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Liner Notes:
Judy Garland: Child of Hollywood
Judy Garland lived 47 years. Her childhood coincided with the advent of sound in films. She died one month before man walked on the moon. From the age of two and a half, she was a romantic wanderer who would have been more at home in Wuthering Heights than in West Hollywood. She did not fit. By her musical talent, she was apart. By her psychological fragility, she was alienated. By her faith in others to provide shelter, she allowed herself to be fooled. Her only real shelter throughout her life was her music. Only through it could the world cease to exist, for a moment. City of lights, city of illusion, Hollywood was a dream and Judy Garland was a dreamer.
Garland signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1935 and with Decca in 1937. The two concurrent contracts permitted her to make soundtrack recordings at MGM and commercial ones at Decca, often of the same songs. Thus, in the late 1930s to the mid 1940s, some of the music Garland sang in MGM films was available on Decca Records, although the Decca interpretations were not the same as those heard on screen, recorded at MGM's own sound facility. She did not really record for MGM as a recording artist, all her sessions at the film studio being intended for use in her screen performances. Even when MGM got into the record business in the mid 1940s, at which time the Garland film recordings began appearing on the MGM Records label, she never did any sessions for MGM Records strictly as recordings for commercial release. Garland left Decca in 1947, although her contract with them ran to 1953. MGM ceased recording Garland when she ceased making films for them in 1950.
In this new compilation of early Judy Garland, the listener for the first time has the opportunity of sampling side by side her early optical track MGM recordings and her early Decca work. Out of the 75 Garland/Decca sides released between 1936 and 1947 (her first two Decca releases, the swing classic "Stompin' at the Savoy" and "Swing, Mr. Charlie," were cut a year before her contract went into effect), only 35 titles were recorded both at MGM and Decca. Often the differences between the two versions of the same song concerned length. Decca was confined to what would fit on a 10" 78 rpm record (only one of Garland's Deccas was ever issued as a 12" 78 rpm recording), which usually meant tempos were faster on the commercial releases than as presented in the films. A quick comparison of Garland's signature tune "Over the Rainbow" à la MGM and à la Decca reveals quite a gulch: the Decca version is orchestrated with one lump of sugar too many compared to the much more deeply felt MGM treatment, which opens the current collection. Decca encouraged Garland from the very start of their association to step out of the sometimes restrictive mold MGM was locking her into and record both swing as well as the great standards which composers such as Harold Arlen, George Gershwin and Cole Porter were miraculously creating in mid-century America. And then there are the MGM recordings that never made it over to the Decca side of the street. The most stunning examples included in this album are "Singin' in the Rain," "Minnie from Trinidad" and "Hoe Down," the later two having been staged and directed quite spectacularly by Busby Berkeley.
One song in the present collection merits special attention in that it goes miles in helping the 1990s listener understand what a listener in the late 1930s must have felt upon first hearing the voice of Judy Garland. That song is "(Dear Mr. Gable) You Made Me Love You." At the 1939 Academy Awards ceremony, announcer Gene Buck said a great deal in his brief and moving introduction: "We're extremely fortunate in having a charming kid that some years ago in a picture... In my hometown of Great Neck, I was looking at a picture and I saw a child sing a song where she was stuck on Clark Gable, which isn't original for her... But the way this youngster, through sheer artistry, sang to a photograph... I never forgot her." And the viewing public never forgot her either. (The optical track version of this song is available on RPCD 311 Movie Musicals, Volume 2, 1930-1938. The version on this collection is of Decca origin.) In this composition, filmed and inserted into Broadway Melody of 1938 after studio bosses witnessed the strong impression she made singing it to Clark Gable in person at his 36th birthday party, the public for the first time was exposed to her vast array of emotions and the utter sincerity she displayed in expressing them. The sequence opens with a profile shot of Garland singing the verse to her scrapbook. This verse, as well as the recitative, was written especially for her by her long-time mentor Roger Edens, who played an incalculable role in shaping her career. It at once places the context of the song as an adolescent's love letter to an idol. But Garland does more than we expect. She submits us to a roller coaster of feelings via her voice, her facial expressions, her gestures, and especially her eyes, which penetrate us, as if they are not afraid of exposing her heart and soul. We are subjected to willfulness, child-like enthusiasm, reflectiveness, infinite sadness, shyness, regretfulness, determination, assuredness, affection, and in the end the wordlessness of her emotions. The natural transition from song into the Edens recitative and out of it informs the attuned ear that, for Garland, words were music and music was words, and the barrier of going from the spoken voice to the singing voice didn't exist for her. This gift played a significant role in the success of the MGM musicals from then on, for song could now be integrated into film and not be considered strictly a "number" in the Busby Berkeley sense, quite apart from the plot. When Garland admits that it was she who was in the way, but that he - Gable - looked at her and smiled, there is a warmth that radiates from this little girl that the spectator, if he allows himself, cannot but be deeply moved by. The purity and strength that are imparted on him remain for life.
