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HARDLY was Judy Garland over the thrill of being named the year's best juvenile and winning an Academy Award, than three carloads of police skidded to a stop in front of the Garland Canyon home, announced a threat had been made to kidnap Judy - and that they were there to see the plot wasn't carried out. Police radios crackled with instructions, cars were stopped, strangers questioned. The neighborhood was in an uproar in a jiffy.
Soon Robert Wilson, a 19-year-old Buffalo, N. Y. transient, was in custody. His plot to abduct the young singing star, drive her into the mountains and hold her for $50,000 ransom resulted in his being booked on a charge of suspicion of kidnapping and being held for a mental examination. He had become panicky, "tipped off" the police to his plan via telephone. It was this "tip off" on his own contemplated crime that proved his undoing.
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To the public, the news of the kidnap plot was very exciting. Judy herself can be excused for feeling a bit nervous about it. But to Hollywood, the threat was simply another in the never-ending real and imaginary plots against the stars.
Judy's studio (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) wasn't any too pleased over all the hue and cry. Officials branded all the excitement as a "super-colossal production by the police department."
Behind that attitude is to be found the real story of the manner in which kidnapping threats are handled in Hollywood. Threats of one kind and another constantly are being intercepted by the studios, at the rate of about 1,500 per year. Few of these threats ever reach the public prints, and only in rare instances is the Federal Bureau of Investigation called in.
Usually these plots are handled almost entirely by studio police, who quietly and efficiently investigate each threat and take whatever measures are necessary to protect their stars. A lot is done, but little said. The public usually never hears about it - and the stars, themselves, except in rare instances, never know their safety has been threatened!
Reason for that attitude on the part of the studios is to keep resultant and too sensational publicity from being spread about their players and the film capital. It's only in isolated cases - like the Judy Garland threat - that the system fails to work.
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