Judy Garland on Judy Garland (20 page)

Judy was due on the set of
Babes on Broadway
in a matter of hours when, at 2:00
AM
, she wired Arthur Freed via Western Union: “Dear Mr. Freed, I am so very happy. Dave and I were married this AM. Please give me a little time and I will be back and finish the picture with one take on each scene. Love, Judy.”

Although filming came to a halt for a day (production notes cite “layoff due to Judy Garland”), Metro would not allow Judy any time whatsoever for a honeymoon. Executives demanded she return to the set immediately. “Even if we don't get a honeymoon right now,” the new Mrs. David Rose told reporters, “we're the happiest couple in the world.”

Judy Garland, now a top-flight star and happily married young woman, may not have been either, she confesses to Gladys Hall, had she continued making silly, teen-age blunders

I'll pretend I have a grab bag in my hands. I'll fish around in it and bring up, one by one, the mistakes I once made, and try not to make any more. Some of them are the very usual mistakes we all make when we are, er, VERY young. Some of them are kind of pathetic, little boners. One of
them was a mistake so serious that it might have meant the end of my career. Another, a mistake so grave that it might have ruined my personal happiness. Others are as funny as the things we read in the comics. Like my first formal dinner party. Hold on, I'll take that one out first!

It was at Jackie Cooper's house, the first formal dinner to which I was invited. There were six of us there. We were all about fourteen. From the elegant conversation going on around the festive board, you would have given us a neat forty. Suddenly I found myself in a predicament. At home, we always had meals served, country style. That is, everything right on the table and the longest arm got the extra ear of corn. So I had never been served, in formal style, from a platter. Being faced with a custom new to me, plus the fact that I am left-handed, really undid me. And as I couldn't make the transfer from the platter to my plate without going into contortions, I only tried once. I managed to make a four-point landing with one tiny drumstick and that is ALL I ate. I tried to look as spiritual as possible, and must have succeeded. For after dinner Jackie said to me, ‘You certainly eat like a bird.” “Yes,” I said, with a wan smile, “I never eat very much.”

When I got home, I ate the icebox, plus contents.

Now, I think, I never make the mistake of pretending. About anything, great or small, Now, if I were not sure of how to behave about something, I'd come out with it. “What gives here?” I'd say. Or I would tell a maid, “I'm left-handed. Will you please serve me from the other side?” The mistake of putting on airs causes so much real suffering not only to others, but to one's own self.

One of the mistakes I made at the beginning of my picture work
(I hate the word “career,” sounds so pompous),
the serious one I mentioned, was that of wanting to be a star right away. I hadn't the patience of a midge. I wanted success so badly that, after a few months of marking time, as I thought, I asked Mr. Mayer to let me go. I didn't want to stay, I said, if I couldn't be Big right away. Mr. Mayer just looked at me. Then, “I didn't think you had a glass chin, Judy,” he said.

I was ashamed, and properly so. I think it was what happened to Deanna Durbin that upset me. I know it was. For when she left M-G-M, she became a star, immediately. She shot right up. And she has stayed up. But it is a mistake to think we can all take the same path to success.

I know, now, that it is a mistake, for most of us, to get success too quickly. I
know
it is better to go slowly and surely, I know it is good for us to get a few knocks on the chin. Which can't be glass, if we are to survive. Now instead of envying the overnight successes, I think of stars like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, who have come up slowly, the hard way, and are still up. They are the ones, not to envy exactly, but to admire and to copy.

I also made the mistake, when 1 was about sixteen, of being antagonistic because everyone treated me like a child. It used to make me very angry. I tried to brush it off with all sorts of ridiculous gestures. Like the time I bought my first fur coat, without my mother to guide me. A ruby fox, it was. Not only did I get a ruby fox coat, but a hat
and
a muff, as well.
And
swept into the studio commissary,
rolling
in fur, and on a very hot day, too. Underneath, I had on a gingham dress. The titters burned me to a crisp. Short, fat people should never wear anything but flat furs. And I was both, short and fat. Youngsters should not wear fur at all, let alone ruby fox. Well, now that I'm married, they still treat me as a little girl. But now I like it. Now it's nice. For when people treat you as a child, they are gentle with you.

Along about the same age, sixteenish, I wanted to outgrow working with Mickey. I thought I could grow faster on my own. Also, I wanted to stop making musicals and go dramatic. I was too young, then, to realize that people like Youth on the screen. I know it now. Especially now, when everything is so terrible, it's kind of fun to see kids on the screen. They're noisy and exciting. They make you kind of forget, for a few minutes, what adults have done to the world—and to the kids.

Anyway, I have no yearning to do Great Dramatic Things now. Just singing gay things are okay by me.

A mistake of which I am very much ashamed comes up now. I am going to tell about it because it may serve to make other youngsters realize more keenly what mothers are, what swell people, what pals—if we give them half a chance.

When I wanted to get married, I thought that my mother would object. I had a regular complex about it. I was positive that she would put her foot down and that would be that, I couldn't get married. I thought everyone would oppose me but, of course, what your mother thinks matters most.
I didn't even dare tell her I was in love. When, at last, on a train coming back from New York, I mustered up courage and blurted out, “I'm in love!” she said, continuing her game of solitaire without missing a card, “I know. Why didn't you tell me sooner?” Then she added, pleasantly, “When do you want to announce your engagement?” “On my birthday,” I bleated. “All right, who'll we have?” she said. “Let's make a list. And I think a garden party would be nice.”

Even after that, when we made up our minds, while having dinner at Romanoff's one night, that we wanted to be married, then and there, that night, I was afraid to tell her. I wouldn't have run away without mother. Of course I wouldn't have done that. So, scared to death, we went home to break the news. Mother took one look at me and, before I had time to open my mouth, said, “Oh, my gosh, all right—let's go. I only wish you could have thought of this yesterday. I've just come back from Las Vegas. And it's a long drive.”