Where did all this come from?
Judy Garland was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota on June 10th, 1922 to Frank and Ethel Gumm. She was given the name Frances Ethel Gumm, and would soon be called "Baby Gumm." Her two older sisters, Mary Jane and Virginia, were already singing on the stage of Frank's New Grand theater, which presented both films and live entertainment. Ethel accompanied them on the piano. At the age of two and a half, headstrong Baby Gumm joined [her] sisters' act, and it soon became apparent that the youngest of The Gumm Sisters was the center of attention. The three sisters and their mother led a traveling life in the vaudeville circuit in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This obviously meant that the young Frances was seeing less of her adored father and perhaps too much of her mother. Starting from an early age, her love for her father was limitless in that he could never say "no" to her. His warmth and joviality created a link which was abruptly snapped when he died of spinal meningitis in 1935. The image she had of her mother was one of a disciplinarian. But Ethel, the typical stage mother, was to some degree living through her daughters not only to make ends meet during often-lean years, but also to get out of a worsening personal situation with Frank. In Grand Rapids and later on in Lancaster, California, where the family had moved, there had been rumors: whispering among townsfolk that Frank had been having more than amicable relations with certain male friends. This was intolerable to Ethel, and no doubt the three girls were witness to unpleasant scenes between them. In any case, throughout these years, Baby Gumm was developing conflicting and unresolved feelings towards her profession, her public and her parents. If the price to pay for fame was disintegration of her family life, she was not consenting. Her childhood was being sacrificed for the sake of others, thus stunting her growth and denying her the family structure so essential for stability later on. Her unavowed response to a stolen childhood was to stay a child until she died. The warmth of the spotlight and an audience's overwhelming reaction to her talents momentarily anaesthetized her hurt, but in the wings her love/hate of the life she had been thrown into was intensifying. The natural transparency of her emotions transferred this inner conflict into her singing. And she did love to sing. Her gift was becoming her burden, though, and her mixed emotions the very root of her art.
The Gumm Sisters first appeared on screen in a 1929 Warner Brothers one-reeler, The Big Revue, singing "The Good Old Sunny South." They made three Warner-First National Vitaphone shorts in 1930 - A Holiday in Storyland, The Wedding of Jack and Jill and Bubbles, in which Frances soloed on "Blue Butterfly," "Hang On to a Rainbow" and "When the Butterflies Kiss the Buttercups Goodbye." Contractually married with MGM in 1935, Judy Garland, who by the mid 1930s had changed her name after theater critic Robert Garland and the Hoagy Carmichael song "Judy," was assigned to two 1936 shorts: the two-reeler La Fiesta de Santa Barbara, shot in color, which marked the last time The Gumm Sisters performed together, here singing "La Cucaracha;" and the one-reel Every Sunday, Garland's first solo outing, in which her swing confronted Deanna Durbin's classicism. Durbin's vocalizing won the battle in that she went on to temporarily greater success, albeit at Universal, while MGM executives seemed not to know how to use their newly-signed singing juvenile, who was no longer a child but not quite a woman yet either, and whom they considered something of an ugly duckling. Garland's first feature film, as it happens, was a loan-out to 20th Century Fox, where she performed in the 1936 Pigskin Parade. Her first feature film at Metro was Broadway Melody of 1938, although she appeared seventh on the cast listing. She began her association with the Mickey Rooney/Andy Hardy series at this time, in which she participated in four films. The Wizard of Oz, of course, dating from 1939, is the film which made Judy Garland a star and provided the song the public would forever remember her by, "Over the Rainbow." In the brief moment of a song, all the voices on earth were one and all human desire the simple expression of a child seeking release from the everyday. In that moment, Judy Garland the myth was born. She went on to perform in four Busby Berkeley musicals in this period, namely Babes in Arms (1939), which was that year's top moneymaker; Strike Up the Band (1940); Babes on Broadway (1941), where Garland and Rooney duetted on "Hoe Down" and How About You?;" and finally For Me and My Gal (1942), where for the first time Judy Garland's name appeared above the film's title.
