Frank Sinatra telephoned her every day. As she improved, she sent for Liza and for a while they took a cabin on the coast where they swam and sunbathed. Over- whelmed by her greeting when she visited a nearby Children’s Hospital, she said: “I loved feeling I could help somebody else for a change.” Over the next few years her garden was often thrown open in the cause of deprived or sick children. Louis Mayer: “I love you like a father.” Dr. Augustus Rose: “If you need pills, this hospital is full of them. But if you can get over it, fine. If you can’t, I’m going out to buy Christmas carols. We’d better start rehearsing now.” After leaving hospital, she lived once again with Minnelli, largely for the sake of Liza. Her friends had told her: “Call us anytime,” and she did at all times of the night. Quickly learning who would listen and who would not - Marc Rabwin was always available to her and often drove over to see if she was all right - she picked up the phone and called, whatever time of day or night, sometimes to laugh and joke, and sometimes to whine and bask in self-pity. Her calls became a lifetime habit. Minnelli: “I’d obviously failed Judy. Those periods in her life when she’d been least able to cope with the world coincided with the years of our marriage. It was an indictment I couldn’t ignore.”

Arthur Freed found Judy so much like her old self that he offered her the co-starring part with Gene Kelly in Summer Stock. Kelly agreed to do the picture as a personal favour to Judy, and anxious to see Judy on her feet, other old friends were on hand - Joe Pasternak as producer, Chuck Walters as director, and included in the cast was Phil Silvers with Saul Chaplin in charge of the music. Billy Rose: “I found your portrayal of a farm girl in ‘Summer Stock’ as convincing as a twenty-dollar piece, and when you leveled on Harold Arlen’s old song, ‘Get Happy’ - well, it was Al Jolson in lace panties.” Joe Pasternak: “I had to handle her differently than anybody else. Delay with Judy is something that is within her - something you know she can’t help. Everybody at the studio said to me: ‘How can you stand these delays?’ I replied: ‘When I look at the rushes, I pray she’ll come back any day.” Heartily eating again, Garland was overweight and ordered to reduce - a prelude to disaster since she began taking pills again. Feeling the picture was below her talents, she became depressed and began to come in late or not at all. Shooting dragged on till no one on the lot believed the film would ever be finished. Pasternak wanted to abandon it but Mayer told him: “Stay with it, no matter what it costs.” The cast and crew were very patient. Gene Kelly and Chuck Walters helped Garland through the filming. Though she re- hearsed the difficult finale, ‘Get Happy’, just once, and recorded it in under four takes, the film took six months to complete. Gene Kelly: “Judy only worked when she thought she was going to be good. If she felt she wasn’t up to giving her best, she didn’t appear on the set. It was as simple as that.” Judy: “Gene encouraged me to forget what people might be saying, laughed with me, helped keep down the friction.” Doctors recommended she take eight months off after complet- ing Summer Stock but three weeks later Garland was called back to work. Freed needed a replacement for June Allyson, who was again pregnant, to co-star with Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding. Judy later explained: “That was when I made one of the really classic mistakes of my life. I reasoned that I had been so humili- ated by the studio and the Press that if I returned, maybe every- thing would be all right.” Within a few days she had started to come in late complaining of the usual nausea and migraines. Even when on set there was no guarantee she would perform. Once again she was warned, threatened and cajoled to no effect. Awaking one morning with a migraine, she telephoned that they would have to manage without her. The studio decided to do just that and fired her. Judy Garland was severed from the M-G-M payroll on 7 June 1950, a week after her twenty-eighth birthday. She believed things could be sorted out but the studio had decided she was a pain in the neck and no longer an asset. It was the end of an era. M-G-M Studio: “This is to notify you that for good and sufficient cause and in accordance with rights granted to us . . . we shall refuse to pay you any compensation . . .” Harry Warren: “She was just too much trouble and too costly, so Metro let her go. But she was treated better at M-G-M than she would have been at any other studio.” Joe Pasternak: “Wish her well, return her love, all who cherish talent and genius and a great heart. For myself, I am lucky to have had the privilege of working with her.” Though Judy was no longer a star at M-G-M, other options were open to her such as a Broadway show, so it was not the end of the world. Judy thought it was and only three days after being fired by M-G-M she gashed her neck with a broken glass in her bathroom. Minnelli broke down the bathroom door to find that her wound was not life-threatening but the suicide attempt made front-page headlines. Friends rallied round. Ethel flew from Dallas; and her private turmoil generated sympathy and passion with the press and the public. New York Daily News: “Judy Garland Fails In Suicide Attempt” Dr. Ballard: “Several minor scratches on Judy’s neck . . . required no treatment.” Just as many people at M-G-M studios felt responsible as be- lieved she had brought it all on herself. Louis Mayer was baffled and asked Katherine Hepburn if she could help. Hepburn spent several hours talking with Judy, mentioning her own problems with Spencer Tracy’s drinking. “Now listen,” Katherine told her. “You’re one of three greatest talents in the world. and your ass has hit the gutter. There’s no place to go but up. Now, goddamit. Do it!” Fred Finklehoff: “Dear Judy: So glad you cut your throat. All the other girl singers needed this sort of break.” The newspapers also discovered that after a dozen years of stardom Judy was virtually broke. Taxes and medical expenses had eaten into her capital and she was without a salary from M-G-M. She confided her financial problems to Louis Mayer but even the old movie mogul himself couldn’t persuade the studio to make her a loan since he was being eased out himself. He offered to pay her hospital expenses personally. Much public sympathy was generated and Garland was soon seen out and about in public with Vincente and Liza. Louella Parsons: “Judy is an appealingly wonderful person when she is not harassed by worry and fear.” Hedda Hopper: “Hers is the greatest talent ever developed in this town, and I’ve known them all. So much talent, so much pressure, so much bad advice.” On a visit to New York in September 1950, she sneaked into the Capital Theatre on Broadway where Summer Stock was showing. Recognised when the lights went up, she found herself sur- rounded by people calling out messages of support. A crowd followed her through the lobby to her car shouting, “Judy! We love you, Judy! Keep making pictures!” She shouted back: “I love you.” Exciting and frightening at the same time, Judy found it: “So astonishing and so wonderful, so encouraging. It wasn’t like a mob, it was like a lot of friends.” Garland was no longer little Dorothy from ‘Over the Rainbow’ - that little scratch on her throat had transformed her into a cult. “I’m suspended so often, my feet are practically never on the ground,” Garland quipped to the Press in New York. On her return to Los Angeles she was released from her contract with M-G-M by mutual consent. There was speculation that she would replace Mary Martin in the Broadway production of South Pacific but she returned to radio - Bing Crosby had faith in her. “He called me up one morning. Bless him - he was cute: ‘Judy, I know how busy you are (Me busy? That was a laugh!) but I was wondering if I could get you on three shows?’ He could get me for thirty shows, or three hundred!” She appeared on Bing’s radio show with Bob Hope and the three of them did comedy skits. When Al Jolson died she did a tribute on the show by singing ‘Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody’. NBC vice-president: “We all love you and would make things enjoyable for you.” Bing Crosby: “She laughed infectiously, you know. The weeks we did together on radio were the best I ever had.” A radio reviewer: “If radio is to be saved, such shows as this will do the trick.” Her private life was as complicated as ever. Judy had already had taken up with Sid Luft, a man who was significantly different to Vincente Minnelli. Blunt, uncomplicated, Sid was aggressively charming. He had been a test pilot, produced a couple of films, and was interested in breeding thoroughbred racehorses. Though he was married to actress Lynn Bari, they were heading for divorce when he met Judy. Confident that he could lift Judy’s career to new heights, Luft became her manager and encouraged her to work on her stage act. Garland and Minnelli were divorced March 1951 and Judy was granted legal custody of Liza, though Liza could spend six months a year with her father. Vincente agreed to pay child support and Judy and Vincente remained friends. Though Variety in Britain was dying, the London Palladium kept it alive by featuring American film stars. Danny Kaye and Betty Hutton had successful seasons and early in 1951 Judy Garland was offered a four week engagement. Roger Edens and Oscar Levant helped her assemble her act, and after some self-doubts, she sailed to England on the Ile de France. When the ship docked at Plymouth, sirens from nearby ships Morse coded J-U-D-Y to her in salutation. “They told me people had a warm feeling for me in England, but I never thought it would be anything like this,” she told the waiting Press. Newspaper accounts referred to her as ‘tubby, plump and jovial’ and she commented: “I feel like the fat lady from Barnum & Baileys . . .” Val Parnell: “We love you as much as ever. Come and appear for me as soon as you are well.” Fanny Brice: “You’re going over there and, with the voice and the talent God gave you, you’re going to make everybody proud of you.” Hoagy Carmichael: “Ladies and gentlemen, as you all know, a great little star from America who entertained you with her marvel- lous pictures is opening on Monday, and she hasn’t been feeling too well - so be good to her: Miss Judy Garland!”

