Judy Garland on Judy Garland (11 page)

Sprinkled through Judy's conversation are loads of names—big names and small names, friends and idols. People are her hobby.

“There's Alfred Vanderbilt. He's so nice. And his wife's baby is one of the cutest I've ever seen. And I adore Lana Turner. She's so outspoken. We make the funniest couple, Lana and I—she's so glamorous and I'm so unglamorous!”

Suddenly, in her conversation, Judy stopped cold. Her eyes were shining. They were staring over my shoulder. “Look!” she squealed. “It's Rhett Butler!”

I turned and saw Clark Gable, sleek in a dark gray afternoon suit, coming into the commissary. He waved to Judy. She waved back enthusiastically.

“Clark Gable is grand, isn't he?” she said to me. “I saw him in
Gone with the Wind
and I'll never forget his performance. He's another friend of mine. I mean, not as close as magazine stories make out, but a friend
anyway. I'll never forget that song I sang to him on his birthday. I gave it all I had, because I admire him so. The next morning, a package arrived for me. In it was the most gorgeous charm bracelet in the world, with a miniature gold book attached. The book snapped open, and inside was Clark Gable's picture and the inscription. ‘To Judy, my best girl, from her most ardent fan, Clark Gable.' What a thrill! And I love his wife. Carole Lombard is so intelligent and frank. Aren't they the grandest couple?”

The lunch was almost over. Judy's salad was reduced to ruins. She licked her lips and murmured, “Dessert time.” She wanted a chocolate sundae. After the sundae materialized, and the blue-aproned waitress, humming a tune, left our table, Judy took up the humming and started in on her favorite conversational topic, music.

“My favorite popular song, the prettiest and most beautiful in the world, is ‘Over the Rainbow,'” she said. “I think it's a relief from some of the other numbers you hear. Aren't the tunes orchestras play on the air awful? They're all so loud and sound exactly alike.

“When it comes to good orchestras, though, I'll settle for Duke Ellington. He's my choice, by a mile. I also enjoy Glenn Miller. But I'll let you in on something private. My brother-in-law, Bob Sherwood—he's married to my sister Virginia—now has a band of his own. He plays the guitar. It's a string band. Strings that swing. He'll be great yet, watch and see.

“My personal preferences go to the classics. I love to listen to classical music, but I have no desire to sing it. I'm satisfied with the popular stuff I do now. It gives me a kick. When I'm on the listening end, I prefer Ravel, Debussy and Tchaikovsky. I suppose Wagner was the greatest, but he's too heavy for me.”

In the past year, she composed three songs of her own. At first she was hesitant about speaking of them. Then, finally, she did. “[Jerome] Robbins, the publisher, wanted to bring out the three songs I composed, but I wouldn't let him. I don't know, I think they're just not good enough, though my mother thinks they are wonderful. My best song is called “I'm Not Supposed to Know.” The idea of the song is that, while I go to school and learn everything, I'm not supposed to know about love. It's a cute idea, I think. I do wish I had more time for composing.”

On the subject of her own warbling, Judy made a confession. “Yes, I'll confess, I never took a singing lesson in my entire life. I bet some of my critics think I should have! But, anyway, two years ago Nelson Eddy's voice teacher took me aside and said, ‘Don't ever get it into your head to take singing lessons, Judy. You're an intuitive singer. You have good memory and a good ear. Lessons will only mix you up.' I followed his advice. I can't read a single note of music! Can you imagine that? I just have a band play a tune over a couple of times and I get it that way.”

Then, excitedly, Judy told me about her new home and about the special and spacious room she has for herself. With broad gestures, she described the white rug on the floor, the fireplace and the bed that resembled a chaise lounge.

She told me that she sleeps in a silk nightgown, that she must have eight hours of sleep or she's a wreck and that she often gathers her friends in her room and holds a back-scratching party. Everyone sits in a circle and scratches everyone else's back. “If you haven't had your back scratched, you haven't lived!” Judy said. “It's entirely inane, but so comfortable! Of course, everyone thinks we're crazy. We are. At dinner, our house is a madhouse.”

Discussing home life led, of course, to a discussion of the root of all evil. I asked Judy if she received an allowance.

“About a year and a half ago I was put on an allowance of $5 a week. But at the end of the first week I had $4.78 left. I never spent money. I don't know why. But now I've discovered clothes—and bracelets. I have a passion for bracelets and shoes. And stockings—why, I wear out two pairs of stockings a day. Isn't that terrible?”

Like most humans, Judy is filled with a thousand different and sometimes contradicting likes and dislikes. She hates mayonnaise. She loves tea and hot chocolate. She is crazy about perfumes. She dislikes jitterbugging, despite publicity photos to the contrary. She spends hours having her red hair fixed in different styles. She doesn't ever want to be a typical glamour girl. She believes in having an outside income “in case of hard times” and owns a flower shop on Wilshire Boulevard. She gets a kick out of riding a bike, but prefers her car.
Love Finds Andy Hardy
is still one of her favorite pictures. She hopes to wear her grandmother's wedding gown at her own wedding.

And as for her Number One amusement, “I'll tell you, if you promise not to laugh. Movies!” Judy grinned. “Busman's holiday, I suppose, but when I have time, I would rather go to the movies than do anything else. I never get tired of them. And Bette Davis is my very favorite. I saw her in
Dark Victory
five times—and I cried myself sick!”

She glanced up at the wall clock and gasped. “Oh, dear, I'm twenty minutes late for school. I'll get killed for this!”