During these germinal years, Judy Garland allowed the emptiness her adolescence inspired in her to be filled by the songs and roles she was now required to sing and play. She believed the words to her music and the roles in her films, as the shattered slate of her personality had no choice but to latch on to and build on that which kept her firmly on the ground and stubbornly in the spotlight, as on that day at age two and a half. That is, her voice enabled her to survive. She and her collaborators must have been aware that the dark depths of this girl could only be enlightened by the impetus of the music she could so prodigiously interpret. In fact, starting from her childhood, Judy Garland was no longer interpreting songs and roles, but becoming them. Listen to "You Can't Have Everything," "In-Between," "Oceans Apart," "I'm Nobody's Baby," "Alone," "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows," or "On the Sunny Side of the Street." These songs and filmic enactments are so permeated by Garland's personality that the necessary distance between artist and material melts by the urgency of her art. This is what separates Garland from the other great vocalists of the 20th century. And this is what made her an outstanding actress, but not a great one. The only role she really ever played was herself.
In an age when pop music is dominated by bare-chested Madonnas and heavy-mettalers out to kill, Judy Garland is an anachronism. Twenty-four years after her death and fifty-seven years after her first Decca releases, it is perhaps difficult for the contemporary listener to appreciate an American popular music which blossomed in the early part of the century. Judy Garland lent herself to the expression of the purist in that music, and in doing so voiced the yearning and innocence that is in the child in us all. The price she paid was her life. For she would find that the exuberance she put into singing the complexity of her ever-so-sensitive soul would, in the end, wear her out. That power she felt as a child mixed strangely with adulthood: a dark side of joy.
It should not be forgotten that in 1967, two years before her death in London of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, when asked what she might have become if not "Judy Garland," she replied, "a housewife." And this is no doubt true. The adoring public of the late 1930s can only have squirmed in great discomfort by the late 1960s as the wide-eyed all-American girl-next-door became the stoned alley cat singing for $100 a night and playing pool at 3 A.M. near New York's Times Square. How did Dorothy, who told us in The Wizard of Oz that there was no place like home, become homeless? Something had gone abysmally wrong. No doubt the images of the purity of her childhood stayed with her her whole life, but there was no more yellow-brick road to get back there. Our child of Hollywood never learned that nothing is pure, and the rest of her life was a quest for something that was missing, something that had been stolen from her, something to live for. Nobody had asked the owner if they could borrow her life. That short life was a long suicide. Yet, if Judy Garland had not taken this perilous route, the sun in her heart would never have graced us, should we care to look and listen, with glimpses of eternity.
For that reason, she cannot be forgotten.
(c) 1993 Lawrence Schulman, Paris
With permission
*
1. | OVER THE RAINBOW | 2'16 |
| | (Arlen-Harburg/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
Optical Soundtrack Los Angeles c. October 1938 |
"That's for Nelson Eddy, not a little girl in Kansas!" was lyricist E.Y. ("Yip") Harburg's initial reaction when he first heard composer Harold Arlen's melody for the song that would become known as "Over the Rainbow."
His wasn't the only objection to the number being too "heavy" for MGM's The Wizard of Oz, the lavish 1939 film version of L. Frank Baum's beloved children's story. "Over the Rainbow" was cut from the movie at least once (depending on which biography you read) before wiser heads prevailed and it was allowed to stay. From a vantage point of more than 50 years it is impossible to think of the timeless classic musical without the number that took home 1939's Academy Award for "Best Song" and became forever identified with Judy Garland.
