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Judy's Crushes
from Sreenland, August, 1939
This little Garland girl is a famous
movie star but that doesn't stop her
from having the same cute romantic
crushes as any sweet-sixteen schoolgirl
by May Mann
Judy Garland's got me remembering when I was just newly turned sixteen and fell in love with my piano teacher who was thirty-five-ish. I know just how Judy felt about Gable, because one day my piano teacher (who was no Gable, but had a dimple on his chin) patted my hand in a grown-up way, and I suddenly discovered he was Prince Charming! I knew that if he'd wait a couple of years for me to grow up a little bit more, a great love would be ours. I pictured myself as the woman he adored, inspiring him to greater things -- that is, until he introduced me to his real inspiration who was twenty-five-ish and proudly announced she was his new bride. You've no idea how tragic it was. Judy felt much the same way when Clark introduced her to Carole Lombard, and she suddenly realized how hopeless were her plans of their future together, Judy's and Clark's I mean.
"I meant every word of that song I sang to Clark Gable in my first picture," Judy seriously confided to me as she slipped off a little blue wool dress with the white lace petticoat trim showing two inches below the hem. And in the next breath, "Look at this note. It's from a boy who saw the afternoon show. He thinks that I should know that my petticoat is showing. Isn't that funny? He doesn't know that's the fashion."
Judy was in New York on personal appearance tour and I was on a holiday. We'd decided to see Times Square and Forty-Second Street and Broadway together -- but the most we saw was the inside of taxicabs and crowds of people as we dashed about keeping Judy's numerous engagements. We'd just come from Judy's broadcast and were in her dressing-room, banked with baskets of flowers, when Judy and I began to wax confidential in true feminine fashion. The telephone was ringing when we entered. It was Los Angeles calling, with Judy's next-door-neighbor-boy-friend on the wire. Ten minutes later a new boy acquired on the New York holiday called for a date, and before a half hour had passed a couple more had called -- one, being as Judy described him, "just perfectly wonderful -- he's going to Yale and he's so distinguished and everything!" That's how we got onto the subject of boy friends and then romance in general.
"Clark Gable was really the first man I ever thought seriously of," said Judy, brushing her gold-brown hair prior to getting ready for the evening show. "The first time I met him, I thought I'd faint, he was so wonderful! He was just exactly the way I'd always imagined he would be. He smiled and took my hand and held it just like he really meant it. He was so clean-looking and had such cute dimples. And the shaving lotion he used smelled so masculine and nice!
"After I sang that little song that I wrote to him in my first picture I was invited to his birthday party. I sang the song for him again. But Carole Lombard was there -- and I soon realized that I didn't have much chance when he already had such a glamorous woman in love with him. She's so beautiful and so witty and keeps everyone laughing at the clever things she says. While me, I felt awkward and self-conscious, and I sat and twiddled my thumbs, which didn't get me very far. I didn't know what to say. All I could do was look at Clark and think how much I liked him and wish that there were two of him, one for Carole and one for me. I couldn't help noticing all of the time the way he looked at her -- like she was something awfully precious. He just grinned when he looked at me.
"Soon after that Clark sent me a charm bracelet and I wore it right up to the day he married. It was awfully cute with a little gold book in which was inscribed, 'To My Best Girl, Judy -- from Clark Gable.' And then when I was in that automobile accident he sent me a pair of love birds. But after meeting Miss Lombard I knew that Clark would never really be serious with me." And Judy began brushing the curls around her finger. She's very pretty and sweet sixteen-ish. Her large brown eyes are girlishly innocent and have a way of widening when she's serious. There's none of the coquette about Judy -- not even when she's talking about her boy friends.
"Isn't that the Gable charm bracelet you are wearing now?" I asked, noting a clever one on her wrist.
"This is the one the boy who lives next door gave me," Judy explained. "He's a very nice boy who takes me to movies and occasionally to parties, and we go bicycling together. But he's very young -- just sixteen. Well, I mean sixteen's young for a boy. Of course we're not a bit romantic -- we're just friends," she added.
