She started out when she was 10 and she's had more romantic escapades than any other teenster in Hollywood. These are the facts -

The first time love struck Judy Garland, now the beloved of a hundred million teensters the world over, what with her "Strike Up the Band" and "Little Nellie Kelly" to say nothing of her radio appearances, she fell for it. In fact, it knocked her silly - and no wonder. For she was only 10 and what hit her was a brick, wielded by the object of her affections (then), one wonder boy named Buddie West. He was 10, also, and a classmate of hers at school in Lancaster, California.

Buddie hadn't meant to demonstrate his caveman impulses quite so definitely. He had merely been showing off for his ideal among the weaker sex, tossing the brick about with devastating nonchalance, when he missed and the brick hurled itself toward Judy, clipping her on the side of the head and giving her a black eye.

Buddie rushed over to her crying, "Oh, Frances, are you hurt? Oh, Frances, how could I do such a thing? Gee whiz, I could kill myself" and such remarks. (He had to call her Frances, of course, for she was still undiscovered by fame and still going under her real name of Frances Gumm.) He raised her off the dusty ground. He took her, tear-stained and battered, to her home. He kept his arm around her all the way and was all solicitude.

Judy bore up like a little soldier. She was very conscious about bearing up like a little soldier. She was being doggoned brave and she knew it. Buddie told her so. It was fascinating. Her heart beat louder than a snare drum and she knew that this was love. Life's miracle had happened to her.

Seemingly, life's miracle happened to Buddie likewise for a few days later in school, to which she had returned after her shiner had departed, there was the episode of the fire drill.

You know how fire drills are in schools, popping upon one when they are least expected. This fire drill was sounded at ten-thirty one morning just at the moment when Miss Frances Gumm, safely hidden behind her school books, had started going to town on an all-day sucker. When the gong sounded she had to spring to her feet and fall into line. Buddie fell into line behind her. He saw her conceal the sucker within her fist and it was at that moment that he took his foul advantage. Thinking she couldn't defend herself, he leaned forward and tried to kiss her. The outraged Miss Gumm turned upon him and slapped him, sucker and all. The candy clung to his face while the other children howled with glee. Immediately the fire drill was disorganized. Judy and Buddie got called down by the teacher and in that horrid instant, as quickly as it was born, Judy's first love died.

It has been ever thus, ever since. Her loves have flamed like a tropical sunset only to fade as quickly, have been speedily experienced and even more speedily forgotten except in the cases where they have turned into what Judy, her voice expressing solid capitals, now terms "Wonderful Relationships."

A Wonderful Friendship has developed, for example, in the case of the dynamic male who did give her that first kiss, which event is to any woman the thrill which most literally comes only once in a lifetime.

The kiss, like the brick, came to Judy by accident. She was in Hollywood by this time, a little girl learning how to put over a blues song and a regularly enrolled member of the Lawlor Professional Children's School. She was still living with her daddy and mother and her two sisters. Her dad was managing a Hollywood theater and her mother was her singing teacher, but just the same there she was in a real acting children's school and it was all gorgeously thrilling.

One day in class, however, she did something she shouldn't do. She can't remember now what it was. The year was 1934 and she was twelve and as punishment she got banished out into the cloakroom to think over her sins, whatever they were. She found there another culprit, a small tousle-headed boy with a very funny face.

The boy was sulkily engaged in trying to comb his hair but he'd got the comb caught in it. He was yanking away furiously when Judy offered to help. She came necessarily close to him, trying to unsnarl him and as her face drew near his, he leaned forward swiftly and planted a kiss full on her ripe young lips. She gasped with excitement. He gasped, too, and blushed as she was blushing.

"Maybe I'd better present myself," he said, when they had regained their breaths and the air of a man-about-town was heavy upon him. "My name's Rooney, Mickey Rooney, but you may call me Mickey."

Instantly, being the boy who had first kissed her, 13-year-old Mickey became her hero. The vision of actually co-starring with him someday was impossible even to dream. He was something for a girl to look up to, a trouper since his babyhood, a fellow of 13 who actually had a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at that, an absolute pal to stars like Montgomery and Crawford and Gable. She was all prepared to worship him, and nearly did, until he crushed her with a wisecrack.

This is how that happened. Judy had gone to some movie (again as in the case of her first love she can not remember all the details) and in it there was the most poetic speech made by the heroine to the hero. It was one of those flowery speeches all about, "You remind me of high trees tossing in the wind, of lakes across which the silver shadow of the moonlight falls on a summer night" - keen stuff like that. Anyhow, Judy memorized it and wrote it in a letter to Mickey. She wrote, giving no screen credit, that this was the way she felt about him.

So what did Mickey do, the dog? He called her up, full of that masculine superiority, and said, "Listen, kid, I saw that picture, too."

That was a crusher and she resolved to forget him and love Jackie Cooper, instead. Gosh, Mickey might have a contract with Metro, but Jackie had been an actual star. He attended the Lawlor school, too, and he was something snazzy alright. He not only was driven up by his own chauffeur in his own car but he had a bodyguard along!

Hearing around the school that Jackie was about to give a party, she maneuvered with a girl classmate to see to it that Jackie issued an invitation through that girl for her, Judy, to come to the party. She got the bid and she adored the jam session at Jackie's house. She told her heart that he was the man for her forever, but two things proved an obstacle to her fidelity. Jackie was so busy and she was so popular.

There was, for instance, besides Mickey continually dropping in, Freddie Bartholomew calling. He even brought her a gardenia one night, proudly telling her he had never bought a corsage for a girl before and that he had paid for same from his own allowance.