Throughout the rest of her career Garland must have sung "Over the Rainbow" hundreds of times, but perhaps never with as much innocence and wistful longing as she brought to the recording for the film's soundtrack that is heard in this collection. In Max Wilk's They're Playing Our Song, Harburg is quoted as saying Garland's voice was "one of the great voices of the century.....She had an emotional quality that very, very few voices ever had. The whole world seemed to have an empathy with her, not only because of the way she sang ("Over the Rainbow") but because her own life was the epitome of it...almost like a Dostoevsky novel, (seeming) to fit this beautiful little child's song that had color and gaiety and beauty and hope...(and) bringing into everybody's life...the sadness of being a human being."
Arlen and Harburg had distinguished careers together and apart before and after The Wizard of Oz, previously collaborating on scores for Broadway's Life Begins at 8:40 (1934), The Show Is On (1936), and Hooray for What? (1937) ("In the Shade of the New Apple Tree" from that score was directly responsible for their Oz assignment and re-teaming for Bloomer Girl (1944) and Jamaica (1958)). Their lives would touch Garland's once again when they joined forces to write the title song for her final film, I Could Go On Singing (1962).
2. | STOMPIN' AT THE SAVOY | 2'24 |
| | (Sampson-Webb-Goodman-Razaf/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
61165-A New York 12/6/1936 |
Barely past her 14th birthday when she cut the two sides which became her first commercially released records, Garland romps enthusiastically through these quintessential Swing Era numbers with a vocal maturity and rhythmic sense that belies her years. Can this really be the voice of a 14-year-old?
Introduced by bandleader Chick Webb, who recorded it in 1934, "Savoy" was credited to him, arranger Edgar Sampson and Benny Goodman, Andy Razaf's lyric added later. A driving tribute to Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, the number became one of the most requested by Lindy Hoppers in the mid 1930s and was further popularized by Goodman's own recording for RCA.
3. | SWING, MR. CHARLIE | 3'02 |
| | (Robinson-Taylor-Brooks/Francis Day & Hunter Ltd./Redwood Music Ltd.)
61166-A New York 12/6/1936 |
Written by J. Russel Robinson ("Aggravating Papa," "Margie," "Memphis Blues"), Irving Taylor ("Three Little Sisters," "Everybody Loves Somebody," "Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are") and Harry Brooks ("Ain't Misbehavin'," "Black and Blue"), "Swing, Mr. Charlie" didn't achieve the same success as "Savoy" even with a dynamic recording by trumpeter Bunny Berigan. Garland seemed unaware that this is a lesser song, treating it with the same zestful fervor she brought to "Savoy."
4. | (DEAR MR. GABLE) YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU | 3'11 |
| | (Monaco-McCarthy-Edens/Francis Day & Hunter Ltd./Redwood Music Ltd)
DLA 967-A Los Angeles 24/9/1937 |
"Dear Mr. Gable" was the song that put Garland on the map with MGM. Signed by the studio in 1935, her feature film debut was in Fox's 1936 Pigskin Parade, on "loan out" because MGM was geared to its older and more sophisticated female stars such as Garbo, Crawford, Shearer and MacDonald. During the era when cute and adorable Shirley Temple was Hollywood's reigning child star, who knew what to do with a 14-year-old possessed of a mature vocal style? Garland's film career seemed stalled, but in the meanwhile she was taken under the wing of Roger Edens, who polished off her rough edges and became her major musical influence. His importance to Garland's career cannot be overestimated.
Edens arrived in Hollywood in 1934 as arranger for Ethel Merman, whose style occasionally surfaces in Garland's own late 1930s singing. He was soon under contract to MGM and working for the studio in various musical capacities, eventually becoming a key member of Arthur Freed's production unit. Edens' taste and style is apparent in musicals such as The Harvey Girls; The Pirate; Easter Parade; An American in Paris; The Band Wagon and other MGM classics. His interest in and development of Garland's vocal talent led Edens to write many special material pieces for his protégée, among them lyrics paying tribute to movie king Clark Gable as part of the old favorite "You Made Me Love You," introduced on Broadway by Al Jolson in the 1913 musical The Honeymoon Express. Garland sang the song at a birthday party for Gable, the girl and the material making such a favorable impression that both were quickly written into Broadway Melody of 1938. In that film the puppy-lovestruck youngster sang her plaintive paean to a photograph of her idol, making moviegoers sit up and take notice of the warmth and sincerity that would become a trademark of Garland's work.
