Judy Garland on Judy Garland (25 page)

“So—it has to be somebody that understands about me and my work and thinks it's important and—we have to work together,” Judy said. “Vincente is wonderful. He's the most interesting man I've ever known. He knows everything in the world, honestly, it just amazes me—he's read everything and heard every piece of music and been everywhere but you'd never think it just to meet him, he's so quiet and rather shy and always making you laugh. But he puts work first. I don't know yet—maybe it will be right for us. We both know that a marriage can either be the most wonderful thing on earth or it can gum up your whole life and spoil everything, including your work. We—we're thinking it over.

I remember I went away that day wondering how long two people in love can think about anything and then I realized that perhaps Judy didn't know how much in love she was. Perhaps because it was all so eminently
right,
because everybody at the studio from Papa Mayer down was tickled about it and feeling it was so fine for Judy—perhaps she just couldn't quite believe it. I thought it was a little tough on Mr. Minnelli to have everybody approve of him to such a terrific extent, because girls are very funny about that and sometimes they don't think it is altogether romantic to have fallen in love with a man that the family cheers for. I went away with a feeling that maybe nothing would come of this romance, that maybe it would be smothered by well-wishing friends and family and studio.

But then Judy called me and I went over to lunch. We sat there talking about a lot of things and then Judy picked up the telephone and called the commissary. She was right fussy about Mr. Minnelli's lunch. His coffee
had to be hot and were the veal chops nice or had he better have chicken and did they have any cottage cheese salad? There was a great deal of consultation before she decided on the veal chops.

The veal chops came with piping hot coffee and all was set out on the small table under Judy's eye—and she reset it twice, and got a little vase of flowers, and stood off and looked at it. We talked some more and still Mr. Minnelli didn't arrive. Judy got up and wrapped a napkin around the hot coffee and peered under the lid at the veal chops. “Do you think they'll be ruined?” she said. “I expect they will. Cold gravy is awful.”

After a while she went to the phone and called Mr. Minnelli's office. “He's supposed to be here,” she said, with a chuckle. “He never knows what time it is. It's wonderful. He gets interested in his work or something and just forgets everything.”

The door burst open and Vincente Minnelli came in talking a mile a minute.

It is very difficult to convey his charm on paper. I thought—but he is very young—very young to be so successful. He can't be so young as Judy, of course but—he has that same quality of youth. (As a matter of fact I found out later he is thirty-four.) He's what I call an attractive ugly man—or at least for the first few minutes that was what I thought. Then I decided that he was attractive and then I forgot all about it, and just knew that he was utterly real and unselfconscious and full of that rare enthusiasm for living that makes everything and everybody around him come to life.

He was born in Chicago of Italian parents and his earliest ambition was the theater. So as soon as he could he went to New York and that swift understanding and enthusiasm carried him on a wave into some of the best musical shows New York ever had, as a stage director. Before he was thirty he had done half a dozen of them—and then he came to Hollywood.

The other day in the projection room I saw a picture called
The Clock.
It stars Judy Garland and Bob Walker, was written by Paul and Pauline Gallico, adapted to the screen by Robert Nathan and directed by Vincente Minnelli.
The Clock
has a sort of charm and honesty and reality
beyond any other picture I have seen in a long time; it has a poignancy that reaches out and touches your heart. It's one of the greatest and most moving love stories I have ever seen on the screen.

When I saw it I couldn't quite explain it—but after I met Vincente Minnelli I could. Also I could understand him better.

“Your lunch is probably cold,” Judy said, beaming upon him. “Did you forget about us?”

“Forget?” said Mr. Minnelli, “but, darling, I am quite early. I was over in Cedric Gibbons's office. It seems that I want too many sets. Or they are too expensive or something.”

“I expect you got them just the same,” said Miss Garland.

“Well yes—I did, as a matter of fact,” said Mr. Minnelli. His dark eyes twinkled at her. “I explained about them you see and then he understood how necessary they were.”

