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Slickest Gal in Town
from Movie Stars Parade, October 1944
(no author credited)
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You'd know just the way the wolf-pack howls even if it weren't for those two J.G.-tagged bombers ...
Sounds like a press agent's dream but Tom Drake has a sizeable garage bill to prove it isn't. He and Judy doing Meet Me in St. Louis's romantic interest had been emoting on the trolley car set. All day they'd jounced on the lumpy cane seats for take after take as their prop trolley had rumbled back and forth over the prop track. It was raining, but undaunted by mere weather Tom called for Judy at the appointed hour and off they started, she sinking back gratefully against the soft leather in his sleek convertible. Then, crash! bang! And next they knew a telephone pole was folding the radiator like an accordion. They had skid, but good. They weren't shaken, nor even scared, it'd been so quick. But what to do? Continue on to the movies, of course - on the Hollywood Boulevard trolley! That's the kind of gay, screwy thing that's happening to Judy lately. Maybe 'cause she's kind of just a teensy weensy on the mad side herself these days. Kind of reminds you of that cute, carefree character Ginger Rogers did way back with Astaire, The Gay Divorcee. Not over-burning the candle, nor making the grim, determined effort to smile. Just kinda normal twenty-two and glad to be alive.
For a while Sister Jimmy and Mom and Pal Betty Asher weren't sure what was going to happen to Judy. She took her separation from Dave hard, lost weight, was jumpy irritable, and once she'd gone home from the studio of a night - home to the solitariness of the hilltop house she'd rented from Mary Martin after heartbrokenly she'd put her own up for sale - she was harder to get to than Garbo.
That was the "trial" period which Judy and Dave both hoped would send them catapaulting back to each other's arms. It didn't. But it was this hope which delayed the divorce as long as it was delayed, not as rumor had it Dave's demand for a financial settlement from Judy. "Why," she's hotly reiterated time and again, "Dave's like a child about money. It means nothing to him. That'd be the last thing that would hold up anything between us." Her decree came through last June. Despite it, Judy and Dave have stayed friends. They don't date, nor do they make grand shows of affection when they meet in public, but she's always admired him as a musician and he's appreciated her talents as a songstress.
They had a professional association long before they fell in love. Dave's arrangements have been responsible for the success of some of Judy's biggest numbers. He might have gone on working with her had he not gone into the Army where the musical score of Winged Victory promptly absorbed all his time. Judy's missed those arrangements of his. Just lately she was to do an air show. Her number was Long Ago and Far Away. She tried this version, then that, but there was something about them all that didn't quite click. She was in a quandry. It was an all-request affair and she'd have to do that song. Dave, in town with Victory's movie unit heard about it and in nothing flat whipped out a super arrangement and sent it over to her. Judy was delighted. She put it over with a bang and later she did it again at a Cobina Wright party where none other than famed pianist and composer Arthur Rubinstein asked to be introduced to her and complimented her roundly, thrilling her to her toes by adding, "I have enjoyed you so often on the screen. I wanted to thank you!"
"Get that - he wanted to thank me, me Judy Garland!" she breathed when she told Betty about it later. " - And wasn't that nice of Dave to do that for me?" she told everyone.
But romantically it is definitely over for her and Dave. The divorce made that final as far as Judy was concerned and she closed the chapter. Eventually she's realized that even so, life isn't over for her, not by a long shot.
She began to date Van Johnson, the dialogue director Freddie de Cordova and Vince Minnelli, her Meet Me in St. Louis director, and Tom Drake and Hodiak. She moved into a new house in more populated Westwood near UCLA, and she bought a silly looking miniature grey poodle that looks more toy than real, and frivolously named him Chou-Chou. She decorated herself a chic new bedroom, lots like the room she'd had back home at mom's, in her favorite brown and yellow.
The St. Lou set came alive with her gags and good spirits. She romped with wee Margaret O'Briend who's in the film with her and personally coached the tot for her first song before the cameras, a duet with Judy of Under the Bamboo Tree.
John Frederic, super chapeau maker, came out to the set one day to bring her a hat and scarf ensemble she'd ordered. He looked high and low but no Judy so he bedecked a prop snowman with the frothy finery and went off. When Judy found them she had stills made and sent them to John captioned "a satisfied customer."
St. Lou marks a first for her in that it's her initial costume picture and for the first time in her life she wears a corset. Not just an ordinary one, but a real replica of a 1910 best seller. "Really an iron strangler," she describes it. It was laced so tight she couldn't swallow and had to get herself all unharnessed every noon before she could go to the commissary. Usually for lunch she shares a bowl of the MGM chef's famous chicken soup with Betty Asher, and then polishes off a chicken sandwich, milk and a hefty slice of chocolate cream pie. Betty works in the publicity department and she's Judy's best friend on the lot and off. They spend their vacations together and lots of evenings at a neighborhood movie or on a double date, though it's got to be a very special date that'll keep Judy out after ten on a work night. For that reason, though her phone is constantly busy, there'd have to be seven Saturday nights a week for her to keep dates with all the boys she's reportedly seen with. Judy with one wee Oscar for the best juvenile performance of '39 has her heart firmly set on a family of them. Since musicals don't give her the dramatic opportunities that win Oscars she'd been determined to do at least one picture a year that would be just a straight emoting job. Her next will be it and her first of what she hopes'll be scores. It's The Clock tragic story about a soldier and a girl with just twenty-four hours to spend a lifetime together. For it Judy's already deepened her hair back to its original dark brown which she bleached during Wizard of Oz because the lighter tint photographed better in color. She's wearing her hair shorter, too, almost a Victory Bob. It's easier to take care of that way. When a girl's skipping off on cross country hops to entertain at Army camps and hospitals and Navy bases every few weeks she's got to think of practicality - and glamour. It takes a slick chick to rate with the boys to the extent of getting a bomber named for her. Judy has two. One with the 340th U.S. Bomber Group, the other with the 250th RAF Squadron. "Just think," she says, "me - bombing Hitler twice a day!" It's fun finding out they love you, even if sometimes it makes you cry a little too. Judy cried when, listening to a recorded eye-witness account from aboard an invasion transport she caught her own voice on a record in the background singing For Me and My Gal. But Judy doesn't cry much these days - she's too happy working and having fun, and just being alive.
Van was one of Judy's first dates after marriage crack up. Handsome H'wood newcomer Guy Madison is her latest. They went to Since You Went Away a deux.
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In Ziegfeld Follies she burlesques movie star. Meet Me in St. Louis beau is T. Drake
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