Trumpeter Harry James claimed his 1939 hit recording of "You Made Me Love You" was inspired by Garland's version of the Monaco-McCarthy golden oldie. James V. Monaco also composed the music for songs such as "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face," "I Can't Begin to Tell You," "I'm Making Believe," "What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?," "Six Lessons from Madame La Zonga" and other hits. Joseph McCarthy's lyrics include those for the Broadway musicals Irene ("Alice Blue Gown") and Rio Rita ("The Ranger's Song").
5. | YOU CAN'T HAVE EVERYTHING | 2'29 |
| | (Revel-Gordon/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
DLA 968-A Los Angeles 24/9/1937 |
Introduced by Foxy blonde Alice Faye in the film of the same name, "You Can't Have Everything" was the flip side of Garland's "Dear Mr. Gable" record, making a decided contrast with the rhythmic drive she brought to the song.
The team of composer Harry Revel and lyricist Mack Gordon contributed a number of standards that came from Hollywood's 1930s screen musicals, including "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?," "Love Thy Neighbor," "With My Eyes Wide Open, I'm Dreaming" and "Goodnight, My Love." In 1938 Garland sang their "Meet the Beat of My Heart" and "It Never Rains But It Pours" in Love Finds Andy Hardy, but only a couple of years after that the team dissolved their partnership. Gordon paired successfully with composer Harry Warren for a lengthy list of hits that included "Chattanooga Choo-Choo," "I Had the Craziest Dream" and "You'll Never Know." Revel wasn't as successful, though two of his post-Gordon songs - "There's a Breeze on Lake Louis" and "Remember Me to Caroline" were nominated for the Academy Award.
6. | ALL GOD'S CHILLUN GOT RHYTHM | 3'04 |
| | (Jurmann-Kaper-Kahn/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
DLA 861 Los Angeles 30/8/1937 |
Written by Walter Jurmann ("San Francisco," "When I Look at You"), Bronislaw Kaper (best known for his film scores for San Francisco; Green Dolphin Street; Invitation and Lili) and lyricist Gus Kahn ("Pretty Baby," "Ain't We Got Fun," "My Buddy," "I'll See You in My Dreams"). "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" was introduced by Duke Ellington vocalist Ivie Anderson as part of a production number (in which a very young Dorothy Dandridge can be spotted as one of the dancers) in the 1937 Marx Brothers film A Day at the Races. 'Covered' by the bands of Bunny Berigan, Ellington and Artie Shaw, the song was even recorded by Anderson herself only a couple of weeks before the version heard here was made. Because "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" was featured in an MGM movie, it is not surprising that Garland also recorded it, being one of the few of the studio's stars under contract to a record label at the time. The name of the game was really "promotion." Copies of a song's sheet music routinely circulated among record companies, bandleaders, singers and radio producers in an effort to get it heard by the public.
It's worth keeping [in] mind while listening to this track that Garland was only a couple of months past her 15th birthday when she made this recording, yet was already blessed with an effortless natural power that older singers would have given their vocal chords to possess.
7. | IN BETWEEN | 3'55 |
| | (Edens/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
Optical soundtrack Los Angeles c. June 1938 |
Following Garland's success with "Dear Mr. Gable," MGM often cast their young star in roles in which she portrayed a lovestruck ugly duckling who can't get the object of her affection to recognize that [s]he's actually a swan until she starts to sing. Love Finds Andy Hardy gave her perhaps the best of those parts, with Garland as Betsy Booth, 12-year-old daughter of a musical comedy star, who develops a crush on next-door neighbor Andy (Mickey Rooney) while visiting her grandmother in Carvel. She sings "In Between," written by Roger Edens as a rueful lament to pre-adolescence, after being rebuffed by Andy as too young to merit his amorous attention. One can hardly fail to be both sympathetic and amused by the number, Garland's unique talent for injecting wry humor into a song that could easily have become maudlin and self-pitying in the hands of others singers carrying her triumphantly through.