"How about Freddie Bartholomew?" I asked.
"Oh, that was one of those studio publicity romances," Judy said. "They were in vogue at the time. Sonja Henie and Tyrone Power, and Wayne Morris and Priscilla Lane. It really didn't mean a thing. We just posed for pictures and he took me to a premiere or two."
"Well," I asked, undaunted, "how about Mickey Rooney -- is he your big moment like the papers say?"
"Oh, that's just another publicity story," Judy smiled. "We've really never been a bit serious about each other. In fact, he pesters me with his practical jokes all of the time. Every time I have a serious scene he stands off somewhere and tries to make me laugh at something and spoil it. Really, at times Mickey can be a terrible pest -- but he's so sweet at others. In our next picture together, 'Babes in Arms,' I win him for a change. In our last picture I lost him to Ann Rutherford."
Judy put on a little pink dress and seemed to be debating with herself before she spoke again. "If you really want to know a perfectly wonderful man, you should meet Victor Fleming," she said with a dreamy-eyed smile. He directed my last picture, 'Wizard of Oz,' -- and he's perfectly marvelous! He has the nicest low voice, and the kindest eyes. Besides, he realizes that a girl who is sixteen is practically grown up. He shows me all of the courtesies he would to Hedy Lamarr. That's very important to me. He rises when I enter the room and places a chair for me. He notices my clothes and the way I do my hair and remarks about them. After our first picture had been in production a week, I felt that I wanted to do something nice for him. I baked him a cake -- and he was so appreciative. I asked mother is she thought it would be all right for me to give him a white carnation for his lapel. She couldn't see any harm in it -- so I picked out the loveliest one in my shop (Judy owns a little florist shop in Hollywood) each morning and sent it to him. A man appreciates little things like that. Besides, it keeps him thinking of a person."
I readily agreed and pursued the subject. "Were you romantic about Mr. Flening -- momentarily?" I asked, remembering my piano teacher and all.
"Well, I might have been if I'd been older," Judy sighed. "He's such a wonderful man!" And the way Judy said that I knew distinctly how she'd felt -- for I could detect a bit of "It might have been" in her voice, in the way that only a girl, in her very early teens can express. Then the telephone rang.
Judy spoke in very low guarded tones. It was a local call from a New York swain. "He's the one who sent me those flowers," Judy smiled after the call, pointing to an enormous basket -- such as prima donnas receive on first nights at the opera. "It really takes a more mature man to do things for a girl. Why, back in Hollywood, no one would ever think of sending me such a large basket of flowers. The boys back home usually send me a corsage of baby pink roses or lily of the valley. Now that I'm sixteen I'd like gardenias at least. And I've always wanted an orchid. But if they ever bring me gifts it's usually candy -- which they sit and eat!
"You've no idea how perfectly miserable I've been waiting to grow up," Judy said wistfully. "And now I don't know how long it'll be before people will recognize the fact that I'm a young woman, and not an adolescent. Everyone calls me 'Baby' and 'Monkey' and no one takes me very seriously," she lamented. "While I'm really as serious as can be. I'm practically sixteen, which means that in a couple of years I should be playing romantic leads in grown-up parts.
"I'd like to tell you my ambition in life -- that is, if you'll promise not to laugh -- because it isn't a bit funny," Judy warned. I promised and she continued. "I want to play my first grown-up leading role opposite Clark Gable. I personally think this is a wonderful idea. Ever since I sang my song to Gable in my first picture our names have been linked together. I think the public would really like to see us together on the screen, don't you?"
I assured Judy that it seemed like a good idea -- and in tune with my sympathetic understanding -- because after all we're sisters under the skin with my memory of my piano teacher and Judy's crush on Gable, so Judy revealed to me her truly one great ambition in life. She wants to become another Bette Davis!
"I wouldn't care if I never sang again -- if I could just become a great dramatic actress like Bette Davis. I don't care whether I'm beautiful or not. I want to sway the emotions of millions of people, make them weep and laugh and feel the things I'm feeling on the screen."
