How To Grow Up Gracefully
Judy Garland makes the jump
from kid stuff to stardom
from Click Magazine, February 1943
(no author credited)
It is an exception, rather than a rule, when a child star can graduate from hair ribbons or knee pants to a celluloid love-life. Current events in the career of Judy Garland show her to be such an exception.
Judy wasn't a Hollywood discovery. She came up the way any theatrically-minded kid prepares for a career. Her mother and father were actors; Judy sang close harmony with her sisters, Virginia and Suzanne, as part of the family troupe. When they moved to Hollywood, Judy went to a professional school, was spotted by a talent scout, had a screen test. She was definitely on the plump side, freckle-faced, and a trifle gauche, but she had a voice.
Bit parts, mostly singing, followed, but it wasn't until Judy teamed with Mickey Rooney that she made a sizeable swell in public approval
The first picture they made was Thoroughbreds Don't Cry in 1938 [sic]. In four years, Judy's pictures improved and she blossomed into a pretty, merry-eyed youngster whose sparkle and little-girl charm erased any pre-conceived notions that she was M-G-M's ugly duckling. That she was growing up, and fast, was evident in the frantic efforts she made, in private life, to dress and act like a Hollywood Glamour Girl. That misguided period was brief, for in the last year Judy has made the transition from juvenile lead to dramatic star painlessly. In her new picture, M-G-M's Presenting Lily Mars, Judy grows up on the screen. She has the beauty, poise and ability to carry a top part in her own right plus the nack of swinging back into adolescent parts easily and convincingly.
No matter what she does, Judy is a distinct personality capable of catching - and holding - her audience. In her new role, she has definitely come into her own.
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The Gumm Sisters sang and danced with the Meglin Kiddies, a junior vaudeville show. The little gal on the left is Frances Gumm, but you see her name in lights now, as Judy Garland. She named herself after Robert Garland, New York critic, tacked the Judy on because she liked it.
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Judy and Mickey have been making pictures together for four years. She was chubby and motherly in early movies - always gave wayward Mickey fight talks. Everybody thought it would be a fine idea to promote a romance between these two. It didn't work. They are just very good friends.
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Her first real love scene is with Van Heflin in Presenting Lily Mars. Judy plays a stage-struck girl who wants to become a great star.
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She's a war bride, too, eloped with arranger-composer David Rose to Las Vegas in 1940. He has enlisted in the Air Force Ground School.
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