8. | FIGARO | 2'13 |
| | (Edens/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
DLA 1871-A Los Angeles 16/10/1939 |
Another of Roger Edens' special material pieces designed to showcase Garland's vocal talents, "Figaro" was heard in MGM's filmisation of Broadway's successful Babes in Arms, which jettisoned virtually all of Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart's score - including standards such as "My Funny Valentine," "The Lady Is a Tramp," "I Wish I Were in Love Again" and "Johnny One Note." Garland would have to wait nearly a decade before getting her chance at those last two songs, which she eventually performed on screen in Words and Music (1948), MGM's highly fictionalized bio-musical about Rogers and Hart.
"Figaro" was included in a lengthy Babes in Arms "Opera vs. Jazz" number with Betty Jaynes, recalling Garland's earlier musical competition with Deanna Durbin in the short Every Sunday. Like Durbin, Jaynes didn't stand a chance alongside Garland's effervescent attack, which turned "Figaro" into a hot swing number.
9. | OCEANS APART | 3'05 |
| | (Rooney-Miller/Cop. Con.)
DLA 1868-B Los Angeles 16/10/1939 |
Co-written by the multi-talented Mickey Rooney and Sid Miller, Rooney's off-screen side-kick (seen in small roles in several Mickey-Judy musicals of the late 1930s and early 1940s), "Oceans Apart" is a sentimental ballad pre-dating not-too-distant World War II separations. Garland's expressive and tender renditions - with something of a "band singer" quality about it - aptly illustrates her ability to rise above some of the less than top-drawer material she was called on to record during her tenure with the Decca label.
10. | FRIENDSHIP | 2'32 |
| | (Porter/Warner Chappell Music Ltd.)
DLA 1987-A Los Angeles 15/4/1940 |
Garland and composer/lyricist/singer Johnny Mercer have fun with "Friendship," bringing free-wheeling camaraderie and humor to a Cole Porter song from the Broadway musical DuBarry Was a Lady (1939). Introduced by Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr, it was later sung in the London edition of the show by Frances Day and Arthur Riscoe. Porter's illustrious theatrical career as a composer and lyricist included his scores for Anything Goes (1934), Red, Hot and Blue (1936), Panama Hattie (1940) and many others. Though his undoubted pinnacle came with Kiss Me, Kate (1948), Porter turned out later hits such as "I Love Paris" and "It's All Right With Me" (Can-Can, 1953), "All of You" (Silk Stockings, 1955) and "True Love" (High Society, 1956).
11. | I'M NOBODY'S BABY | 3'34 |
| | (Davis-Ager-Santly/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
Optical soundtrack Los Angeles c. March 1940 |
Another oldie revived and arranged by Roger Edens to showcase Garland's dynamic style. Written in 1921, the song quickly became a favorite of female vaudeville performers of the day (including Marion Harris, who recorded it). Garland's successful Decca recording of the song spent ten weeks on Billboard's then-new "Best Selling Singles" chart in 1940, inspiring records by band singers such [as] Helen Forrest, Connie Haines and Marian Mann.
"Nobody's Baby," featured in Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, is performed by Betsy Booth (Garland's second appearance in the Hardy series as that character) during a New York deb party. Once again the ever-dense Andy sees her in a new light when she sings, though to her dismay he continues to remain romantically disinterested.
Benny Davis's other credits include "Baby Face," "Oh, How I Miss You Tonight," "Goodbye Broadway, Hello France" and "Margie," Milton Ager's such favorites as "Ain't She Sweet?," "Glad Rag Doll," "I Wonder What's Become of Sally" and "Happy Days Are Here Again," though "I'm Nobody's Baby" was Lester Santly's sole success.
12. | ALONE | 2'28 |
| | (Brown-Freed/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
Optical soundtrack Los Angeles c. May 1940 |
Early in Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, Betsy sings "Alone" for Andy's benefit - as he's dressing for a dinner date - in a vain effort to alert him to the fact that she no longer considers herself to be a child. Garland's over-dramatic emphasis of the song's title in its lyric suggests the young star's growing flair for comedy, a talent quite under-used during her tenure at MGM.