I interrupted Judy to tell her that really she was doing something like this on the screen in her current pictures -- but Judy said that she wanted to be very dramatic as a grown-up actress. I'm very serious. I want to study drama. I've mentioned this to the studio and they just smile -- the powers that be -- and chuck me under the chin and say 'Run along, Judy, you're just a kid yet. You've got plenty of time for serious things.' They don't realize that I'm sixteen. They insist that I must wait for years and that you can't portray experiences you've never known. But they don't know the emotions I've already experienced."
I could feel with Judy -- remembering that piano teacher. But luckily school-girl yearnings have a way of vanishing and are soon forgotten -- though I'm sure Judy doesn't think so at present. But she will in just a few more years.
A bell rang and a call boy said, "First curtain, Miss Garland." Judy patted a bit of powder on her nose and hurried to the stage. I caught her mother, who accompanied Judy on the tour, coming up the stairs and we dashed down into the audience and stood in the aisle to catch Judy's numbers.
"Judy's been telling me that she wants to be a great actress," I whispered as we waited for Judy to appear.
"Yes, and she's very serious about it," her mother smiled. "Did she tell you she's got her heart set on being Clark Gable's leading lady when she's eighteen?" I nodded.
"Judy's just at that age where she's thrilled with everything," her mother whispered. "She had a crush on Clark Gable for a long time -- but that finally wore off. Then she became very much interested in her accompanist. He's more like a father to her since her own Daddy passed on. Then her dancing master caught her fancy but that only lasted for a week. She discovered that he was married and had daughters older than herself.
"Judy's such an impressionable child -- she goes about singing and laughing all day, but when she starts sitting around waiting for the telephone to ring we know she's in the midst of another romantic crush. Probably the person she has a crush on never knows it -- but mothers can always tell. I never worry about her, for these school-girl crushes never last long. Judy's very proud that she's a young lady now. The other day she went shopping by herself and came home with her first pair of high-heeled slippers. They really look so much better than the flat-heeled slippers that I let her wear them and buy some more. Judy's still girlishly plump -- and she wants to be pencil-slim like her two sisters, bit I tell her she'll slim down in another year. My other girls did.
"You should have seen Judy when she picked up this morning's paper. There was an article saying that Judy Garland, the youngster, would now step into Deanna Durbin's shoes -- for Deanna was now definitely a young woman. Judy felt terrible at being classified as a youngster. 'You'd think I was Jane Withers' age,' she said."
Judy came on stage then, and the applause was terrific. She looked sweet-sixteen and appealing; she sang several songs and then told the audience how she'd broken into the movies. A talent scout heard her sing on a lodge program at Lake Tahoe and sent for her. Louis B. Mayer of M-G-M heard her audition and promptly signed her on the dotted line.
On the way back to the dressing-room her mother continued, "Judy's an unselfish child. She wants to do so much for her family. Though both of her sisters are married, she insists that they stay home and live with us. She wants us all to be together always. We have a new eleven-room house and there's plenty of room. Judy adores her two older sisters."
Judy was going through a handful of fan letters and mash notes sent back to her from out front. She was smiling over some and suggested to her mother that she really ought to see the writers and greet them since they were so nice to write back and ask to see her. At the stage door there were hundreds of them milling about -- all waiting to get a glimpse of her. A high-school youth was carrying a florist's box and another had a box of candy -- Judy's suitors!
Judy returned home the other day and so I dashed right over to her house in Beverly Hills to check up on her, as it were. And darned if the telephone didn't ring, right while I was there -- and it was New York calling. Judy talked sweetly for five full minutes and then with sudden concern, "Oh, we've talked for five minutes -- just think how much that will cost! I guess we'd better hang up!" And after she'd placed the receiver on the hook, I asked her point-blank, "Well, which one was that?" And Judy replied, "He's a boy I met in New York. He took mother and me out to dinner and to see Katharine Hepburn in "The Philadelphia Story." Really he's a wonderful boy. So thoughtful." Meaning probably that he's another one of Judy Garland's romantic crushes!
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