There were to be two shows nightly and on the eve of opening Judy’s nerves were bad: “I kept rushing to the bathroom to vomit. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t even sit down.” A young comedian, Max Bygraves, concluded the first half of the bill and after two more turns in the second, a great roar greeted the orchestra’s ‘Over the Rainbow’. Garland later recalled: “My knees locked - like Frankenstein’s wife - and they wouldn’t bend. So I walked on with two stiff legs . . . and just stood there in terror.” She looked older and stouter than the audience expected but they didn’t mind - they just cheered. She was frozen to the micro- phone through her first medley of songs and then, as she ex- plained afterwards: “Well, I began one little curtsy, and one nerve undid, and I just kept going! I wound up sitting on the floor - for no reason . . . I was blushing like a baby and feeling a fool. I wanted to cry, but I laughed instead - and the audience laughed with me.” Her accompanist, Buddy Pepper, hoisted her to her feet and she quipped: “That’s one of the most ungraceful exits ever made.” The audience laughed again and then applauded. They were in the palm of her hand and she sang a second medley of songs, leading off with a tribute to Al Jolson, ‘Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody’, and concluding with ‘Over the Rainbow’. Reborn was ‘Hollywood’s Singing Sweetheart’. Noel Coward: “You’re a very great artist, my darling.” Daily Telegraph: “She gave a more vital performance than any- one I have heard since Sophie Tucker, making me aware that what I imagined to be a fortissimo was merely a forte. It was not only with her voice but with her whole personality that she filled the theatre.” The four weeks of her run were sold out within three days and she was the toast of the town, receiving celebrities in her dressing room. Winston Churchill came, and so did Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh who invited her to their home. After a fortnight’s rest she did a short tour of the provinces organised by Sid Luft. Five-year-old Liza, whom she hadn’t seen for three months, joined her at the Hippodrome, Birmingham, and watched her from the wings as the audience stood up and sang to her ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Judy just “howled into her roses”. Interrupting her tour, she again appeared at the Palladium in a special midnight benefit performance for the family of late comic, Sid Field. Appearing with fifty other stars, including Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Danny Kaye, Orson Welles and Richard Atten- borough, she was the evening’s highlight when her ‘Rockabye’ was greeted by a great roar from the audience. Daily Telegraph: “Miss Garland’s charm is a complete absence of affectation.” Richard Attenborough: “It wasn’t just the song, or the way she sang it; it had nothing to do with pathos or memories: it was just magic.” The Palace, New York, once the goal of every vaudevillian, had seen better days. Years before it had starred the great names of vaudeville but by 1951 was unkempt, looking the worse for wear and showing dime movies. Owned by RKO, it was at the heart of New York’s theatre land and Sid Luft telephoned RKO vice presi- dent, Sol Schwartz, and asked him to take a look at it. They both saw the potential and Schwartz immediately made plans to refurbish the theatre and re-open with Judy Garland headlining an all-star ‘two-a-day’, reserved-seat bill, for four weeks in October. Judy Garland would bring vaudeville back to the Palace. Variety: “If anyone can do it, this bundle of talent can.” A columnist: “Judy Garland’s idea for a flash return to Broadway has wiser heads wagging negative.” Garland would more than sing, she would show her skills as a dancer with a chorus of Judy’s Eight Boy Friends, and with one of her Boy Friends perform ‘A Couple of Swells’. Many were doubtful that Judy Garland could breathe life back into vaudeville - Time-Life did not even bother to send a photogra- pher - but advance bookings were good and the first night could have sold out five times over. Police barricades had to hold back an estimated 5,000 people in Times Square and Garland, es- corted by Chuck Walters, had to walk the last block. Among the star celebrities waiting inside were Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson, Irving Berlin and General MacArthur. Chuck Walters: “What’s this? Why can’t we get through?” Cab driver: “Well, Judy Garland’s opening tonight, and them’s the fans out there waitin’” Policeman in Times Square: “I’ve been on this beat twenty years and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

After the first half of five variety acts, the curtain went up on a chorus line of dancers in tuxedos known as ‘Judy’s Boy Friends’. Suddenly, like her original ‘Baby’ Gumm act, Judy slipped out from behind them to thunderous applause from the audience that rolled on and on till she finally had to cup her hands and shout: “Hello!” Sailing into Roger Eden’s ‘Call the Papers’, she then sang the title song from M-G-M’s On the Town. The audience rose to her after every number, and after performing ‘A Couple of Swells’, she plopped down on the edge of the stage in her tramp costume with a dirty face, dishevelled wig, microphone forsaken and just a white spotlight on her face to sing ‘Over the Rainbow’ in what was a moment of unforgettable theatre. Applause rolled on for ten min- utes, and as ushers brought bouquets up the aisles, Garland could only quaver: “Bless you all.” This opening night was the biggest smash seen on Broadway in years. Critics stretched back into vaudeville history to find some- thing to compare it with and the only name they came up with was Al Jolson. Life: “Almost everyone in the theatre was crying and for days afterwards people around Broadway talked of it as if they had beheld a miracle.” A. E. Hotcher: “That night on the Palace stage Judy Garland took her place among the immortals of the theatre.” New York went wild in its acclamation of Judy Garland but in spite of her excellent notices she began dieting again. Two shows a day, thirteen shows a week became a strain and she began seeing a new doctor. During the fourth week, just before the Sunday matinee, she collapsed backstage. Her doctor gave her a sedative and told her not to go on. On hearing the slow hand clapping Judy said: “That does it. I’ve got to go on.” Appearing to be drunk, she managed to get through the opening number - “Halfway between the sky and the floor,” she later recalled - before her voice tailed off completely and she stumbled into the wings. Vivianne Blaine, currently playing in Guys and Dolls, valiantly stepped out of the audience to take over, as did comedian Jan Miller who completed the show. The Palace closed for four days and she returned to an ovation little short of the one she received on opening night. Max Bygraves: “Anybody who was anybody wanted Judy at their party. All and sundry told her how great she was; you’ve got to start believing it if it’s said as often as it was said to her.” Judy’s doctor: “Nervous exhaustion, similar to combat fatigue.” The Palace willingly cut back to ten shows a week and the show ran for an unprecedented nineteen weeks, grossing $750,000 - a record for vaudeville. At the end of the last Sunday night, Lauritz Melchior, the famous opera singer, who was succeeding her on the bill the following week, joined her on stage for the finale. Still the audience franti- cally asked for “one more” with some shouting for ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Judy folded her arms and said: “Okay . . . let’s see you do it.” The orchestra started up and Melchior led the audience into singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to Garland. The entire house rose for the final bars and Judy left the stage in tears. Life: “The girl with the voice meant equally for lullabies, love songs and plain whooping and hollering deserved the most over- worked word in her profession - great.” Betty Hutton: “The audience is in tears before she opens her mouth, and when she sits down without a microphone and starts ‘Over the Rainbow’, you can hear people all over the audience saying: ‘God bless you, Judy.’ Who can follow that?” Luft and Garland took a holiday in Palm Beach before opening the show at the Los Angeles Philharmonic on 21 April 1952 and the entire four-week run was sold out in advance. All Hollywood was on hand for another opening night triumph. At the close of the show she said: “I think you know how much it means to me to be singing for you. I’ve missed you.” On 27 May, the show moved to San Francisco where a doctor confirmed that Garland was pregnant and in a secret ceremony on 8 June, Judy Garland married Sid Luft. The world learned of it two days later in a newspaper headline: ‘Judy Garland’s Secret Marriage Revealed.’ Six-year-old Liza learned of it from a TV news bulletin. Other headlines followed about her personal life - she and Luft had been in and out of court over his child-support payments to his ex-wife Lynn Bari for their son; and it was also revealed the Judy’s mother Ethel was working as a clerk at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica for ‘a little over a dollar an hour’. Ethel: “He’s a bad guy. I’ve been hoping it wouldn’t happen.”

The Friars Club, involved in show-business charities, honoured Garland at a formal testimonial dinner at the Biltmore Bowl in Los Angeles (pictured above with George Burns). The only other woman to receive this accolade was Sophie Tucker, and dubbed ‘Miss Show Business’, Judy sat tearful-eyed as Frank Sinatra sang, ‘Dear Miss Garland, You Made Us Love You’. Judy put a full-page ad in the trade papers: “Can you possibly know, each and every of you, the good you have done my heart. I am very honoured, I am very grateful, and I am very proud.” Judy repaid Bing Crosby’s earlier kindness by replacing him in his radio programme when his wife Dixie Lee was dying of cancer. Homer Dickens: “The list of celebrities who honoured Judy that night is long enough to fill the Beverley Hills phone book.” George Burns to Sid Luft: “I married a girl with talent, too. It’s wonderful.”

