from TV Mirror, 1965
(exact date unknown)
Years ago there was a motion picture entitled The Wizard of Oz which introduced a little girl called Judy Garland who stole hearts everywhere with a song called "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Judy was the girl next door, the girl who could make you laugh or cry. The world loved her... the world possessed her. She became a legend in her own time.
Irving Berlin once said of her, "I think that girl has more talent in that little body of hers than anybody that's been around in a long time. She's a songwriter's dream." And through the years she continued to be a songwriter's dream, despite her personal dilemmas and uncertainties which were numerous and widely publicized. Somehow she has always been able to make comebacks re-establishing herself as one of the most exciting phenomena of our time - until recently.
When Judy lost her television show, which introduced more perplexing problems, something happened to her as a person, a star, and inevitably something happened to that great voice. The years of misuse and the emotional imbalance in her personal life has now finally taken its toll.
Recently, she appeared on the Sammy Davis, Jr. show, and it was almost impossible for her to sustain any of her notes. She even signaled to Sammy to sing one of the high notes because she wouldn't make it -- at 43 Judy Garland is talking her songs like Sophie Tucker did during her last years.
This is exactly why we should stop being sentimental about Judy, and making excuses for her, encouraging her, in other words, to go on the way she is going.
When she started her comeback trail in London at the Palladium she was at her worst but when she sang, "Over the Rainbow," her Palladium audience broke into cheers.
In November of '51, continuing her comeback, Judy collapsed on the Palace stage in New York. The second half of the show, consisting of her and her company, had been late in starting. The intermission dragged on and on. When Judy finally came on, those in her audience report that her gait was unsteady and she seemed to walk with great care.
After the first few bars of her opening song, she missed the words, then caught herself and continued, but sang off key. When the orchestra broke into the introduction for her next song she whispered, "No, not that!" She walked to the piano and took a drink of water. Then she sang, "Rock-a-bye, My Baby."
Vivian Blaine, in the audience, was asked to come backstage and stand by in case Miss Garland collapsed. And it was Vivian who took over as Judy was carried on a stretcher from the theatre to a sanitarium. She was, it was reported, suffering from nervous exhaustion. Some reporters wrote encomiums about her courage, the show-must-go-on sort of thing. But many in show business shook their heads, said it was a pity that Sid Luft, her manager to whom she was engaged to marry -- had gone out of town. Mr. Luft, all explained, could control Judy. The only time there had been trouble during her London engagement, they added, was when Judy and Luft were having difficulty.
The night she reopened at the Palace, she received an ovation. And her curtain speech, punctuated with sobs, concluded, "I... I love you... I mean it!" Ironically enough, her emotionalism which too often had been her undoing, also often serves her well.
No one close to Judy took seriously her attempted suicide a few years ago when she cut her throat with the jagged end of a broken glass. And even during her television series it was reported that she tried to take her life three times at the Beverly Hills home of actor Glenn Ford.
The realities, responsibilities and self-denials of maturity are not Judy's dish. She was happier, far happier than she ever has been since, when she was a teenager -- when Mickey Rooney and the young Hollywood gang met at her house to play records and dance and talk -- when she was a Hollywood belle and went to night spots with her current beau. Her first marriage to David Rose lasted three years. Her second marriage to Vincente Minnelli lasted five years -- more or less.
Because of all that Judy is, everyone always has forgiven her everything. Louis B. Mayer, who was head of MGM studios when Judy was a star there, eternally coddled her. That studio, in fact, is reported to have spent over $100,000 on doctors, hospitals and various forms of psychiatric treatment to help her. But finally they had to let her go. Too often they rejoiced over her glad cry, "I'm back at work -- and so happy," only to discover, one or two or three weeks later, that her company was waiting on a studio or recording stage and she had not appeared, that someone had telephoned to say she was ill.
Betty Hutton, as everyone knows, had her great success in the title role of Annie Get Your Gun after Judy was removed from the cast. Jane Powell climbed higher than ever in Royal Wedding after Judy threw a tantrum one day when Arthur Freed, who had been instrumental in getting the studio to entrust her with the part, stood watching her rehearse. "Stop looking at me, I say!" And then she cried and stomped off the set.
Whatever Judy does, however she does it, all those who love her are quick with excuses. She's been in show business since she was three, they say. All her life it had been her habit to go to bed at dawn and sleep all day. In order to adjust to the turnabout schedule of movies she had been obliged to take sleeping pills to go to sleep at 9 P.M. instead of 3 P.M. And because of the effect the sleeping pills had upon her she had to take Benzedrine to wake up. So it goes, affording Judy no impetus to discipline herself.
Those of us who love her resent being forced to suffer with her when she is performing. When she attempts to make up for the lack of voice with energy her inadequate performance is spotlighted more than ever. I feel that her fans have a right to request that she take stock of herself, and begin to close doors on things which are obviously destructive elements in her life. At this point in her career, she should be still going strong WITH A VOICE! She shouldn't be on the road to being a washed-out has-been holding onto a rainbow of yesterday. I don't want to watch Judy and have the feeling that I'm witnessing the death of a star. And it doesn't have to be that way. She means too much to too many people, BUT the important thing is she has to discover what she means to herself, then possibly the voice of Judy Garland will begin to live again.
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