Such a gesture Judy knew was very romantic even though Mickey and his gang took a bit of the edge off it by teasing her about it constantly. Another disturbance to any glow she might have felt about Freddie was Bobbie Jordan and jitterbugging. Bobbie was as different from Freddie, even from Mickey and Jackie, as whiskey is from butter. He was from the sidewalks of New York, a tough guy, but he could dance like a demon and she went for that. In a little while her whole gang, Jackie, Mickey, Freddie, Bonita Granville, Syd Miller and the lot of them were all jitterbugging. An enchanted summer and winter went by in this violent exercise and emotion got absolutely evaporated out of her until she met The Perfect Him on the Metro lot.

It was January, 1938, by this time and she was about to be 16. She stood and gasped at him, as some million other women have. She stood there and bitterly swallowed the knowledge that every column said that he was in love with Carole Lombard.

They were not introduced, she and Mr. Clark Gable, on that first encounter. They merely passed on the same street on the lot. She smiled and he smiled back, as only he can smile back, and she went straight out of this world. That night, at home, was the first time in her whole life that she wasn't able to eat her dinner. She even said she was going to bed early. Her mother asked her if her stomach was upset. Stomach, indeed!

The next day at the studio when she heard that the whole place was planning to join in a Gable birthday party, and, all unawares, it was handing her, right on a silver platter, a way of bringing herself dramatically to his attention. Roger Edens, her accompanist and voice coach, had been asked if he could fix up a song for Judy to sing Gable at the party. Roger had whipped up a tune called "Dear Mr. Gable" and Judy started putting her soul into it.

Came the birthday, February 1st, 1938. Judy suddenly realized that she hadn't a thing to wear. She had never thought about that before. With the gang she wore slacks or old dungarees. At the studio she wore what they prescribed, little girly-girl dresses, socks, flat-heeled slippers. What a costume in which to vamp a Great Lover!

She was forced to rely on her voice and its power. She sang the song to much applause and saw Gable bearing down upon her. She stood, in her detested flat heels and her hated bobby socks, and waited for what he might say. His blue eyes looked deep into her dark ones and she thought she would suffocate until she heard his words. For what Mr. Gable was saying was, "You're the sweetest little girl I have ever seen."

The next day he sent her a charm bracelet. From it dangled a score of charms, a whole orchestra in little golden figures, a locket with his picture burned into it, a disc that said, "To Judy, my best girl." But none of it made up for the hurt of his thinking her just a child. She decided to dedicate her love to her art and she sang "Dear Mr. Gable" in "Love Finds Andy Hardy" and let the world laugh at her loneliness. It was all very awful until Artie Shaw came to the studio to make "Dancing Co-ed".

Now definitely Artie Shaw was the first honestly grown-up male who became aware of her romantically. Not only was Artie, the idol of all jitterbugs, the rugcutter's king, aware of her personally but he knew about her voice. Judy began to haunt the stage where the Shaw film was being made. Judy listened to Artie's band. She listened to Artie's talk. It never entered into her romantic little head that with making "The Wizard of Oz" she was right then nearly as important as he was and, potentially, much more important.

Artie had to return east when the film was finished and while he was gone, Judy met Dave Rose, another musician and the ex-husband of Martha Raye. She was on the radio by now, in the Bob Hope show, and Rose broadcast with Tony Martin from the same studio. Thus they encountered one another frequently. They talked music and they listened to music and when Dave asked Judy for a date, she vibrated with excitement. A divorced man taking her out! That was distinctly something!

It was for a date with Dave that she persuaded her mother to let her buy her first real evening dress. And since it was to be her first real evening dress she decided it wasn't going to be any routine old ready-to-wear. No siree. She'd have a dress especially designed for her, a knockout dress, an utterly different dress. So she dug up a friend of hers who she knew was a costume designer and had a sketch made and then the dress was made, and it was terrific because it only had one shoulder. The other shoulder had to be supplied by Judy's own pretty skin. Then Dave made it perfect by suggesting they go to Ciro's! That was so wonderful that it didn't spoil things a bit when her mother went along.

So there she was in Ciro's with Dave's gardenias on the shoulder that was made of cloth. There she was dancing to an orchestra that was smooth. Too smooth, she soon discovered. You couldn't jitter to it. She couldn't jitter, anyhow in that dress, that hung so precariously. She never wore it again.

Right at that moment Artie Shaw returned to town and rang her for a date. She thrilled. Was it possible that she was in love with two men - two old men of nearly 30 - at once? Unfortunately she was working in "Babes in Arms" and she simply couldn't go out that night. Instead she went miserably to bed at nine. Her sister came bounding into her room the next morning with the dawn - and the unbelievable news. Artie Shaw had dated Lana Turner after Judy had turned him down. Dated her, heck. He'd eloped with her.

Well, that nearly cured her - that and her being so busy with her movies and radio. She decided if men were as fickle as that she was through with them. She'd be friends, only friends.

She's been that way, too, until just recently when she met Dan Dailey, Jr., tall, interesting, young. She'd been all work until then, but now she is beginning to moon again. She is eating a lot less and sleep once more seems to her a waste of time. Dan it was who escorted her on her evening of triumph, the preview of "Strike Up the Band." Dan it was she telephoned on that wonderful recent morning when her contract was upped from a measly $500 a week to a glittering $3000.

Maybe her studio and her family should be worried, but they are not in the least. Judy is absolutely positive this is love. But they know what it is. It's youth! Youth and Judy!

Judy Garland Database ©1995-2007 Jim Johnson - see copyright statement