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COME right into the parlor, Dame Grundy. No, take that rocker over there by the window. Then you can rock and listen and you won't miss a thing that's going on across the street.
You're here early this morning because you think you're going to hear some more about that little Garland girl who acts in the movies, aren't you? You've had quite a time clucking your tongue and shaking your head about the way she's been carrying on lately. You and your delightful friend, Mrs. Gossip, have enjoyed feeling sorry for her mother, Mrs. Gumm. In a spiteful way, of course. You've talked it all over, and you both know exactly what you'd do if you had a daughter like that, I'll bet. You say she wears slacks and runs around to those drive-in places at night with boys! And you've seen pictures of her dining and dancing with Dave Rose, the musician. You've decided she's too young to do that, haven't you? Then the way she dresses in formal clothes and goes to those dine-and-dance places to dance. And the way she dances. You don't say so! She jitterbugs! Well, did you ever!!!
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No, don't go yet, Dame Grundy. I know you're in a hurry to get over to Ella Gossip's and tell her all about it. It'll make her so very happy. She can be thankful her daughter isn't like that. You know the one I mean - the one that has adenoids and is a little backward in school. You see, I have something to tell you about Judy Garland. Just a few facts I wish you'd use when you start comparing her with other kids of her age. It won't take long.
Judy Garland was eighteen years old on June 10, 1940. I know it seems as though it was only yesterday she was singing "Over the Rainbow" in "Wizard of Oz" and it doesn't seem possible. But she is. You have to get over the idea that she's just a little girl. You have to look at what she does in the light of what other girls of eighteen do.
Judy isn't spoiled. She has accomplished quite a bit in her eighteen years when you stop to consider it, but she doesn't talk about herself in conversation. She listens. If you tell her your troubles, she'll try to help you out. That's the kind of girl she is!
She has some freckles on her nose, but she doesn't rave and rant and try to hide them, as quite a few girls I know would. Fact is, she doesn't even use any make-up - except lipstick.
She has dozens of friends, and they all swear by her. They have reason to. Judy's loyal, generous, thoughtful - and she'll fight for a pal at the drop of a hat. She holds open house at her comfortable ten-room Bel Air home on Sundays, and often there are as many as fifteen youngsters at the dinner table. Judy's mother is prepared for them, and they get hot chocolate, chili and beans, "brownies" and popcorn. It's a standing rule that the gang must clean up after themselves when they've finished. They do it, too.
Naturally, Judy likes to dance. What normal youngster doesn't? She also likes music. Along that line, it may interest you to know that Judy has one of the finest collections of classical recordings in Hollywood. She has a notable number of swing records as well. She likes to lie on her stomach on the floor in her den and listen to the symphonies of Debussy and Tschaikowsky - and she didn't have to study musical appreciation in school to be able to understand them, either.
I'm not trying to tell you that Judy is perfect. She isn't. Her biggest fault is allowing herself to be imposed upon. For instance, she thinks posing for publicity pictures is a silly occupation, and feels she'd have a lot more fun dancing or doing something else. But the publicity boys get around her. They tell her that some cameraman will lose his job if he doesn't get a sitting of pictures of her at home. They explain that the cameraman (or sometimes it's an editor) is a nice sort of fellow, and it would be a shame if he were fired because he couldn't get pictures of her as he was told to.
On that basis, Judy gives up her day off, cancels whatever plans she might have made for herself, and poses. She'll change clothes half a dozen times, run up and down stairs, work like a Trojan. No coaxing, pampering, cajoling is necessary. She'll do anything she's asked to do within reason. And she does it like a lady. No complaining, no "I'm doing you a favor" attitude. She's perfectly willing to sacrifice her own pleasure for someone else's gain.
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Last year, when Judy was on Bob Hope's radio program, she had some trouble with her eyes. She found it necessary to be fitted with glasses so she could read the script while she was on the air. She didn't storm and stew and refuse to wear specs, as millions of less attractive girls of her age do every day. She bought a pair of big horn-rimmed glasses and wore them to rehearsal. When Hope saw them, he began to make fun of her goggles. He even talked about them on the air. Judy didn't sulk, or get her feelings hurt, or kick up a fuss. She herself thought they were funny.
Incidentally, everyone on that radio program including Bob idolized Judy. She'd be on it again this year if it weren't for a non-radio clause in her new contract with her studio, M-G-M.
Judy doesn't dramatize herself, as many teen-age youngsters do. She doesn't have tantrums or display temperament, although she's rubbed elbows with that sort of thing all her life. She is never nervous before a big movie scene or radio broadcast - at least, if she is, she doesn't show it. When she does get excited, usually as a result of some happy surprise, she'll jump up and down and yell. Once, when a temperamental director screamed at her, she became so frightened she couldn't work the rest of the day.
