Judy Garland on Judy Garland (43 page)

Yul Brynner's young son Rocky, just over from Europe and traveling alone, dropped in to pay his respects to Judy. Judy said, “Liza's in Hyannis Port. What are you doing in Newport?” Rocky: “Seeing you. You murdered them. It's unfair to do that to an audience.” Judy said that she had learned backstage behavior from Laurette Taylor. “If people didn't come back to see me, I'd feel very bad because I'd think they didn't like the show.”

Anxious to see her children after a three-day separation, Judy was driven alone late that night in the chauffeured Rolls to the Hyannis Port house she had rented for the rest of the summer. She also wanted to spend some time with her friends in the Kennedy clan across the street. There was not a concert in sight until Forest Hills again, nearly four weeks later.

In Hyannis Port, Judy fell into the life of a summer resident, emulating the wealthy Boston women who had fewer responsibilities, hiring a couple to cook and take care of the house, visiting the Kennedys and Shrivers, renting a convertible which she drove into Hyannis on shopping trips, spending long hours with her children, Lorna and Joe, avoiding the sun and the beach assiduously, and occasionally visiting daughter Liza, who was working a 14-hour day, seven days a week, as an apprentice at the Cape Cod Melody Tent.

Judy wanted to see [Frederico] Fellini's celebrated
La Dolce Vita
to round out the informal Garland film festival that had begun in New York, and we found it playing in a drafty bubble-shaped steel theater, with canvas chairs, outside Hyannis. But the picture was so good that Judy would have looked at it upside down. At dinner afterward, she saw a parallel in the unpretentious quality of the better foreign films and what she had learned about performing: “Isn't it marvelous to see something that is truly moving? Ten years ago I went to the Palace in New York and then to the Met with eight or 10 chorus boys, choreography and another act. My show was really
produced.
When I got to London finally, I asked about doing a concert. I knew I could. I felt too good. [This despite the fact that she was recovering from a severe bout of hepatitis.] If I had believed any of the doctors I've met, I'd be a hopeless invalid.

“I said I'm just going to go out and do nothing but
sing,
by myself. Just get a good band and I'll sing for an hour, then 10 minutes intermission, then another hour. Elaboration on a good theme isn't necessary. Perhaps it distracts an audience to see all of the trappings, like chorus boys. Even though I'm working twice as hard as I did at the Palace, I get much more satisfaction, an
exultant
satisfaction out of this. It was fun to go out and sing and celebrate afterward at Forest Hills.

“Funnily enough, the first 10 minutes at Newport threw me. The lack of a spotlight is funny to a person trying to create an emotional thing. Then I got into their spirit…. I really do live for talent. A movie like the one tonight, a moment that takes you out of yourself into … a how do you say it? … something you have no control over …

“I wish that the arts were appreciated, but that's stupid, they're damn well appreciated. Anybody with a deep talent will keep on. I don't think there have been many undiscovered geniuses. I think Fellini has it—along with pure genius, a driving desire to be heard. No great artist is content to sit back and say, ‘Nobody understands me.' For me, George Gershwin was a genius. I had an awful fight with Ernst Lubitsch, who said, ‘They are coming along but there is just no American music.' What did Gershwin write? He simply discovered a certain style that typified American music.”

Judy called the next day: “What are you doing tonight? Would you like to see a movie at the Kennedys'?” I drove to Judy's house and was
stopped at the street corner by a uniformed policeman and two Secret Service men. I told them I was going to Miss Garland's, gave my name and was waved on. I picked up Judy, said good night to Lorna and Joe, put the familiar bottle of Blue Nun
Liebfraumilch
in my outside coat pocket.

We went down the street to the same Secret Service men who had accosted me earlier. They expected Judy and walked with us to a driveway that served three or four white, two-story frame houses, most of them on the beach facing the Atlantic. The scene was pure Norman Rockwell: children, bicycles, cars, dogs, grass relieved by an occasional hedge, and lighted dining rooms and kitchen windows where all manner of Kennedys and their staffs were having dinner. We walked toward the farthest house, passing one last lighted room, where the seated figures of the president, the first lady, the attorney general and his wife could be seen, dimly, at dinner.

