Judy Garland is the exception that proves the rule on how to become a star in pictures. She's the one in a million.

You've heard the laws for stardom, of course. They've been laid down for years by directors, actresses, actors, producers, everyone in the business including studio gatemen.

The basis of these laws is that you must learn your trade before you tackle Hollywood. You must work hard at acting or singing, practice from morning till night, get into little theaters. Beauty is not as important as talent or experience. Lessons, lessons and more lessons are the watchword!

Uh-huh. Then along comes Garland.

Judy had her first and only singing lesson at thirteen. The coach put a pencil between her teeth, listened to her muffled tones, and said her diction needed improvement. She also remarked that if her pupil weren't careful she'd wind up singing like Kate Smith. Judy, the daughter of a vaudeville team which never quite reached the upper brackets, said, "Is that bad?" and walked out. She never went back.

She learned to act by "seeing myself in one stinkin' picture after another and trying to do something about it." The "doing" involved inquiring about timing, studying lines by herself, and so on. Now, even the most hardened critic will admit she plays a more than passable scene.

She found out about dancing through a routine in a picture. "I had never danced before," she says, "so I faked it." Later, in For Me and My Gal, she worked with Gene Kelly. He taught her the steps the camera would see. For a long time afterwards, she didn't know any others.

The laws are not phony. They are applicable in 999,999 cases out of that million. But the millionth case concerns a girl who has so much natural talent, such adaptability, plus such a basic knowledge of show business as a whole, that she couldn't help but become a star.

Judy Garland has been around Hollywood a long time. Over seven years, in fact. She admits readily that she really didn't start working seriously until a little over a year ago. Up to that point, everything was a gold-plated cinch for her. She breezed in and out of pictures without effort. Then she discovered that she could do more than merely "get by". She could, perhaps, be terrific.

It's peculiar to talk of someone as well-known as Judy as being at the beginning of her career. But, nevertheless, it's true. She is just beginning - as an adult. For she has just learned how little she really knows about her trade and how hard she must work to accomplish results that she believes are worth-while.

Judy wants to be a great actress like her idol, Greer Garson. She is sure of that now and is aware of what it means. The endless work. The sincerity. The exhaustion. But she didn't have that vision a year ago. Then, like Lana Turner, she was a kid, still unawakened. She grew up in a hurry, because of her marital troubles, and because it suddenly dawned on her that she was not utilizing fully what she possessed within herself.

The transformation from kid to woman is not yet complete, however. At present, she is a strange combination of adult and adolescent, as most stage-bred people are. In Judy's case, happily, there is none of the repulsive phoniness which seems indigenous to a career which begins before six. She is essentially a nice girl. She is a surprisingly calm, quiet, simple person, with just enough of the 20-year-old about her to make her normal.

She is normal. Yet, she is two persons.

The most significant characteristic of that dualism is the kind of music she likes. Outside of her family and a few intimate friends, music is the most necessary element in her existence. She is constantly singing, listening to records, talking orchestras and musical works, going to openings and concerts. She was beside herself with delight when she was invited to sing with the Philadelphia Orchestra last summer. She is never without a melody in her head.

The melodies are of all types and ages. She has a high school girl's violent adoration of Harry James and a Carnegie Hall habitue's devotion to Beethoven. She veers between these two poles mentally. At one moment, she is Mickey Rooney's sweetheart. The next, she is a mature young woman who speaks of the break-up of her marriage with the words, "Whatever happens will be the best for both of us."

When she is her chronological age of twenty, she says, "I'd like to get to that 'graceful' age - you know, between thirty and forty - and be the tall, suave type. The kind of woman who has two children and doesn't look it!" Then she turns ten-year-old. She goes into rapture over peanut candy, eats it on the set, hoards it. Or, she has long conversations with her mother about the "problems" of life.

She hates noise, stuffs cotton in her ears on the rare occasions when she can go skeet shooting in wartime, or holds her hands to her head for half an act if the villain in a play appears with a gun. But, her idea of a great time - like the idea of thousands of other youngsters her age - is to scatter records on her living room floor, turn up the volume deafeningly, and play everything from Louis Armstrong to Stravinsky.