She pulled on her jacket and explained, “I have a private instructor in my dressing room. It's loads of fun. I graduated from high school courses last year, but the state law says you have to attend school until you're eighteen, so I'm taking a postgrad course of my favorite subjects, music appreciation, art appreciation and French. I'm learning oil painting, too. I've been at it five days. And I'm learning the history of art. When I visited the [Metropolitan] Museum in New York, I could tell who painted what without even looking at the names underneath. School really isn't bad this term. But last year! Ouch! I had geometry! And that was terrible!”

In a moment she had a mirror in front of her face, for a hurried checkup. If her fans, that moment, could have peeked over her shoulder, they would have seen an even more attractive Judy Garland. They would have noticed her light makeup and carefully rouged lips, her glistening eyes, tilted nose and determined chin.

As she gathered her belongings, her fans would have marveled at five feet two
*
of animation. When she rose, they would have guessed her to be 110 pounds in weight and they would have been right. They would have thought her off-screen figure amazingly slender, and one of the fans—a male, no doubt—would have emitted a whistle at her beautiful legs.

She left me with a wink and a lilting, “Be seeing you soon.”

I wish I could pay her a compliment. Not only for her talent, but for her genuine lovableness. I wish I were smart enough to think of something startling and different.

However, I have heard it said that when a fellow sees a girl and immediately thinks, “There she is, the kind of girl I would one day want to marry,” he is then paying her the greatest of human compliments.

I have heard those who know Judy pay that compliment to her. Judy need not blush. Those who know her realize she is everything a fellow could want. They realize she's not boy crazy, not Hollywood, not anything more than little Miss Gumm from Grand Rapids.

And you see, Judy, I wrote this for those who don't know you, just to let them in on it and to reassure them that—well, that in the robust language of sportdom—you're the real McCoy!

*
M-G-M's height for Judy was 5′2″, but she was actually 4′;11″.

The delayed publication of submissions by Hollywood writers was commonplace in the 1930s and 1940s, as evidenced by this interview. Clearly conducted when Judy was sixteen, this piece was not published until just before her eighteenth birthday.

Judy Garland, 16, is no longer a child and not yet a grown-up. And the teens aren't so terrible with Judy representing them. You'll like the way she speaks up

“I don't think the teens are so terrible,” said Judy Garland—as if she meant it. She even added a smile. It wasn't a pained smile. She didn't act as if she intended to be pleasant-even-if-it-hurt about being reminded that she wasn't grown up yet. Certainly she didn't give the impression that she was in a hurry to
look
grown up. In a commissary full of Pretty Young Things, some of them playing schoolgirls in a new picture, Judy was the only one who looked more like a schoolgirl than a movie actress. Her hair wasn't carefully coiffured; it was merely combed. Her eyelashes weren't long and artificial. Her lips weren't rouged. Her clothes weren't Fashion's latest gasp; she was wearing a jacket and skirt—both inconspicuously plain.

As it happened, the only reason why she was at the studio today was that, even between pictures, she had to go to school. You might think that a girl who had just been elected Feminine Star No. 3 in a nationwide
newspaper poll would be embarrassed about letting anyone know that, till next June, she still had to go to school. But Judy wasn't embarrassed. Not on that score.

“Not after what has been happening to me ever since
The Wizard of Oz,”
she said, darkly. “I've been accused of being twelve years old.

“You should see some of the disappointed looks I get, when people lay eyes on me in person. They expect someone in gingham, with braids, to come out singing ‘Over the Rainbow.' And out I come, instead. I think some of them are pretty angry with me, too, for not wearing braids, and not dressing like
Dorothy,
and not being eleven or twelve. They've written in about it.

“I don't get any sympathy from anybody. People I've trusted all my life tell me, with perfectly straight faces, that I ought to feel flattered. ‘It isn't every actress that people are willing to believe younger than she is.'”

She tossed up both hands in a you-can-see-what-I'm-up-against gesture.

“It's terrible to be halfway through the teens and not get credit for even being in them. But the teens themselves aren't terrible. Just inconvenient sometimes.

“Some people who know how old I am don't give me credit for having any sense—because I'm ‘only 16.' That attitude is the only thing that really bothers me. I'd like to break it down. But apparently there's no way except to grow up. And I don't know if I want to grow up. I'm having a wonderful time.”

Now, most adolescents don't enjoy being just that. They can't wait to be adults. They harbor the youthful delusion that adults lead more desirable lives. The movies encourage them in the delusion. The movies make adolescence something to laugh about or pity, and the grown-up state something romantic and poised and exciting. And Judy not only sees movies; she's in them.

Another thing: A girl six thousand miles from Hollywood can get ideas about trying to be more sophisticated, just from watching glamour girls on the screen. And here Judy is, right on the same lot with Hedy Lamarr, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford; she sees them in person; and she isn't inspired to try to acquire that adult allure even off the screen.

She actually likes being an in-betweener: No longer a child, not yet a grown-up.

“I've thought a lot about it,” she said earnestly. “I don't envy grownups. They take life sort of for granted. They don't get excited about it. Practically everything they do, they've done before. It's all old stuff. And having cares and worries cramps their fun.

“That's why I don't want to get ahead of myself; I don't want to grow up in a hurry. I want this to last a while. I mean—this being able to look forward constantly to something new, being able to get excited about things. I'm doing so many things for the first time. And there's no time like the first time.

“If I were 25 or so, and could go to the Victor Hugo [café in Hollywood] every night in the week, how much would it mean to me? But I get to go dinner-dancing about once a month—with my mother's permission—and it's an event. When I walk in the door, I may look casual about being there. But I'm really palpitatin' inside.”