“Anybody who starts listening to you explaining,” said Judy, “is nuts. Eat your lunch. Is the coffee hot enough?”

It was stone cold, but Vincente smiled brightly and said it was splendid.

I looked at them and thought they were a very fine pair of typical and representative young Americans. Judy sat in a straight chair with one foot under her. The stiff little white shirtwaist with a severe black bow and the straight tailored skirt of black and white checks gave her a trim, neat look—an oddly feminine look. Minnelli, in worn and sloppy tweeds with a sweater instead of a shirt, sprawled at ease on the big divan, never taking his eyes off her. Every move she made, every word she said, seemed to give him a real and evident delight.

We talked about the dialogue—which is so all-important to pictures. Minnelli said that he was in favor always of as little dialogue as possible. We talked about that classic made by the Army Air Force,
The Memphis Belle,
and of the simplicity and power of the real things the crew said to each other in the midst of battle.

“When you see a thing like that,” said Vincente Minnelli, “you get on your toes and wonder if even Shakespeare could equal the sheer drama of reality.”

They were excited about a concert they had heard with Yehudi Menuhin at his best—and about a new Tommy Dorsey recording—and about
house furnishings. Vincente said, “Judy is a very remarkable woman. She knows that chairs should be comfortable to sit in. Oddly enough, very few women know that.”

It came over me all of a sudden that here were two people not only very much in love but presenting that oneness, that unity of purpose and intent that is so reassuring. You could see them supplementing each other, supporting each other, maybe fighting once in a while, but meeting shoulder to shoulder the many problems of a Hollywood star's marriage. You could see there would be gaiety and tenderness and maybe pain in their lives—but always that oneness, that unity. So that things would draw them together instead of driving them apart. You felt glad that there was such equality between them, this brilliant young director about whose future everyone is so enthusiastic and the young star everyone loves.

So that the people who love Judy Garland on the screen can all say, as I did—this is right, this is all right—and wish them the happiness and the progress together that I saw so plainly between them.

Five days past her twenty-third birthday, and just one day after completing
The Harvey Girls,
Judy married Vincente Minnelli in an intimate ceremony at her mother's home in Hollywood. Unlike her marriage to David Rose, this union was Metro-approved, with Louis B. Mayer giving away the bride. The newlyweds departed that evening on the Super Chief “Train of the Stars,” destined for a New York honeymoon. During their stay, Judy threw a bottle of pills into the East River in declaration of new beginnings, promising Vincente she would rid herself of all medications.

Toward the end of their stay, Judy found out that she was pregnant. Phoning her mother she announced, “I'm going to have a baby, Mama. Do you mind?” Baby Minnelli—Liza May—was born March 12, 1946, at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, weighing 6 pounds, 10 ounces.

Judy and Vincente would tell you—that a honeymoon in a penthouse is a modern version of the old-fashioned paradise.

Crowning a beautiful building on the ultra-fashionable Sutton Place in New York City there is a triplex penthouse. The beautiful rooms on all three of its floors open on lavishly furnished terraces where trees and gardens grow fabulously in painted tubs.

A guest, standing on the upper terrace of this penthouse during a party recently, looking down at the city lights far below and then up at the stars, said: “More than halfway to Heaven …”

An amusing remark this but also something of an understatement. For it was here, through the long summer, that Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli honeymooned. It was here they found their way to the same quick and sensitive understanding as man and wife that they have enjoyed this last year as star and producer.

From the first there was a creative affinity between Vincente and Judy. It would, of course, take a man as sensitive and shy and also as brilliant and as much fun as he is to comprehend a girl as wholly the artist as she.

Vincente says of Judy proudly, “She's the most responsive actress I've ever worked with. When we have rehearsed a scene I have only to say, ‘Judy, I wish you could do it more—' and before I have finished I know by her eyes she understands. And when we do the scene, then, it has just the essence I wanted for it.”