Lorna Luft (pictured above) was born 21 November 1952 and joined Liza and John, six-year-old son of Sid from his previous marriage, in the Luft household. Once again Judy suffered from post-natal depression and began taking pills other than those prescribed by her doctor. Well-mean- ing people supplied her. When Judy wanted something badly enough she could be both charming and intimidating. The Garland-Luft marriage was a stormy one. Their large home in Holmby Hills, south of Bel Air, could not hide their battles which were loud and inventive. The couple gave and went to a lot of parties. Always gay, witty and exuberant, Judy took joy in her singing for no other reason than to please her friends. Drinking into the small hours, she would then bend anybody’s ear about ‘the son-of-a-bitch Sid’. More than one divorce suit was brought and then dropped. The Holmby Hills neighbourhood was also the home of the Rat Pack - the Bogarts, Sinatra, David Niven, Peter Lawford and the rest. The name came into being after a chance remark by Laureen Bacall when she entered Romanoff’s restaurant one evening, looked around, and said: “I see the Rat Pack is all here.” The Lufts spent a great deal of their leisure time with the Rat Pack who described themselves as being against everything and everyone, including themselves. At their centre, Bogart loved to argue, banter and above all drink, and as much as he liked Sid and Judy, he often became fed up listening to their family problems. “You’ve got no class, Sid, that’s your problem,” he once told Sid when he bought a Rolls Royce. “You can’t buy it and you can’t acquire it like a suntan.” In general however, Garland’s friends liked Luft who had charm and intelligence. Ethel spent Christmas with her daughter Virginia and her hus- band in Texas before returning to Los Angeles. On 4 January 1953 she was found dead in the Douglas Aircraft parking lot, victim of a heart attack. The Press made great play of the contrast between the life of a highly paid actress and her humble mother who was a clerk in a factory. It was rarely mentioned that Ethel had received a portion of Judy’s salary during her fifteen years at M-G-M. Theirs had been a volatile relationship. Ethel had been extremely ambitious for her daughter and Judy always had, from the age three, that craving for an appreciative audience. Judy never found it easy to blame herself for the things that went wrong in her life and she blamed those nearest to her. Ethel became a convenient scapegoat. Ethel Gumm: “Judy has been selfish all her life. That’s my fault. I made it easy for her. She never said ‘I want to be kind or loved’, only ‘I want to be famous’. She worked - that’s all she ever wanted - to be an actress. Judy and I never had a quarrel, she just brushed me off.” Chapter Five: A Star A Star Is Born

Sid Luft set about producing Judy Garland’s next film. The rights to A Star Is Born, a 1937 Janet Gaynor- Fredric March classic, were held by Edward Alperson and in exchange for the rights to remake the story, Luft gave him 20% interest in his new company, Transcona Enterprises. Apart from two more screenplays the only other asset of Transcona Enterprises was Judy Garland. “Those two alley-cats can’t make a movie,” Arthur Freed com- mented, but Jack Warner admired Judy’s work and ambitious to outdo M-G-M, made a nine-picture deal with Transcona Enter- prises that included A Star Is Born. George Cukor, a fastidious, cultivated man, had always wanted to direct Judy and jumped at the chance to direct A Star Is Born: “If it’s for her, I’ll do it, no matter what it is.” Judy: “I wanted George. The picture had to be the greatest; it couldn’t merely be good - I had too much at stake.” George Cukor: “She showed the emotional ability to be a great actress.” The role of leading man was offered to James Mason, who liked Judy as a person and an actress, even though others told him: “Judy will never make it!” Mason was not the first choice. Among the stars considered were Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Tyrone Power and Stewart Granger. Cary Grant actually turned it down. James Mason: “In the end I grabbed it before it slipped away.” Jack Warner on Sid Luft: “He’s one of the original guys who promised his parents he’d never work a day in his life - and made good.” A nervous Garland failed to show up on the starting date - she was dieting. There were further delays when the new wide screen burst upon Hollywood and shooting was changed from Warner- Scope into CinemaScope. Judy’s behaviour was little different from when she was at M-G-M - she either did not come in at all, or left after an hour. All too often Cukor had to coax her out of her dressing room. When asked if anything was wrong, she snapped: “This is the story of my life. I’m about to shoot myself and I’m asked if anything’s wrong.” George Cukor explained: “When Judy didn’t think she was ready for a scene, she wouldn’t do it. That’s good sense not tempera- ment.” When he quietly expressed his awe at her powerful screaming in one particular take, she replied: “Oh, George, that’s nothing. Come over to my house any afternoon. I do it every afternoon.” Ina Claire: “This girl should do just one take a day . . . then take an ambulance home.” Jack Warner: “I am worried about all the delays and nervous tension, and we want to get this picture going.” James Mason: “Judy was essentially a witty, lively, talented, funny, adorable woman. If the film went over budget, only a small fraction was due to her erratic timetable.” Shooting took ten months at a cost of over $10 million and at three hours running time with an intermission it was the longest film since Gone With The Wind. Three songs written by Arlen and Gershwin were rejected and Luft turned to Roger Edens and Leonard Gershe. They came up with the ‘Born In a Trunk’ sequence that Jack Warner loved and it was added in at a cost of a quarter of million dollars. Doris Day visited Judy on set and later wrote: “She was one of the funniest, wittiest ladies I have ever known who would set me laughing until I actually doubled over.” Judy: “Of course it’s a good picture. It’s a great picture. Mason’s great, the score is great, I’m great, the photography’s great, it’s a great picture . . . isn’t it?”

James Mason (pictured above with Judy): “She was a party- goer, almost too eager, some may have thought, to join whoever was at the piano and sing along, while the hostess made sure that her medicine cabinet was safely locked.” George Cukor: “She’s always saying that the trouble with her is that she’s honest and direct, and everyone lies to her. The fact is that when she’s in this state the truth isn’t in her, she’s devious and untrustworthy . . . but she’s a very original and resourceful actress.” Warners Bros. hustled as only they knew how and the premiere of the uncut A Star Is Born was televised live for the first time nationally by NBC at Pantages Theatre on the night 29 September 1954. An entire Who’s Who of Hollywood turned out and a crowd of 20,000 lined Hollywood Boulevard. At the end, Judy walked down the aisle to a standing ovation and was heard to ask: “Do you think they really liked it?” Evening News: “In this case a star is re-born, because Holly- wood had written off Judy. Yet she gives a performance which far outshines anything she did at the height of her triumphs.” On 11 October in New York, the film was dual premiered at the Paramount and Victoria Theatres to accommodate the expected crowds. Times Square was blocked off and fans broke police cordons when Garland arrived. Albert Warner announced: “It’s a wonderful thrill because of the wonderful Judy Garland. It’s the greatest thing we have done since we brought out the first talking picture.” Warners instructed theatres to run the film on a continuous basis without an intermission in order to quickly recoup the film’s ex- penses and one theatre in San Francisco scheduled seven show- ings a day. The film grossed $700,000 in its first week of release. The triumph of A Star Is Born became diluted down. A shorter version would mean more lucrative showings per day and Harry Warner ordered it cut by 27 minutes. The cut pieces were de- stroyed and the film was arbitrarily reduced to an imbalanced, less rich and less satisfying film. Business drastically fell off and by year’s end it was far from earning back its production cost. Sid Luft: “We were so enthusiastic, we did too much of every- thing - wrote too many songs, too much movie, too much music . . . but it was a great too much.” The British had always loved Garland and their leading actors and actresses were in the foyer of Warner Cinema, Leicester Square, when the cut version of A Star Is Born was premiered in London. Live radio and newsreels were on hand and the event made the front page of the Evening News. The reviews were triumphant and could have been penned by Warner’s publicity department. At the end of the year A Star Is Born featured in the Ten Best list of every virtually every British critic and readers of Picturegoer voted Judy Garland, by an astounding margin, as best actress for 1955 - Grace Kelly for her performance in The Country Girl came sixth. Picturegoer: “Maybe Judy won’t make another picture, but this triumph is one they can’t take away from her.” In Hollywood no one cared what British critics thought. The Academy Award for Best Actress was between Grace Kelly, ‘born in a Philadelphia mansion’, and Judy Garland, ‘born in a vaudeville trunk’. Garland was once again pregnant which added to the tension engendered by the contest. Judy told the Press: “I feel great. But I really think Grace Kelly will win. Have you seen Country Girl? Wasn’t she just wonderful in it?” Two days before the awards ceremony, where she was sched- uled to sing ‘The Man That Got Away’, Judy suffered labour pains prematurely. Rushed to the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, she gave birth to a son. “I’ve got my Oscar already,” she exclaimed but the baby’s left lung had failed to open and he had to be placed in an incubator with a 50-50 chance of survival. Frank Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart and Laureen Bacall were on hand with their support and by the following afternoon, Joseph Wiley, the name his parents had decided upon, was out of danger.

