Judy Garland: World's Greatest Entertainer. By John Fricke. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1992. 256 pp. + illus. ISBN 0-8050-1738-0. Judy Garland. By David Shipman. New York: Hyperion, 1993. 540 pp. + illus. ISBN 1-56282-846-0. London: Fourth Estate, 1992. 522 pp. + illus. ISBN 1-872180-95-7. Few singers of popular songs have elicited the attention in print that has been lavished on Judy Garland, both during her life and since her untimely death in 1969. In the last few years, something of a Garland renaissance has taken place, with many reissues of most of her recordings on compact discs and a variety of books on diverse aspects of her work and personal life appearing. Since the late 1970s, there have been books on the making of two Garland films in Aljean Harmetz's The Making of The Wizard of Oz (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977) and Ronald Haver's A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), her troubled television series in Coyne Steven Sanders's fascinating Rainbow's End: The Judy Garland Show (New York: Morrow, 1991), and a career survey in The Complete Judy Garland (New York: Harper & Row, 1990) by Emily R. Coleman, as well as numerous in-depth biographies and personal memoirs by Gerold Frank, Anne Edwards, Christopher Finch, and several former co-workers, ex-husbands, and hangers-on. David Shipman's new biography, Judy Garland, follows the familiar formula of the tell-all tome and is certainly a serviceable text on that level. However, it offers few new revelations, most of this material having been well covered in Frank's Judy (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), which profited from the cooperation of many Garland friends and family, and Edwards' Judy Garland (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975). Shipman has been assisted by Garland friends Deanna Durbin and Joe Mankiewicz, among a few other survivors from Garland's early days, but much else in his study depends on second and third-hand accounts and he readily admits that many co-workers and family members declined to cooperate. As such, this book emerges as little more than a rehash of Frank's work, which will undoubtedly remain largely definitive as an intimate personal biography of the troubled star. Shipman includes a lyric which is particularly appropriate in suggesting a way to understand Garland: "The history of my life is in my songs..." she sang plaintively in her perennial medley of film songs. Audiences would forever identify the ups and downs of her personal life with the songs she sang, from the hopeful young girl of "Over the Rainbow" to the lonely mature woman of "The Man That Got Away." And, like Billie Holiday, she frankly revealed her pain to her audiences. But it is Fricke who astutely recognizes that despite Garland's erratic personal life, her body of work in over 30 films, approximately 1,100 concerts, numerous radio and television appearances, as well as recordings, would have to be considered extraordinary by any standards, all the more so when one is reminded that she died at the relatively young age of 47. Fricke's Judy Garland: World's Greatest Entertainer is perhaps the most welcome of all Garland books, particularly for those less interested in behind-the-scenes gossip than in her extraordinary achievements. Fricke has noted that his book is intended "for those who feel that the most important aspect of Judy Garland's life is her professional legacy," and he proceeds to survey all facets of Garland's career, vaudeville, film, radio, concert stage, television, and recordings, in a lively and engaging text. Although he does not shy away from acknowledging Garland's personal infirmities and tragedies, he avoids dwelling on them, keeping the focus firmly on Garland's artistry. Few popular entertainers have dominated so many areas of entertainment as Garland, and even fewer have been regarded as artists. Garland, as Fricke writes, was perhaps the singular popular singer of her time who will be remembered for "her matchless talent, her communicative ability, and-in the word used repeatedly by her professional associates-her genius" (p. 9). Judy Garland: World's Greatest Entertainer is lavishly illustrated with photographs (many in color and most previously unpublished), reproductions of lobby cards and movie posters, programs, studio memos, and other ephemera related to Garland's work. Although much has been written about Garland's work in movies and her later performances on concert stages and on television, Fricke has unearthed a considerable amount of fascinating detail about these areas and, most interesting of all, about Garland's earliest performances in vaudeville as a child. As the youngest of the Gumm Sisters, Garland was continually singled out by critics and her fellow performers as a unique performer able to "convey in song the heartrending pathos of human existence"(p. 8). Simply put, what more could be asked of any artist? Reviewed by James Fisher.