Judy, in turn, says of Vincente: “We have known each other for about four years, but not well. Vincente was the producer for
Ziegfeld Follies [of 1946], Meet Me in St. Louis
and
The Clock.
But it wasn't until
The Clock
that we began going out together.

“Everything about that picture was wonderful. We had such fun making it—Vincente and Bob Walker and I working always so close—that we didn't know how the dickens it would come out. Seemed almost as if we were enjoying it too much.”

A long time ago Judy and Vincente worked together too. When she and Mickey Rooney were doing those old Busby Berkeley pictures Vincente designed many of their production numbers.

“Only I never knew it,” Judy says. “After all I just got a script and it never said who had sat at a desk in one of the offices and planned what went into it ….

“But when Vincente told me the numbers he had worked on I realized that even then—before we met—he understood me better than anyone else. For the numbers he worked on always were my favorites.”

Judy and Vincente, as you know, planned to be married in New York. Manhattan really is his home. He has many dear friends there; all the theater people and writers and musicians and charming cosmopolites who have adored him ever since he produced the delightful Music Hall shows
and presented Bea Lillie and Bert Lahr in his own production,
The Show Is On.

With a New York wedding in mind, Vincente, busy in California, telephoned Mr. John of John Frederics in New York to ask if he knew of an apartment. John offered to look around. Finally he called Vincente back. Martin Block, the radio star and producer of
Make Believe Ballroom
would lease his triplex penthouse, ringed with terraces and furnished with a French decor.

John went on, in effect: “You enter an L-shaped corridor, Vincente. On that floor is a guest room and bath and a master bedroom and bath and dressing room. Also, at the end of the corridor there's a dining room, kitchen, pantry and servants' quarters … A curving stairway leads to the second floor and the living room, about fifty feet by twenty-two … The third floor is smaller, has a playroom and bar, including a slot machine …”

“We'll take it!” Vincente decided promptly.

When at the last moment Mrs. Garland was unable to come east for the wedding, Judy decided to be married in her mother's house. This also meant that Louis B. Mayer could give Judy away. Often Mr. Mayer must have wished, together with all those who love Judy, that somehow she might find the happiness and fulfillment personally she knows professionally, even though this is not too often given the true artist. For there's an excellent chance that Vincente, another true artist, as her husband may bring the same bright magic into her life that he has, as her director, given her pictures.

Certainly the few close friends who saw them married, heard their quiet steady voices making their vows, saw the deep tenderness of their marriage kiss, believed it was a happy day.

Judy wore a pale blue-gray jersey dress that had a little bustle and that was embroidered with pink pearls. A La Boheme bonnet sat far back on her reddish gold hair. She carried pink peonies almost as big as herself. There was a bride's cake, three tiers high, which Judy and Vincente cut with an old silver knife tied with gardenias and white ribbon. In the garden they posed for color pictures for
Photoplay.
Between time everyone must admire the black-and-gold wedding band, set with tiny pearls, which
complemented the pearl engagement ring, set in gold and black enamel, which also was Vincente's design. Then they were off for New York.

“When we arrived the apartment was waiting,” Judy said. “Vincente had thought to have it filled with flowers. And right away we did as we had planned—just moved in and pretended to be New Yorkers …”

A cook and a maid were waiting too. And when Judy and Vincente had bathed and changed, breakfast was served on the upper terrace, so very high that only a few of Manhattan's tallest spires stood between them and the blue dome of the sky.

“It's all been wonderful,” Judy says. “Especially this chance to meet Vincente's friends who love him … And, of course, I keep hoping, in time, they'll be my friends too …”

“Whenever I came to New York before,” Judy says, “I lived in a hotel—for two weeks perhaps—and rushed, rushed, rushed. I had to cram about one hundred and sixty three things into that time—shows, mostly. Now we go to the theater two or three times a week and take our time about it.”