Let a crisis occur and Judy is as calm as an Englishman waiting for the next bombing alarm. Last March Judy was at home with Patti McCarty, her girl friend, and Leonard Sues, a young screen player and friend of both of them. The maid and the butler were out of the house, so when the phone rang, Judy answered it. It was the police.
"Lock your doors," she was ordered. "There's a screwball headed your way." The officer explained that a man had phoned he was going to kidnap her.
Judy thanked the policeman, hung up the phone, repeated what she had been told to Patti and Leonard, then went about the house locking doors and windows in a calmly efficient manner. Within a few minutes, plain-clothesmen arrived to guard her, and the next day the potential kidnaper (a youngster who said he'd fallen in love with Judy) was apprehended.
Judy had her tonsils removed the first week in October. Her throat was good and sore after the operation and she couldn't have been blamed for seeking a little sympathy. She didn't. When her friends came to see her after the operation and tried to sympathize with her, Judy didn't take the offered opportunity to feel sorry for herself as most girls would have. She turned the operation into a joke by saying:
"Somebody must have applauded my doctor, because for an encore he cut out my adenoids!"
Here's something else to think about. Judy had been a screen star a long time before she had a fur coat. She was in pictures several years before she had a car. Judy had money in the bank and could have bought a fur coat most any time she pleased. But she didn't. She saved a little from her allowance every week for two years until she got together enough to buy the kind of coat she wanted. Then she went out and bought it. Until last year, when her business manager told her she could afford a car, Judy chugged around Hollywood on a motor-scooter. Then she was given an oxblood-red Cadillac sedan. You should have seen her jump up and down and heard her yell when she saw it! The motor-scooter stays in the garage now.
Certainly Judy has more clothes than the everage girl. She has dozens of pretty dresses and suits, a large number of pairs of shoes and some beautiful furs. But everything she has is just as much her friends' as it is hers. She loans clothing with utter disregard for its care. She's always insisting that pals take her books to read and her records to play. Judy herself usually kicks off her shoes the minute she arrives home from the studio or a date. She likes to walk around in her stocking feet.
She's thoughtful and generous, never forgets her friends on their birthdays or important anniversaries, and always does something nice for them on these occasions. Last February, Judy gave Patti McCarty a big birthday party at her (Judy's) home. It was quite an affair.
Judy's been thinking quite a bit about marriage lately. Not to any particular fellow, but just about marriage in general. That's logical, isn't it? After all, she's eighteen. And, level-headed youngster that she is, she's decided that she won't let her career interfere with marriage should the right man come along.
You don't believe it, eh? Well, how would you like to know that Judy has talked the subject over with her mother and that her mother agrees with her! As success has come to her, Judy has kept her balance amazingly well. She regards her work in pictures as something she must continue until the public tires of her. She feels that is an obligation to her fans, her employers, her family and herself. But she's not willing to sacrifice happiness for a career. Her mother wouldn't let her if she wanted to.
Judy's mother is a very wise and very understanding person. To her training should be attributed Judy's decentness and right sense of values. Mrs. Gumm (Judy's real name is Frances Gumm, you know) has always given her youngest daughter to understand that she has implicit faith in her and her judgment. In spite of her career, Judy has always had freedom. Judy is proud of her mother's faith and wouldn't betray it for the world. Judy's lucky in having the mother she does, just as Mrs. Gumm is fortunate in her daughter. Perhaps their daughters wouldn't all turn out to be Judy Garlands, but many a mother like Mrs. Gossip certainly could profit from Mrs. Gumm's example.
There's little danger of Judy's deserting the screen for marriage for some time to come, however. She likes to date, go dancing, play ping-pong, swim and spend an evening at an amusement park taking in the rides now and then. Boys are handy things to have around on occasions like that, and there are always plenty around where Judy is. Judy's oodles of fun, for one thing; then there's always lots of man-filling food around the Gumm establishment.
Just as Judy does her work capably and well without making a fuss about it, she eats what and when she pleases.
Judy really grew up in "Strike Up the Band." She not only sang well, danced professionally and pushed Mickey Rooney for acting honors but she blossomed forth as a beautiful young woman.
In "Little Nellie Kelly," bought especially as a "growing up" picture for her, Judy will play a dual role, Little Nellie Kelly's mother, and the part of Little Nellie Kelly. She has George Murphy as a leading man. She'll play her first love-scene. Her studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, sold on Judy's ability as a singer, comedienne and dancer, in this film will give her an opportunity to show her worth as a dramatic actress. She does a grand job, too.
Judy still plays her favorite game of "Pretend" when she feels sorry for herself over some fancied slight. She is quite apt to lock herself in her den, play sad music and have a good cry. Then she imagines she's a great opera singer, a glamorous beauty, or a brilliant lawyer. After she has felt sorry enough for herself and imagines hard enough, she finds her troubles have disappeared.
She still says her prayers at the foot of her bed every night - and the last thing that meets her eye are two portraits, one of her mother and one of her dad, who died shortly after she was signed by M-G-M six years ago.
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