With Judy’s permission, NBC installed equipment to televise her re-action if she won the Best Actress Award - one camera was inside her bedroom and another outside the window looking in. The idea was that Judy would talk to Bob Hope from her bed. “My God, they’re wiring me up like radar, under my bottom, up my front, and down my nightie,” she joked. The ceremony, as usual, was interminable, especially as A Star Is Born went unrewarded even among the minor awards. When the big moment came and Grace Kelly was announced as the winner, the camera crew at the hospital immediately wrapped up. Judy wanted to cry but as she was quickly disentangled from the wires she saw the funny side: “Boys, don’t short me!” She told Sid: “Forget it, darling. Open the champagne. I have my own Academy Award.” Of all the thousand telegrams and letters Garland received, the one from Groucho Marx summed them all: ‘Dear Judy, this is the biggest robbery since Brinks.’ Laureen Bacall: “She carried it off beautifully, saying her son, Joey, was more important than any Oscar could be, but she was equally disappointed - and hurt. It confirmed her belief that the industry was against her . . . Judy wasn’t like any other performer. There was so much emotion involved in her career - in her life - it was always all or nothing.” Gordon Jenkins: “Miss Garland has done more for the Kleenex people than the common cold.” Hollywood had turned its back on A Star Is Born; Garland had failed to re-establish herself in Hollywood; and it brought the end of Sid Luft’s multi-picture deal with Warners. Garland had signed a contract with Capitol Records, who had revitalised Frank Sinatra’s career, but the income was insufficient to pay her bills. She claimed that she had more goddamn talent than anyone else in town but Humphrey Bogart told her: “Talent’s no good in the living room, you’ve got to get out there and do it.” A concert tour of California and Pacific Northwest was arranged which included a benefit for retarded children in Long Beach. Frank Sinatra bused in friends from Los Angeles to cheer her on but Frank refused a request to sing. “I’m not going to follow this kind of act,” he explained. This was followed by a national tour which ended with a two month run at the Winter Garden, New York. She was simply singing for her supper. Still suffering from the agonies of stage fright, she could still say: “I fell hopelessly in love with audiences. I still love them, and it’s been a serious romance.” Sid began to find Seconal and Benzedrine pills under carpets, behind books, in the hems and seams of Judy’s dresses, in her slippers - everywhere. “You missed your calling, Sid,” she would say. “You’re a gumshoe.” Liza Minnelli: “We travelled with charisma . . . There were never less that twenty-six pieces of luggage, and I’m talking about checkable luggage. The hand stuff, forget it: shopping bags, food bags, medicine bags. I was always in charge of her personal ice bucket which she had to have . . . But I didn’t mind, because mother almost always made it fun. She was truly one of the funniest people I’ve ever known.” In September 1955, Judy appeared in a special television show for CBS, ‘The Ford Star Jubilee’, the first spectacular to be broad- cast in colour. “I’ll probably come out on the stage, take one look at those three-eyed TV monsters and faint dead away,” she prophesied, but despite her nerves and a touch of laryngitis, ratings were good. Forty million people tuned in - the largest audience in history for a special. Despite vowing never again to endure the agony of live television, Garland signed an exclusive three-year contract with CBS for one colour special a year. Judy’s first recording with Capitol, Miss Show Business, was issued to coincide with the ‘Ford Star Jubilee’ show and using Roger Eden’s vocal arrangement as a guideline, Nelson Riddle created Garland’s classic ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’ as well as ‘Last Night When We Were Young’. CBS Production supervisor: “I just prayed to God that she’d be able to appear.” Variety: “Nothing else mattered when she was on . . . that ol’ black magic and magnetism came through all its treasured nuanc- es.”

Scheduled for 8 April 1956, ‘Judy Garland In Concert’ was the first of her TV shows (pictured above), contracted with CBS - a special presentation of the ‘General Electric Theater’. Despite Nelson Riddle conducting his own orchestral arrangements, Gar- land was hampered by nerves and medication that impaired her singing. Judy humorously recalled: “One man kept worrying during rehearsals that we weren’t going to hold the audience. ‘They’re gonna get beer,’ he repeated constantly. After a few days of this I was ready to shoot him.” Garland made her cabaret debut at the New Frontier Hotel, Las Vegas, guaranteed $55,000 a week.. On opening night every other major club in Las Vegas closed down so that her fellow entertainers could attend. Her five week run broke all house receipt records and she followed this with a repeat run at the Palace, New York, opening to a rapturous star-studded audience on 26 September 1956 Despite recurrent laryngitis, she triumphed again just as she had done five years earlier. A big hit in the show was comic Alan King who was moved from the first act to closing the first half after Judy had told him: “You can close my show any time you like.” With her own children on stage it was often more like ‘a family party’ that weekend audiences saw: Liza in a duet of ‘Swanee’, Joe in Judy’s arms for ‘Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe’, and Lorna in appreciation of ‘Rockabye’. By December the strain of giving eight all-out performances a week had become too much and she closed with a Gala Farewell Show on 8 January. Sol Shwartz: “A gold plaque with your name on it will be put on the door. From this night on, your dressing room will be called ‘The Judy Garland Dressing Room’.”

During her final week at the Palace, (pictured above with hus- band Sid Luft), Garland rejected CBS proposals for her to do another televised variety show: “I don’t care for big production numbers, and I think it would be wise next time to try and use music in the most intimate way - because you are singing to people in their homes.” Marie Torre, New York Herald Tribune columnist, quoted an anonymous CBS executive as saying that Garland ‘is known for her highly developed inferiority complex’ and that she did not ‘want to work because something is bothering her, but wouldn’t be surprised if its because she thinks she’s terribly fat’. Six days later, CBS tore up Garland’s contract, claiming she had not performed as requested. Garland sued CBS for libel. Litigation dragged on for three years while Marie Torre refused to name her source at CBS. Held in contempt by the judge, Marie Torre was sent to jail for ten days which raised much sympathy and where she was called the ‘Joan of Arc’ of her profession. It didn’t do much for Garland’s image. After playing for three weeks at the Flamingo Hotel, Las Vegas, Garland made a much-anticipated return to England in October 1957 where she opened at the refurbished 3,000 seater Dominion Theatre as the Palladium wasn’t available. “I have to be better than I’ve ever been tonight - it’s a debt I owe. London gave me back my faith in myself,” she said. ‘Judy’s Boy Friends’ sang of all the great falls in history, Troy, Babylon, the Roman Empire and the Bastille before Gordon Jenkins began the overture. When the curtains parted there was Judy sitting flat on floor - a reminder of her fall on her Palladium debut - and as she was drawn to her feet she was greeted by a storm of applause. As it died down someone shouted: “Welcome back, Judy.” Obviously moved, she nervously fingered the microphone and couldn’t speak for a few minutes. It was much the same Judy Garland who had appeared at the Palladium six years earlier, only plumper and more polished. After her grand finale, ‘A Couple of Swells’, in outsize shoes, a grubby face with a cheeky gap-toothed grin under a ‘fright’ wig and battered and dirty top hat, she sat on the apron of the stage, legs dangling into the orchestra pit, and sang ‘Over the Rainbow’ as only she could. At the end, baskets of bouquets of flowers were presented to her on-stage by Donna Reed, Petula Clark and Vera Lynn. She played four and a half weeks without missing a show despite continuing insomnia and severe vocal problems during the last two weeks. Judy: “I sound like Sophie Tucker’s grandmother.” Two nights after closing at the Dominion, she appeared on the Royal Variety Show along with Mario Lanza and Gracie Fields. Max Bygraves introduced her as ‘The First Lady of American Show Business’ and she stopped the show. The audience shout- ed: “More, more!” but there wasn’t time and she walked off stage to a further ovation. At the line-up afterwards, the Queen Mother told her: “I’m sorry you weren’t allowed to sing another song.” Ned Wynn: “If there is an error in my thinking, it is that people love Judy in spite of her excesses - I think they love her because of them.” Judy still lived as extravagantly as she had done in her days at M-G-M and her engagement in London did little to improve her finances. A mother of three, with no fixed income, owing back taxes and with a damaging track-record of quarrels with film and television studios, broken contracts and cancelled appearances, she depended on others to keep her finances in order: “Ever since I was three years old I’ve been working to support somebody.” She played Las Vegas, Brooklyn, Los Angeles Cocoanut Grove, Miami, New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, Chicago Civic Opera House, San Francisco, Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium, and by autumn 1959 weighed more than 180 pounds. So obese now she waddled when she walked. Liza, just twelve years old, acted as her nursemaid and dresser. Kenneth Tynan: “The engagement was limited; the pleasure it gave was not. When the voice pours out, as rich and pleading as ever, we know where, and how moved we are - in the presence of a star, and embarrassed by tears.” Alan King: “Judy was so sick, and the show so complicated and so demanding of her, I don’t know where the energy came from.” Judy: “I hated the way I looked. I cried for no reason, laughed hysterically, made stupid decisions and couldn’t tell a kind word from an insult.” Liza: “She’d put too much trust in somebody, then they’d do something slight, and she’d take it as a slap in the face.” Judy had consistently refused to see a doctor and it was a long time before Sid, convinced there was something seriously wrong with her, eventually persuaded her to go into hospital on 18 November 1959. She had acute hepatitis. After years of abusing her body with pills and alcohol, her liver was found to be four times its normal size. Twenty quarts of fluid were slowly drained from her body and doctors told her: “For the rest of your life, all physical activity must be curtailed. You are a permanent semi-invalid. It goes without saying that under no circumstances can you ever work again.” Judy fell back among her pillows and uttered a weak, but gleeful: “Whoopee!” Chapter Six: Carnegie Hall Judy at Carnegie Hall