She sits up all night with adult books on the war. She buys movie magazines by the bushel and reads them avidly. She pursues every paragraph she can find on Ronald Colman, Greer Garson and Bette Davis. Their pictures lure her like the most avid of fans after her own work is finished.

She hates the "details" of living: filling out forms, getting ration books, sending clothes to the cleaners, picking up shoes at the cobbler's. Dresses hang in her closet as long as a year before she has them altered. She loathes slacks on the street, most hats, and talking on the telephone. She makes ridiculous and shocking excuses not to have to look up numbers in the phone book. One of these was childishly horrifying: "I have no hands..." Judy explained to Information.

At twenty, she is nervous about staying in a house alone. Her separation from Dave Rose brought her solitude for the first time and, except for the wee hours of the morning, she likes it. If she wakes then, she calls Betty Asher, her best friend, gets her out of a sound sleep, and asks plaintively if she won't come over. Nine times out of ten, by the time Betty arrives, Judy is fast asleep again.

Off-screen, she is a small, neatly-put-together girl with reddish- gold hair and enormous brown eyes. Her skin is clear and rather pale, drawn tightly across her cheek bones. Her mouth is not pretty, but somehow fits her. She still has her little-girl giggle, and her speaking voice retains the slightly nasal quality you catch on the screen. In the last year, she has lost so much weight through work and numerous Bond tours that the studio is alarmed, wants her to take a three-month rest, and has trouble quelling rumors that she is ill. Judy, herself, says that she never felt better, that her thinness is the result of dancing too hard. She wants to entertain the troops overseas.

That last remark reflects the more mature Judy. The girl who is proud of the five-room house she rented from Mary Martin. The girl who bought herself a 1940 Cadillac sedan, hired herself a maid, remarks that "jewelry is only nice when it's given to you." The girl who thinks perhaps - maybe - one scene out of a picture is good, and who is working like crazy to make it two.

She manages her own affairs and does a good job of it. She knows publicity and the value of a story. She will honestly try to help an interviewer who is on the level with her. If the questions become too personal, however, she can parry them.

She realizes, too, that she is a "property" of value to MGM. She knows she must be well-dressed in public and goes in for simple suits and dresses, very little ornamentation, and good grooming. But this is not all studio policy; Judy would do it anyway. She's that kind of a person.

For years, MGM tried to keep Judy a little girl. She was appealing and money-making that way. She was therefore a child to the public long after she really knew the score, long after she had become adult in at least half of her make-up.

She went about with the Jackie Cooper - Bonita Granville - Ann Rutherford gang and sincerely liked them all. But she was more adult than they. Her friends included as well, Artie Shaw, Roger Eden (sic), her arranger, and a man named Dave Rose. He was, at first, her father confessor, an older guy who treated her with respect, like a contemporary, a friend. Then suddenly he was more than that. Suddenly, he was a husband.

The world was shocked when Judy got married. "That infant!" it said. It didn't know the side of her it had never seen on the screen. Then came her separation.

Judy's own explanation of why her marriage broke up is revealing when you think about it: "We had no scenes, Davie and I. I guess we were just not meant to be together. Whichever way it works out will be the best for both of us."

Since her break-up with Dave Rose, Judy has been seen with a lot of people; Van Johnson and Don Loper, her dancing director, among them. She has also gone on long and arduous Bond-selling tours. She has donated her services on Command Performance and Mail Call, two variety shows which are sent to the boys overseas. She has made Girl Crazy and Presenting Lily Mars. And she has carried on her own tradition of keeping her thoughts to herself and, with them, her dignity.

When you meet her now, she's a little more quiet than she used to be, a little more grown-up, a little more determined. And the thing she is determined about is what began this story: she's out at present to learn her trade. She's beginning all over again - in more ways than one, actually. She hopes someday to be a really great actress.

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