Written by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed for the 1935 Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera, "Alone" was introduced on-screen by Alan Jones and Kitty Carlisle. Brown and Freed's career at MGM had begun in 1929 when they were asked to write songs for The Broadway Melody, the forerunner of all the backstage musical films that would follow and the first to feature an original song score written directly for the screen. Among the hits to emerge from that initial effort were "You Were Meant for Me," "The Wedding of the Painted Doll" and "Broadway Melody." Other Brown-Freed screen standards included "You Are My Lucky Star," "Pagan Love Song," "Temptation," "All I Do Is Dream of You," "Broadway Rhythm," and "Good Morning." Many featured in the 1952 film Singing in the Rain. Freed became one of MGM's top producers, heading up his own film unit and turning out most of the studio's classic musicals. Brown continued to compose, some of his other credits being "You Stepped Out of a Dream," "Love Is Where You Find It" and "Paradise."
13. | SINGIN' IN THE RAIN | 3'00 |
| | (Brown-Freed/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
Optical soundtrack Los Angeles c. September 1940 |
Based on George M. Cohan's 1922 musical comedy, Little Nellie Kelly retained only his song "Nellie Kelly, I Love You" for the film's thin four-song score. Garland's appearance marked the first time she was given solo-star billing at MGM (above-the-title billing would be reserved until 1942's For Me and My Gal).
The Brown-Freed "Singin' in the Rain" became a standard after being performed by Cliff Edwards and chorus in the early "all-singing, all-dancing, all-talking" Hollywood Revue of 1929.
Reluctantly performing during a Little Nellie Kelly party scene (an effective way to get the young singer in front of an enthusiastic audience and coincidentally providing an early look at the extraordinary energy and charisma Garland brought to her later concerts), Garland's Edens-arranged version of "Singin' in the Rain" packs plenty of punch. But the definitive rendition remains Gene Kelly's unforgettable rendering as he sang and danced in the (studio induced) rain in the 1952 film named after the song's title.
14. | IT'S A GREAT DAY FOR THE IRISH | 2'27 |
| | (Edens/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
DLA 2285-A Los Angeles 18/12/40 |
Written by Edens for Garland - and Douglas McPhail - to sing as they marched in a street parade in Little Nellie Kelly, "It's a Great Day for the Irish" went on to become a St. Patrick's Day favorite. The film is otherwise notable for giving Garland her only on-screen death scene - she plays both mother and her look-alike daughter in its plot.
15. | MINNIE FROM TRINIDAD | 5'23 |
| | (Edens/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
Optical soundtrack Los Angeles c. January 1941 |
Yet another Edens specialty for Garland, the tale of "Minnie from Trinidad" can be directly traced to Cole Porter's earlier "Katie Went to Haiti," introduced by Ethel Merman in DuBarry Was a Lady. Both songs tell similar stories of a "not so good but I'm not so bad" lady loved by the population of a tropical island.
Performed in Ziegfeld Girl within a lengthy, lavish production number directed by Busby Berkeley, "Minnie" provided Garland with the opportunity to prove she could be as alluringly sexy as Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner, her co-stars in an over-long (though effective) story of how three young women handle their success as showgirls in Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies.
16. | CHIN UP, CHEERIO, CARRY ON! | 3'37 |
| | (Lane-Harburg/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
Optical soundtrack Los Angeles c. September 1941 |
The third of the Mickey-Judy "let's put on a show!" plots, Babes on Broadway was the most expensive and lavish of the bunch to date. Veteran performer Elsie Janis was even hired as adviser and coach for Garland and Rooney's lengthy tribute to vaudeville performers of the past, in which the young stars appear as Sir Harry Lauder, Fay Templeton, George M. Cohan, Blanche Ring, Walter Hampden and Sarah Bernhardt.
A quartet of numbers from the optical soundtrack of Babes on Broadway leads off with "Chin Up, Cheerio, Carry On!," a sentimental but stirring piece of World War II propaganda written by Burton Lane and E.Y. Harburg. Sung in the film by Garland and a chorus portraying World War II refugee children, the segment is awash with indomitable British spirit, complete with scenes of London designed to further heighten patriotic fervor.