After seven weeks Garland left hospital in January 1960 and fretted through four months of convalescence. Her only medica- tion was a mild tranquilliser though her weight remained a prob- lem. After recording an album, That’s Entertainment, for Capitol her self-confidence began to return and picking up the threads of her social life, she made friends with John F. Kennedy who was beginning his campaign for Presidency. She appeared with the Senator at a Democratic Convention and he took to telephoning her and asking her to sing ‘Over the Rainbow’ for him. “Just the first eight bars,” he would say, and after thanking her, he would tell her she had made his day. With no work being offered in Hollywood, she flew to London for a vacation - despite her fear of planes, she wanted “to prove to myself that I could function as a halfway intelligent woman”. Greeted by the Press, she told them: “I feel marvellous since I’ve gotten over my illness.” After recording for Capitol under Norrie Paramor whom she jokingly called “Noilly Prat”, affecting to mispronounce his name, she decided to settle in London. Sid and her children joined her in London where she began looking for a house. Her close friend Dirk Bogarde suggested she return to the London Palladium: “Without Hungarians with dogs and ventriloquists - just you and a whopping big orchestra.” Luft worried that it might be too much for her and booked the Palladium for just one night. ‘An Evening With Judy Garland’, booked for Sunday 28 August 1960, sold out within hours of the box office opening, presaging another stage in her career - the concert stage. Sid Luft: “I didn’t want her to work, but she was in such good shape, it was kind of miraculous.” Backed by the orchestra of Norrie Paramour and dressed comfortably in a short black sheath and blue satin jacket, Garland offered a first act of twelve songs that ended with ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ in tribute to Oscar Hammerstein II who had died five days earlier. For the second act, she was in a sequinned top and black slacks and did another nineteen numbers. Despite her nervousness, she was in superb voice and in full control of her talent and humour. Unencumbered by dancers and other acts, she could do wrong. Daily Mail: “She is one of the greatest entertainers of our time, a versatile, volatile, vital personality, a singer of outstanding original talent . . . and a great clown.” The performance was repeated the following Sunday to a capacity house and at the finish the audience rushed down the aisles to congratulate her. The crowds waiting in the street didn’t want to let her go home and hundreds sang ‘For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ as her car drove off. More concerts followed in Paris (she won eight curtain calls and an embrace on-stage by Maurice Chevalier), in Amsterdam and on four Sundays at Odeon cinemas in Britain.

Keeping her promise to John F. Kennedy, she spent two days in Frankfurt entertaining American troops (pictured above) persuad- ing them to vote: “Senator Kennedy says, and I agree with him, that the important thing is for absentee Americans to vote one way or the other.” She also appeared in another Royal Variety Show at the Palladi- um. Dutch Radio: “She gets more power as she goes further into her show. Everyone is walking to the stage to cheer and applaud, stamping on the floor . . . They can’t get enough.” Reports of her success in Britain circulated in America and agents Fields and Begelman flew to London to convince her that she was exactly the talent they wanted to handle. Since it seemed to be all happening in America, Garland and her family left Eng- land on the last day of 1960 for an apartment in New York. With Fields and Begelman on hand Garland no longer needed Sid Luft and they separated. Their relationship appeared to have ex- hausted itself on a diet of domestic warfare, but whatever his faults, Sid was the one man in Judy Garland’s life who both loved her and stood up to her. No Broadway producer would take a chance on her so Freddie Fields arranged a tour, booking nineteen American concert dates. Fields also learned through one of his other clients, Marlene Dietrich, that Stanley Kramer was looking for someone to play a small, but highly dramatic part of a housewife in his film Judge- ment at Nuremberg. Fields suggested Garland. Kramer figured he could get a good performance out of Judy whatever problems might ensue and so she broke into her tour in March to fit in the filming. Weeks before arriving on set she had studied the accent of a German hausfrau and was punctual and co-operative during the shooting, probably helped by the fact that she did not have to carry the entire film. Nominated for an Academy Award as Best Support- ing Actress, she lost the Oscar to Rita Moreno in West Side Story. Judy: “Damn it, Stanley, I can’t do it. I’ve dried up. I’m too happy to cry.” Stanley Kramer: “I saw staid citizens acting like bobby-soxers at an Elvis Presley show. I was struck, too, by the tremendous emotional range of Judy’s performance . . . She’s like a piano. You touch any key, and a pure note of emotion comes out.” Maximilian Schell: “Garland is fantastic; every dimension is there.” Judy: “Oh, horseshit, Max - just act the damn scene.” At Catskills’ Concord Hotel, the second concert of the tour, the hotel’s musical director couldn’t handle Garland’s difficult arrange- ments so Fields and Begelman persuaded Mort Lindsay, who had given up conducting to pursue composition, to take over as musi- cal director. Lindsay was later talked into becoming Garland’s permanent musical director and her orchestral arranger. Garland had never sung better in her life, but the better she became, the more she worried about being up to standard and she began to threaten not to go on. Sometimes she became angry at being separated from her children and would cry: “I work my ass off, making money for everybody and can’t even have my children with me.” Mort Lindsay: “People would say Judy was difficult. I found her easier to work with than anybody. She appreciated what you did; she made your stuff come alive - even more that you’d hope.”

Garland reached the apex of her adult career when she arrived at Carnegie Hall on 23 April 1961, pictured above) The word had gone out that she was completely in control of her talent again and tickets had been sold out within hours of going on sale. By eight o’clock the streets around 7th Avenue and 57th Street were jammed. The audience of 3,165 included nearly all of Broadway’s top performers on their Sunday night off and many movie stars who had flown in from Los Angeles. The atmosphere was electric and petrified by fear - “this ain’t Dallas, kiddo! This is Carnegie Hall . . . and I ain’t Heifetz or Rubinstein!” - Judy almost didn’t go on. She did, and it went down as one of the greatest nights in show business history. Greeted by a standing ovation that lasted five minutes, she could only say, “Oh, my . . .”, and mock-clap back to the audience. Time: “She got, without opening her mouth, what it takes Renata Tebaldi two and a half hours of Puccini to achieve.” Her voice was flawless. The concert spanned two and a half hours and twenty-six songs, showing Judy in all her moods from clown to mistress of melodrama. There were standards, show-stoppers, numbers from her mov- ies and Al Jolson songs - “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody’ and ‘Swanee’. After a multitude of curtain calls and an encore of ‘After You’ve Gone’ she asked the audience: “Do you really want more? Aren’t you tired?” They just yelled for more. Warning them that this was her last song, she sang ‘Chicago’, sounding as fresh as she had at the beginning of the show. Rock Hudson then lifted Liza, Lorna and Joe on-stage for a bow with their mother to finally end the concert. Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall became an immediate show business legend. Judy: “I’ll sing ‘em all and we’ll stay the night.” Roger Edens: “I still don’t believe anything like this could happen. She said: ‘Let’s do it’, as though she had never done it before.” Mort Lindsay: “This was her crowd - the first five or ten or fifteen rows were the cream of show business - and she sure delivered.” Hollywood Reporter: “There IS Judy Garland and there WAS Al Jolson. And then the mold is broken! Ask anyone who remembers the days when ‘Jolie’ took over the Winter Garden runway and they will tell you that never since has a singer of songs been able to mesmerize an audience. There are unrestrained shouts of ‘Bravo!’ after every number. At the end of two and a half hours there is a mad race down the aisles by the ‘we want more’ idolaters, who know the lyrics of every song she’s ever sung, and feel cheated if she skips one. All of them agree she is the GREAT- EST.” In the summer and autumn of 1961, Garland played 21 more concerts in 16 cities, including a return to Carnegie Hall on 21 May (sold out at the same time as the first one) and setting box-office records. Missing only two engagements because of an ear infection, she played cities that included Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Detroit and Cleveland and broke the Hollywood Bowl attendance record in September where 18,000 people sat outdoors in a steady drizzle and refused to leave even after four encores. These concerts were deeply exhausting feats of endurance. Singing non-stop for the first hour, she would break for an interval of twenty five minutes, return to the stage for another ninety minutes, and by the time she reached the encores would be so exhausted she could barely walk to the wings between songs. The tour placed huge demands on her and there were several instances when she behaved temperamentally and irrationally - she was over-medicating with amphetamines and barbiturates. While in Los Angeles she recorded the speaking and singing voice of ‘Mewsette’, a cartoon kitten in the animated feature Gay Purr- ee. In July 1961, Judy at Carnegie Hall was released by Capitol as a two-record set and it went to Number One on the Billboard chart, remained there for thirteen weeks, winning a Gold Record and an unprecedented five Grammy awards. Judy: “Every once in a while you seem to earn a year where everything goes right.” Fields finally settled the legal battle between Garland and CBS, and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were her guests for her comeback TV special.