We entered the last house, which I was told belonged to Joseph Kennedy Sr., and met R. Sargent Shriver, head of the Peace Corps, and his wife, Judy's friend, Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

We looked at the rather quiet Kennedy collection of old English furniture, talked about seeing
La Dolce Vita
the night before, and descended into the basement. The projection room seated about 30 people, and by the time the picture started it was filled with an informal, happy and talkative group of similar-looking Kennedys, their dissimilar mates, and children and some unidentified men. The president and Bobby Kennedy and their wives did not appear.

The picture began, and before long it was apparent that Judy had gotten herself into a situation where she couldn't walk out. It was the late Gary Cooper's last film
[The Naked Edge]
and also starred Deborah Kerr; but neither of them could save it. Judy tried very hard not to say anything, and did not, but the fingers of both hands opened and closed rapidly and nervously for the awful duration of the film.

Upstairs at last, we couldn't talk about it. Ted Kennedy and Shriver couldn't either, and shortly afterward I took Judy home. Judy said she liked the Kennedys' informality and she thought they were a wonderful example of how to raise a family in wealth and still give them great ambitions.

The next meeting I had with Judy was back in New York City at Voisin, a fashionable restaurant Judy chose because of its chocolate
soufflé.
We walked in bravely, carrying the Blue Nun, to find Richard Rodgers and his wife, old friends of Judy's, at the next table. He stood up and kissed Judy, telling her the truth, that she looked marvelous, but, he said, running his hand over his head, he was losing his hair. Judy said, “With your talent, you don't need hair.”

We settled down next to them and discussed world affairs for a while. “If men could only sit down and say, ‘Let's talk,
correctly.'
Men have honor without understanding,” said Judy. “Men destroy and women preserve.”

For the rest of the evening Judy answered questions and went a long way toward explaining the current Garland boom.

“What are you saying when you sing?”

Judy: “Just tremendous love. ‘Come along with me and let's enjoy this.' I have a tremendous desire to please. I have a quite sincere love for people who pay for tickets, drive to theaters, park cars and sit in uncomfortable seats. I do wish people would feel everything I sing, hear the words and be affected by them. You must remember that over the years, multitudes of people have shown me a great deal of love and loyalty, a very, very deep love. The papers have often given me bad publicity. Some writers said I was through but, by God, the audiences came and bolstered me. What they were saying was, ‘We don't give a damn what the papers say, we love you.' That's why I could never cheat on a performance, or coast through. My emotions are involved.”

“Do you mind the invasions of privacy in show business?”

Judy: “The only thing is that I don't like to be watched when I shop or walk. It never enters my mind that they're saying, ‘There goes Judy Garland.' I think they're saying, ‘My God, isn't she awful?'

“Which song do you like best of all?” Judy: “‘Through the Years,' by Vincent Youmans.”

“If you had it all to do over again, would you have gone to work at the age of 12? If Liza wanted to go into show business, would you allow her to?”

Judy: “What do you mean, 12? I was two. The only reason I'm letting Liza do this now is because she has been longing to do summer stock. When summer's over, she'll go back to school. I think it robs a youngster
of too many things. It's too competitive. I don't think children should be thrown into that at all. They should have proms and football games and all of the fun of growing up. I was on stage from the age of two. I don't regret it, I learned a lot, and I've been successful. But I do think I missed a lot. It's a very lonesome life.

“I've come through it just fine. I have three lovely children, but there were moments I wouldn't want any children to have. I have no ambitions for my children except for them to be happy and well adjusted. I don't want to push.”

“You said something weeks ago about the Mack Sennett situations that keep happening in your life. How do you explain them?”

“I just think people are terribly funny. I don't mean that in a deprecatory way. I'm hilarious. I'm really a joke to myself. And I can't take people too seriously, either. I can love them, but the overall thing is kind of funny. It really is.”