17. | F.D.R. JONES | 2'29 |
| | (Rome/Warner Chappell Music Ltd)
Optical soundtrack Los Angeles c. September 1941 |
First heard in the 1938 musical revue Sing Out the News, Harold Rome's "F.D.R. Jones" was introduced by Rex Ingram, then was performed by the popular team of Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen in the London revue The Little Dog Laughed (1939)(included in Flanagan and Allen RPCD/MC 322). Interpolated into Babes on Broadway, it is rousingly performed by Garland - in blackface makeup - as her solo during a minstrel show production number.
Rome was one of the few in a handful of successful songwriters who created both words and music. His initial success came with the revue Pins and Needles (1937). Among his other scores were Call Me Mister (1946)("South America, Take It Away"), Wish You Were Here (1952), Fanny (1954)(with their hit title songs), Destry Rides Again (1959), and I Can Get It For You Wholesale (1962).
18. | HOW ABOUT YOU? | 4'28 |
| | (Lane-Freed/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
Optical soundtrack Los Angeles c. July 1941 |
Composer Burton Lane supplied the melody and producer Arthur Freed's lyricist brother, Ralph, wrote the words for "How About You?," Babes on Broadway's Oscar-nominated song (the year's winner was Irving Berlin's "White Christmas"). Though he didn't achieve quite the songwriting success that Arthur did, other Ralph Freed lyrics included "Smarty," "You Leave Me Breathless," "Please Don't Say No, Say Maybe," and "Hawaiian War Chant." Lane wrote the music for a number of excellent songs, such as "You're My Thrill," "I Hear Music" and "Too Late Now." His greatest success was the score he wrote for the Broadway musical Finian's Rainbow (1947).
19. | HOE DOWN | 4'36 |
| | (Edens-Freed/EMI United Partnership Ltd)
Optical soundtrack Los Angeles c. August 1941 |
Roger Edens and Ralph Freed's "Hoe Down" provided Babes on Broadway director and choreographer Berkeley with the inspiration for yet another of his show-stopping, seemingly endless production numbers (heard here in a slightly shortened version). This one, set in a barnyard, appeared to use every chorus dancer within 200 miles of MGM, all engaged in an energetic combination of square dancing and jitterbugging. The song is infectiously sung by Garland and Mickey Rooney, the Six Hits and a Miss, and the Five Musical Maids, before it finally winds to its end.
20. | ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET | 2'34 |
| | (McHugh-Fields/Lawrence Wright Music Co Ltd)
DLA 2970-A Los Angeles 3/4/42 |
Written by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields for producer Lew Leslie's 1930 International Revue, "On the Sunny Side of the Street" was introduced by Harry Richman and quickly became a popular number with both singers and jazz musicians.
McHugh's and Fields' careers started when they wrote songs for the late 1920s Cotton Club revues, including "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "I Feel a Song Comin' On," "Exactly Like You," and "I'm in the Mood for Love." McHugh went on to write with lyricists Harold Adamson ("A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening"), Frank Loesser ("'Murder' He Says") and others. Fields, daughter of comedian Lew Fields - of the popular team of Weber and Fields - was one of the few female lyricists to write successfully for both Hollywood ("I Won't Dance," "The Way You Look Tonight") and Broadway, with such diverse musicals as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Sweet Charity to her credit.
21. | I'M ALWAYS CHASING RAINBOWS | 2'11 |
| | (Carrol-McCarthy/Redwood Music Ltd/EMI United Partnership Ltd
Optical soundtrack Los Angeles c. November 1940 |
Its melody based on Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu in C sharp minor, Joseph McCarthy and Harry ("Trail of the Lonesome Pine," "By the Beautiful Sea") Carroll's "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" was first heard in the 1918 musical Oh, Look!, where it was introduced by Harry Fox, and then sung by Phyllis Titmuss in London's 1919 Brian Pie. The song was revived in the 1970s when it was interpolated into the Broadway revival of Irene, where it was sung by the show's star, Debbie Reynolds, also a graduate of MGM.
Garland's lovely reflective version of the old favorite is from Ziegfeld Girl, where it is performed as an audition number which begins her character's ascent to Follies stardom. Closing out this compilation, "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" seems an almost-too-perfect summing up of Judy Garland's life and career, a never-ending search for happiness and contentment that would never quite be within her reach.
(c) 1993 Max O. Preeo
Editor, Show Music
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