Sinatra sang to Garland (pictured above): “You’re Just Too Marvellous for Words,” to set the tone, and with virtually no chit-chat, the three singers just sang for the whole hour. With the highest rating of any entertainment programme in CBS history, it amassed four Emmy nominations and later won the international television award at the Montreux Festival. Norman Jewison: “The most exciting television I ever did.” Judy: “I was terribly proud of the show and I usually don’t like my own work.” Garland went straight to work on another Stanley Kramer production, A Child Is Waiting, playing the part of a teacher working with retarded children. “I wanted the role so badly be- cause I’ve done work with troubled children and I know a bit more about them than most people. A disturbed child once helped me to get well.” Genuinely retarded children were allowed to appear in the film and on her first day on set, the children clamoured for autographs from ‘Dorothy’. The film was not a success. Her co-star Burt Lancaster, though encouraging and considerate, insisted upon telling her how to play the part, and actor-director John Cassavetes clashed with pro- ducer Stanley Kramer over the philosophy of the film. Late in April 1962, Garland hit the headlines with another alter- cation with Sid. She had filed for divorce, and wanting to leave with her children for London, she had Sid restrained at the Hotel Stanhope while she rushed Lorna, Joe and Liza to the airport. Luft branded Garland as an unfit mother. At a Press interview in London, Judy said: “I don’t know why Sid says I’m unfit mother. The children love me. I hear he may be coming over to try to take the children away from me. He will never do that. There is no chance of a reconciliation. My marriage is finished.” Lawyers in London arranged for her children to be made wards of court and her passport was impounded. Judy stayed for a week in Buckinghamshire at the home of Dirk Bogarde, one of her long-time friends and one of the ‘dawn patrol’ whom she was in the habit of ringing in the early hours of the morning. At the end of the week they threw a party and Bogarde recount- ed: “After supper, in the fading light of the summer sun, everyone sat around the grand paino and she and Noel Coward sang for their suppers. She knew all Noel’s lyrics, which pleased him greatly, from Mrs. Worthington to the entire score of Bitter Sweet and If Love Were All, which they sang as a duet, and brought the packed room roaring to its feet.”

Dirk Bogarde was her co-star in her new film, I Could Go On Singing, adapted and re-titled from The Lonely Stage. Judy liked the soap-opera plot: “This big, big star goes to London to do a concert and finds the man who got away . . . It’s about me. I guess someone read my lyrics.” When shooting began she was difficult. Her erratic behaviour was not prompted by any viciousness but by a consuming fear. She was terrified of being unable to produce what was required, and her self-imposed dieting, her dependence on pills, and cus- tody battles with Sid all added to it. Dirk Bogarde showed infinite patience, re-writing scenes for her, but the British crew’s liking for her soon faded. When she finally walked off set, she yelled at them: “You’ll miss me when I’ve gone.” It has to be said that the whole film crew spontaneously ap- plauded the finest dramatic scene in the picture, the one that Dirk Bogarde wrote for himself and Judy. Propped up in a hospital room, Judy moved from drunken, owlish humour, to defiance, to a tearful breakdown, and recovery all in one six-minute ‘take’. It was her thirty-second feature film and her last. Mort Lindsay: “She really wasn’t feeling well and we didn’t know what to do.” Ronald Neame: “At times she could be unbearable and do and say terrible things, and yet there was this aura of magic that made working with her a wonderful experience.” Garland returned to the States in August 1962 and again filed for divorce. Both parents wanted custody of the children. Sid argued that Judy was unfit to have custody and Judy became obsessed that he would kidnap them. After going on a crash diet of two unsweetened cups of tea a day, she was found uncon- scious in her room and was hospitalised suffering from a kidney complaint. Luft telephoned her, enquiring about her condition, adding: “I’d like to see the children, by the way.” Judy answered: “You can see them when the court says you can see them.” Liza: “It was tough being Judy Garland’s daughter. The differ- ence between me and the other kids on the block was that when my parents battled, or my mother went to as rest home, it became a matter of public record.” Two days after leaving hospital she opened at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas for a three-week run and for the first time in Vegas history this was extended for two more weeks. She told a reporter: “I think right now is possibly the best time in my life. I’m really starting to do my best work. I have three marvellous children, and I think I have a brand-new career opening up.” After a concert in Chicago, she made promotional appearances for A Child Is Waiting and Gay Purr-ee, and gave her first ex- tended television interview on ‘The Jack Parr Program’. Greeted by a standing ovation from the studio audience, she provided a happy hour of spontaneous fun and joyous song. On the strength of this showing, Fields and Begelman contracted Garland to do a weekly series of TV specials for CBS scheduled to begin in June 1963. Garland’s production company would be paid $24 million for four seasons of variety programmes. Jack Parr: “One of the great talkers in show business.” Variety: “She provided a picture of mental and physical health . . . a highly rewarding and gratifying display.” Though Judy felt drained and was ready for a vacation, she taped a CBS special with Phil Silvers and Robert Goulet and four days later opened at Lake Tahoe where she sang her latest ballad, ‘As Long As He Needs Me.’ On her seventh night she collapsed in the dressing room with slight paralysis and was taken to hospital. Recovering quickly, she returned to Britain in March 1963 to attend the premiere of I Could Go On Singing. In spite of good promotion and spectacular re- views, no one in Britain wanted to see the film, though they would queue for hours to see her on stage. She also appeared live on ‘Sunday Night at the Palladium’ and donated her fee to the Thalidomide Fund. Once she missed her cue and said: “Come on! We can stop - even on television.” For the first time she sang ‘Smile’ which became a Garland classic. Liza decided she wanted to be in show business. Her father, Vincente Minnelli encouraged her: “Yes, I think it’s about time. You have so much energy you might as well start using it.” Judy told her: “All right, you do as you please. I can’t stop you. I won’t try. But you’re going to have to make it on your own.” Although Judy was not prepared to help financially, she was generous with advice. There was an attempt at reconciliation with Sid but two weeks after a party to celebrate Garland’s forty-first birthday and eleventh wedding anniversary, he moved out for the last time. There were unpaid bills, irregularities in her accounts, and she talked of suing her agents for misappropriation of money. Chapter Seven: Judy Show The Judy Garland Show