On this philosophical note, which may well be the essence of Judy Garland, I ended the movie-going, the socializing, the interviews and thanked Judy for her candid cooperation. But Judy had only partially answered the most important question of all: What does she do to an audience?

The two ranking authorities on the question were her discoverer, Roger Edens, and her friend and former musical coach, Kay Thompson. Edens began: “It's right down deep inside. Good, solid, raw talent creates excitement. That was the charm of the Carnegie Hall concert. I had never seen her on [that] stage before. I still don't believe anything like this could happen. She practically burnt the house down. She said, ‘Let's do it,' as though she had never done it before. It's there and when she touches it, it emerges. It's alchemy.”

Kay Thompson harmonized: “She's saying ‘Here I am and there you are, so shall we begin?' It's as if she belongs and the audience belongs. There is an instant point of contact, and at that instant something opens and takes place, both parties giving everything. There is some connotation or fragrance of rain or shine. There is an intimacy, a sharing of emotions for two hours. I don't think she ever realized what she could do until now.”

The Garland fever continues. At the Hollywood Bowl on September 16 she set an all-time attendance and dollar record. The Bowl sold its 18,000 capacity plus an additional 600 standees, for a gross of $75,400. But that was not all. “At 8:25
PM,
five minutes before the show started,” Freddie Fields relates, “it started to rain. Those people out there are not accustomed to rain. We rushed Judy on stage before anyone could leave and she held them there in the rain for the entire show. Not
one
of them moved. They put up umbrellas and pulled coats over their heads but not
one
of them moved. They even made her sing “San Francisco” again, after “Chicago!” We built a ramp out over that 40-foot pool in front of the stage and she sang out there in the rain.”

Suddenly, every producer and every entrepreneur in the United States, and a scattering of foreign countries, wanted Garland in one medium or another. Judy was booked for so many different things so far in advance that her chances of becoming a Scarsdale Guinevere in the new home she has just rented outside New York were rather slim.

The schedule for the months after the Bowl appearance included 10 concerts, at Denver, Boston, Montreal, Newark, Pittsburgh, Miami, Philadelphia, White Plains, Rochester, and San Francisco. Wedged in among these were a benefit in Los Angeles and the most off-beat use of the Garland talent yet devised, a sound track for a full-length UPA cartoon,
Gay Purr-ee,
for which Judy would sing six brand-new Harold Arlen-Yip Harburg songs, as Mewsette, a cat who leaves her farm in the French provinces to discover the joys and sorrows of Paris.

On December 11, Judy will fly to the Berlin premiere of Stanley Kramer's
Judgment at Nuremberg,
if both Judy and Berlin are still holding up. Immediately after the Berlin ceremonies, Judy will return to Hollywood to start rehearsals for the Garland television special with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin as guests. It will be taped January 1–8 and be shown Sunday evening, March 11, on CBS at 9
PM
EST.
*

After more concerts, Judy will costar with Burt Lancaster in January in a Stanley Kramer production,
A Child Is Waiting.
Then she will go to London in March to film
The Lonely Stage,
based on the original television
play by Robert Dozier, to be produced by Stuart Millar and Lawrence Turman for United Artists. At the moment, Judy has three additional films under consideration, all of them starring roles, one for the Mirisch Brothers, one for Ross Hunter and, bringing her full circle, an M-G-M musical.

Show business for all its sentimentality is frequently cynical, a condition that derives from broken or unfulfilled promises over the years. When anything or anyone is successful, the first question is always whether the success will last. This is especially true of Judy Garland. Somewhere, there's a someone who does not like Judy Garland; but that individual at the moment seems to be in hiding.

In the absence of any overt detractors or enemies, Judy must rely on her friends for misgivings about her continued career. Her friends would like to believe that Judy will go on forever, but they are also professionals who know the terrible demands of what she has committed herself to do, and there are a few intelligent reservations about what is humanly possible.

She is a highly emotional woman, which, happily, allows her to give everything she has to an audience. It also means that she is totally vulnerable each time she walks on a stage. These two factors, and the physical demands of the concert tours, may eventually have their effect.