Apart from two concert solo performances: the show where a fledgling Barbara Streisand and Ethel Merman joined in blasting out ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’, and the Christmas show with her children - “Hi, Babies. Isn’t this going to be fun? All of us together, singing on television, just like we do at home. Joey, did you learn your song?” - the Garland series foundered. Garland became ever later for rehearsals and after thirteen episodes, The Judy Garland Show was in deep trouble. Though a new executive producer, director and writers were signed up, Garland was feeling unhappily insecure about the whole series, and investigative reporters for national magazines began to haunt the set delighting in news that Garland had failed to turn up and trying to confirm that she drank. Judy: “Sometimes rehearsals are missed, but I’ve been around long enough so I can pick things up quickly.” Lena Horne: “She was a helluva a singer who always pulled through, but -oooh, honey, she could make you mad.” Lloyd Shearer: “The show is merely a statistical failure . . . incor- rectly targeted by network masterminds.” Before the fourteenth show could be taped, the entire nation was shocked by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It hit Judy Garland especially hard since she knew him personally and liked him. “We have changed our dinner at the White House so we can watch your show,” he had recently told her. As a tribute to JFK, she closed her show by singing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’. Mort Lindsay: “CBS didn’t want her to do it; they felt it was too heavy or political.” Bill Colleran: “One of the great performances of all time; if you didn’t cry, you were dead.” Bill Colleran, married to Lee Remick, produced the last seven shows and hit it off at once with Garland. “That’s it,” he said. “What this girl does better than anyone else in the world, anywhere in history, is sing . . . So I gave her a mike, added ten men to the orchestra, and let her sing for an hour. CBS were furious but the show was wonderful.” The last seven shows introduced more songs, less patter and pleased the critics, only it was too late - CBS had already can- celled the show. Commercially, the show was not a success and it hadn’t made Garland a penny richer. Nevertheless, the series won four Emmys and the total of twen- ty-six episodes contained scores of unforgettable Garland solos, and she invariably topped the competition from contemporary talents in the shows. One columnist prophetically commented: “The tapes of these twenty-six shows with close-ups and medium shots of Judy singing songs identified with her and standards are priceless, and are destined to become a golden section of the Judy Garland story.” Over the years Judy Garland made millions but somehow she managed to stay broke almost the whole time. With the amount of money she was earning she could not conceive of denying herself the comforts to which she was accustomed, even when heavily in debt. She had no business sense and it seemed none of her managers ever did get a grip on her finances. At one time local supermarkets would not extend her credit and pharmacies would not make up her prescriptions because her bills had not been paid for over a year. Liza Minnelli: “But no matter how broke we were, we always lived like millionaires and with laughter.” Garland decided to get away from it all and in the spring of 1964 she took up an offer to give three concerts in Australia. She had already been dating a small-part actor named Mark Herron and brought him along as her escort. Panic set in when customs confiscated her supply of pills but she was in glowing form at her first Press conference in Sydney. Asked if this was another come-back, she answered: “Some people regard it as a come-back when I return from the bathroom!” Though physically frail, she triumphed in her two Sydney con- certs, playing to capacity audiences, though some of the songs could not be heard above the tumultuous roar of the crowd. At the end of the second concert she thought she had taken enough bows when the producer indelicately told her: “Only a jerk like you could get a response like that.” A stunned Garland slapped his face. The episode unnerved her and nagged at her. By the time she reached Melbourne she was overwrought, not having slept for days and in poor voice. Arriving an hour late for the concert, she appeared to want to clown with the orchestra rather than sing. The songs she did sing were out of sequence and the orchestra didn’t know what was coming next. An announced interval of fifteen minutes turned into twenty- seven and voices called out “You’re late,” and “Have another brandy.” After bickering with the audience she sang three more songs ending with ‘I’ll Go My Way By Myself Alone”. When the slow handclaps turned into boos, she began to cry, broke off, saying: “It’s so lonely by myself - Good night,” and rushed off stage. Some of the patrons had already left and some asked for their money back. The concert was a disaster and the newspapers had a field day with accusations that she had been drunk or drugged. She tried to explain: “I felt so awful, unhappy and lost that I hardly knew what I was doing . . .” Time magazine: “At 41, Judy Garland may have gone over the rainbow for the last time.” Garland fan: “The behaviour of the Melbourne audience was rude, disgusting and embarrassing. If they had been a little more civi- lised, they would have seen the Garland that Sydney saw.” Garland and Heron fled to Hong Kong where this time she made a serious attempt to destroy herself with a large overdose. At one point, she was given up for dead but rallied. Her stomach was pumped out but the dosage of Seconal was so large that her health was irreparably damaged. She would never be altogether well again. By tragic coincidence, her sister Suzy had succeeded in taking her own life in Las Vegas with an overdose only a few days earlier. Amid confusing reports that were married, Garland and Heron, flew to London where she attended the charity show, ‘Night of a Hundred Stars’, held at midnight at the Palladium. Expressly forbidden to sing by doctors, she could only acknowl- edge the welcome roar from the audience. But Shirley Bassey, topping the bill, blew her a kiss during her number ‘If Love Were All’, and when Shirley had completed her last song, the audience began a unified chant of “Sing, Judy, Sing!” The MC, Richard Attenborough, led her to centre stage and she wistfully sang ‘Over the Rainbow’, before belting out ‘Swanee’. The applause was deafening and Garland herself was over- whelmed. Judy: “London has always been like home to me. Now its more than ever like home. I don’t know what happened there at the Palladium or why the people should have shown such emotion towards me. I guess it’s something that just happened. And, believe me, it was the most exciting thing in the world.” Listener: “Tears were in many eyes at what appeared to be personal triumph over adversity, while Miss Garland’s voice fully deserved the cheers which eclipsed any that had gone before in this genuinely starry show. This was an exceptional occasion which everyone present will remember for ever.” Liza came to stay with her mother in her Kensington home and they appeared together in concert one Sunday evening in Novem- ber at the Palladium. Tickets sold out immediately. Capitol re- corded it for an album and to accommodate demand another appearance was booked the following week, which had to be at midnight after the normal Palladium show.

Singly and together (pictured above on stage), mother and daughter sang a host of songs, some of them arranged by a friend of Liza’s - the unknown Marvin Hamlisch. Liza was commended for her scatty, off-beat interpretations of her songs, but it was Judy who turned cheers into ovations. Judy’s voice had become worn by the end of the second show however and she asked the audience to sing ‘Rainbow’ for her. Liza Minnelli: “One minute I was on stage with my mother, the next moment with Judy Garland. One minute she smiled at me, and the next she was like the lioness that owned the stage and suddenly found somebody invading her territory . . .” While in Hong Kong, Judy had heard the Allen Brothers, a singing-dancing duo of Australian performers, and imported them to London to work in cabaret. When Garland returned to the America in December 1964, she agreed to appear on the CBS talent show, ‘On Broadway Tonight’, to introduce the Allens to America. They became her opening act for her concerts and encouraged by Judy, Liza became engaged to Peter Allen. Judy was invited to sing at the Academy Awards celebrations but the elaborate arrangement by Roger Edens was too much for her and her performance was poor. Her illness in Hong Kong, where she had undergone a tracheotomy, had taken a heavy toll on her voice. Suffering vocal problems at concerts in Charlotte, Chicago and Cincinnati, she attended the UCLA Medical Centre. She had to leave to play a two-week engagement at the Thunderbird in Las Vegas where she played to capacity audiences without mishap, though her salary was sequestered by a court order. In May 1965 she was at long last divorced from Sid Luft. Almost every month some new illness or injury was reported and there was always the pressing need for money.

She appeared on the Andy Wiliams Show (pictured above) but during an six-night engagement in September 1965 at the Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, fell over her pet dog and broke her arm. Assisted by Mickey Rooney, Martha Raye and Johnny Matthis, she did the show on the second night with her arm in plaster but the rest of the shows were cancelled. Variety: “There’s no arguing with a broken arm but the long-term effects of the occurrence will, unfortunately, compound an impres- sion in the minds of some promoters and fans that Miss Garland cannot be relied upon to completely fulfil an engagement.” Liza: “Sometimes Mama was sick and I would hear about it. Sometimes - most of the time, in fact - she wasn’t sick, but I’d hear that she was.” On 14 November 1965 she married Mark Herron in Las Vegas. Her children were not there as she had hoped - Liza was about to open at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles and Luft had forbid- den Lorna and Joey to attend. After doing a one-night stand at the enormous Houston Astro- dome with the Supremes as the opening act, vocal problems again began to dog her. Laryngitis affected the taping of two ‘Sammy Davis, Jr. Shows’ on 18 and 25 March 1966, though she won acclaim for the medley of film hits performed with Sammy Davis in tramp costumes (pictured below).

Garland’s recent record royalties, television and concert salaries had been attached for tax debts. After fifteen months working at top salary and being threatened with repossession of her home, she had great difficulty in understanding why she had gone even further into debt. In May 1966, Herron learned that under Californian law he could be liable for half of Judy’s debts, now running into millions, and so he instigated divorce proceedings. With cancelled performances, ‘comebacks’, the effects of medi- cation, illness and hospitalisations, her public reputation was at a new low. And even though running out of friends to borrow from, she refused to work through the rest of 1966, except for an engagement in a Mexico City night-club that only lasted two nights because of laryngitis. Judy: “Once I was worth millions but today I haven’t got a dime.” She had put on weight during her marriage to Mark Herron but now lost weight rapidly, her health deteriorating again. Photo- graphs showed her alarmingly thin. When Liza married Peter Allen in New York on 3 March 1967, Vincente Minnelli escorted Garland to the ceremony, the first time they had been seen together in sixteen years. Judy: “If you had any class, you’d escort me to your daughter’s wedding,” In February 1967 she began work in a supporting role on the film Valley of the Dolls. There were rumours that she was at odds with various members of the company but after reading the script Garland refused to leave her dressing room. After a few weeks 20th Century Fox announced she was being replaced by Susan Hayward. Judy: “I was hired, everybody seemed happy, I showed up every day on time. Nobody knows what happened. I’ve still got the dressing room key.” At the end of March 1967 Garland received an Income Tax demand for $4 million dollars which she did not have and she had to sell her home in California: “In a way I’m glad they’ve taken the house. It’s too big, too impractical. Besides the man who lived in it before didn’t love his wife.” For the next couple of years she would be based chiefly in New York, moving from hotel to hotel living out of a suitcase. Whenever possible she stayed in friends’ houses. At one point she spent three weeks sleeping on the floor of an apartment belonging to some young friends of Liza’s. Sid Luft was called in to try and straighten out her financial affairs and formed a company called Group V, supposedly com- prising of Luft, Garland and her three children. If she had read the contract small print, Garland would have discovered that Group V owned her body and soul and the only member of Group V was Luft. After playing the summer-stock circuit, Luft booked Judy into the Palace for the third time in a four-week run, ‘Judy Garland at Home at the Palace’. Opening on 31 July 1967, every night became celebrity night as Judy brought celebrities on stage such as Duke Ellington, Joan Crawford and Beatrice Lillie. Seven evening shows for twenty- seven consecutive nights could have been too much, but she miraculously pulled it off with the help of her daughter Lorna, who offered a solo medley as well as duets with her, and her son Joey who played drums. Liza returned from abroad to appear on the last two evenings to duet ‘Chicago’ and sing ‘Cabaret’. Someone in the audience: “What do you think? Is it theatre?” Came the reply: “Is it theatre? You bet it’s theatre. It sure as hell ain’t singing.” From the Palace, Judy went on a ten-city, sixteen show tour, which included off-stage visits to military hospitals in Boston, Chicago and Bethesda where she chatted and sang to servicemen wounded in Vietnam. Her free open-air concert on Boston Com- mon drew over 100,000 people on a cold, damp day. The audi- ence began arriving thirteen hours before showtime and sang ‘Hello, Judy’ to her as she danced between numbers. In Washing- ton she spent four hours talking to servicemen in the War Veterans Hospital: ”Those young men make me so proud. They have such dignity and honour . . . They have no self-pity or cynicism. You really come away feeling inspired.” The arduous ordeal of touring took its toll and ignoring doctors’ advice to cancel some of her engagements - she couldn’t afford to - she struggled to complete each concert. Publicly accused of ‘not bothering to perform properly’ and described as ‘a legend self- destroyed’, she was unable to complete her final booking of the year at the Madison Square Garden Felt Forum because of bron- chitis. Al Terban: “I think she may have closed her career.” Garland had little to show for her seven-month concert tour since most of her income was taken up in back taxes. Her personal and professional fortunes were now in terminal decline as debts, medication, ill-health and disillusion with Group V took its toll. Judy: “Professional happiness doesn’t last through the night. You can’t take it home with you after the curtain rings down. It doesn’t protect you from the terror of a lonely hotel room. And, in a way, it destroys your soul to feed off applause. I know, I’ve tried to draw strength and security from it. But in the middle of the night applause becomes an empty echo, and you think, God, how am I going to make it till morning?” Early in 1968 she was locked out of a New York townhouse because she could not pay the rent and her possessions were impounded at the St. Moritz Hotel. There was a bad one-night stand in Baltimore where she was unable to sing, and in June, her five-night engagement at the Garden State Arts Centre in New Jersey proved a fiasco when she fell asleep on final night and had to be helped from the stage. Once again she sought treatment at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston and several weeks later her performance at Philadelphia’s outdoor JFK Stadium was one of her finer efforts, zipping from one song to the next. A critic: “The audience talked to Judy and she talked back. It was a beautiful love affair in this ugly stadium.” Whilst Judy’s fortunes were in decline, Liza’s career was flour- ishing and living in relative comfort with Peter Allen. Judy could create a crisis out of thin air and fed up with quarrelling with her mother, Lorna fled with her brother Joey to Sid in Los Angeles while Judy took an apartment by herself in Boston. Marcella Rabwin: “I could never hate you, Judy, but I may feel sorry for you.” Mickey Deans was the night-manager at Arthur’s, a fashionable discotheque owned by Richard Burton’s former wife Sybil. Garland had known Mickey for two years when out of the blue, she an- nounced their engagement. They enjoyed each other’s company and he told her that if they married she would not have to work again - unless she wanted to. Garland had already accepted an offer of an engagement at London’s Talk of the Town and Deans accompanied her to London on 28 December 1968 where she was handed a writ attempting to prevent her appearance in cabaret - Judy’s Group V employment contract had become the province of two businessmen when Sid Luft had been unable to re-pay a loan. A British judge threw the case out of court. Never sure whether she would show up, or if, when she did, she would be able to perform, Bernard Delfont had booked Garland for a five-week engagement.. He need not have worried, every star in London was present at The Talk of the Town to cheer her on when she successfully opened on 30 December 1968. Despite the fact that smoke-laden atmosphere was hard on her voice, she got through the first three weeks of the engagement but her health was now a serious problem. Wholly dependent on drugs, her strength ebbed away under the strain of performing nightly. Though she herself wasn’t aware of it, she was consist- ently late, and missed two days when doctors ordered her to bed. Her backstage helper, Lorna Smith, regarded it a miracle that she was able to go on at all every evening. In her final week she tried to joke: “What’s the matter - can’t a legend have the flu?” Nevertheless Garland broke all records at The Talk of the Town. Lorna Smith: “Drawing herself together to become as much of ‘Judy Garland’ as her worn-out constitution would allow.” The Stage: “There are very few artists who create an emotionalism - almost amounting to hysteria - minutes before they actually set foot on stage.” Judy Garland married Mickey Deans at Chelsea Registry Office on 15 March 1969. She looked as frail as a bird, a mere shadow of her former self. Johnny Ray, whose career was also well into decline, was the only show-business figure present. A reception was held at Quaglino’s Restaurant but as arrange- ments had been made at short notice no famous names were present. Deans arranged concerts for her in Stockholm, Malmo and Copenhagen, attracting audiences where she had never appeared before. Her concert in Copenhagen on 25 March turned out to be her final performance and if the quality wasn’t there any more, there was still the magic: “She sat down on the stage floor and began to sing ‘Over the Rainbow’. It was though she sang it for the first time, with fervent innocence and sweetness. Tears came to one’s eyes . . . She had a great triumph.” Garland and Deans returned to New York for three weeks. Her moods were as changeable as ever - one day planning for her future career, and the next saying that she wanted nothing more than to be an English housewife. But where in the past she gave the impression she would somehow pull out her slump and make a comeback, her energy was now running low. The couple returned to London on 14 June and stayed at their tiny mews cottage in Cadogan Lane. She looked frail and ill, hardly ate, and spent more time reading. On the following Saturday they cancelled a trip to the theatre to see Danny LaRue’s closing night and stayed home. Judy retired first and was still awake when her husband came upstairs. After taking a dose of sleeping pills, she fell asleep. In the early hours of Sunday, 22 June, Deans found Judy dead in the bathroom, sat on the toilet, her head cradled in her arms. After awakening in the night, she had taken more sleeping pills and in her weakened condition had been unable to survive the dosage. She had often said that when her number came up she would ask for another one, but it had come up once too often. She was aged forty-seven and $4 million in debt. The official verdict was that Judy had “died accidentally from barbiturate poisoning due to an incautious overdose”. The Coroner stated: “I think one should bring it out publicly there was no question of alcoholism.” Newspapers made much of the tragedy of her life, her suicide attempts, addictions, domestic problems and hospitalisations, and little of her extraordinary work. Harley Street surgeon: “She had been living on borrowed time. When I examined her about eight years ago she had cirrhosis of the liver. I thought that if she lasted five more years she would have done very well . . . She was always a fighter. She was under great stress, but for her it was always: ‘The show must go on.’” Garland’s body was flown home to New York for burial and it was agreed that the public could pay a last homage. Over 20,000 people filed past the open casket in Campbell’s Funeral Home on Madison Avenue, New York, and hundreds of floral arrangements arrived from stars and fans. Liza handled the funeral arrange- ments and wanted mourners to remember the gay side of her life by asking those who came to pay tribute not to wear black. The funeral flowers were yellow and white as Liza explained: “For joy,” and asked Marcella Rabwin to be there: “Because you were there in the beginning and I want you to be there at the end.” A heartbroken Mickey Rooney left before the funeral began. Liza: I think she was just tired, like a flower that blooms and gives joy and beauty to the world, and then wilts away . . . I just want to send her off as she would have wanted to go . . . bright and lovely.” The twenty-minute Episcopal service began with an organ rendition of ‘Here’s To Us’ and James Mason delivered the eulogy: “It was the love of life which carried her through everything. The middle of the road was never for her. It bored her. She wanted the pinnacle of excitement. If she was happy, she wasn’t just happy. she was ecstatic. And when she was sad she was sadder than anyone.” The small congregation of about forty people ended the service by singing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ while Garland’s coffin was carried aloft by six pallbearers. She was buried in Ferncliffe Mausoleum in Hartsdale, Westches- ter County, over a year later.

Frank Sinatra: “She will have a mystic survival. She was the greatest. The rest of us will be forgotten - never Judy.” Mickey Rooney: “People should remember her as the great actress and entertainer she was and always will be.” Bing Crosby: “The most talented woman I ever knew was Judy Garland. She was a great, great comedienne and she could do more things than any girl I ever knew. Act, sing, dance, make you laugh. She was everything. I had a great affection for her. Such a tragedy. Too much work, too much pressure, the wrong kind of people as husbands.” Budd Schulberg: “Judy Garland somehow survived as a star of the first magnitude - a Lady Lazarus who kept rising from the dead, from countless suicide attempts, and broken marriages and nerv- ous breakdowns and neurotic battles with weight and sleep, to somehow pull her jangled nerves together, take command of the Palladium, Palace or Carnegie Hall and bring down that audience one more time.” Richard Attenborough: “All who follow her have to bear that very, very, hard comparison of Judy Garland, anybody who sings, anybody who holds an audience in the palm of their hand, with such consummate ease, with such magic, with such sincerity, with love and with such truth. She is, always will be, Miss Show Business.”