I never again made the mistake of keeping anything from my mother, and never will. Not that I could, even if I wanted to. I learned
that.

One mistake I never have made, by the way, is that of underestimating the good sense and intelligence of the fans. When I was warned that the fans would resent my marriage, that it might hurt me on the screen, I didn't believe it. And I was right. I didn't have one single letter that wasn't congratulatory and sweet and swell. After all, we're all
human.

Of course, at fifteen, I made the common mistake of wanting to be sooo beautiful and exotic. I cried myself to sleep after I first saw myself on the screen, in
Pigskin Parade.
I thought so much depended on being beautiful. I used to sit for hours trying to make my nose go down and stay down. Every time I pressed it down, it flew up, higher than ever. I'd soak my face in buttermilk, nearly drowned in it, trying to get rid of my freckles. I dieted like crazy. Which
is
a mistake for girls in their early teens, as I found out. For when I was about seventeen or eighteen all my fat came off, just like that. It was baby fat and would have evaporated in the natural course of my growth, without all that fasting on my part.
*

Now I don't think that looks mean so much. I just try to look as well as I can and let it go at that. It's what's behind the face that puts you where you want to be, and keeps you there.

I used to overact an awful lot, of course. I thought that in order to get across on the screen you had to punch all the time. I gave out with all the overworked expressions. My voice was pitched too high and too loud, I screamed and gestured and mugged. Then I'd see the results and feel so discouraged I just didn't want to make pictures anymore. That's how I learned. For when I'd see rushes that were plain revolting I'd go into my next scene sort of limp and relaxed and so—what and lo, they'd turn out pretty good!

I know it's a mistake to try too hard about anything. A mistake to feel that what you are doing is THE most important thing in the world. I think very few of us make this mistake nowadays, though. For none of us can read the newspapers and really believe that what WE are doing belongs in the headlines.

I don't mean that we should be lax about what we do, or lazy. Heavens, no. But I do say that if we think, “Well, if it's good, it's good and if it's bad, it's bad—but there is always something else ahead,” it will
be
good.

The next little prize package to come out of the grab bag is—our house. For the house we bought, though beautiful, was certainly a mistake. It was MY mistake, too, not Dave's. He knew that it was too big for just two people. But I took one look at it and felt that I could really be the Lady of the House. Now we are trying to sell it or rent it and when we do, we'll rent a small place in Westwood.

I really have an aversion to anything false. I believe I can honestly say that I never did make the mistake called “Going Hollywood”—unless it was that great big
house.

As the Lady of which, by the way, I have made a couple of social errors that were dillies. For one horrible example: One night, not long ago, I got home from the studio, very tired. I removed my makeup. I slipped into a robe. Dave and I had dinner in the living room, in front of the fire. Just as we had finished, the doorbell rang and I heard voices in the hall. The voices of two very famous stars here in Hollywood.
Voices belonging to guests I had invited to dinner that night!
Colder than Juliet in her shroud,
I greeted them as they were ushered into the living room. I had
just
got home from the studio, I said, I hadn't had time to change, but would do so at once if they would please excuse me for ten minutes meanwhile, if they'd just make themselves at home … dinner would be a little late, so sorry … still chattering, I dove up the front stairs, then down the back stairs and told the cook she would HAVE to get a dinner on the table, yes, another dinner, any kind of a dinner, the best dinner she could whip together, but a
dinner.

Half an hour later, we were all at table. And Dave and I had to eat all over again. Thanks to a slight social error on my part: that of not keeping track of my engagements.

Lack of responsibility about small things, but not so small when they rise up and bite you, has always been a fault of mine; has been responsible for many of my mistakes. I never carry any money with me, for example. With the result that, when I have the need for some, I just write off checks and then forget about them. When I was first married, I thought I could take care of everything, my work, my household, all of it. Before I knew it, there were piles of bills on my desk, mounting to the ceiling, with the little inscription, “Please Remit,” on most of them. Mother came in one day, took one look at the tower of Please Remits and took over for me, as she had done before I married. And so the mistake of thinking I could do everything was corrected.

Most of my mistakes, by the way, seem to hover around dinner tables. They really are my undoing. I just thought of another horrible occasion, which occurred around the same time as Jackie Cooper's party. I was dining out in the home of people I didn't know very well. Just before dessert was served, I moved my finger bowl from its plate, but left the doily
on
the plate. When the chocolate soufflé was passed to me, I deposited my helping on the doily and proceeded to eat it, doily and all. When I realized what I was doing (and
that was with the first mouthful!)
there was no going back. I
couldn't
leave a half-eaten doily on the plate for servants to see. So I finished it. So help me.

Oh, and there were the little slips o' the tongue I made when I went on a tour of the camps. I was the first of the picture people to make such a tour and I didn't know what the insignia meant. So I called a colonel a
corporal, a brigadier-general, a lieutenant, and so on. At Camp [Wolters] in [Texas], I pulled several of these boners, which certainly got me the laughs when I least expected them. After I got home, the boys sent me a whole chart with all the insignia and what they mean. I have it hanging in our dining room at home. I'm living and learning, General!

I'm afraid I've always made the mistake of being rather a skimmer. When I could get by, on the surface, I never bothered much about building the foundation. I never took singing or piano lessons, you know. I've seldom had occasion to play the piano and I got by with the voice on the stage, on the air, in pictures. That was good enough. Now, Dave is teaching me piano. He has showed me my mistake in not being familiar with the fundamentals of what I do. It's like the difference between walking on quicksand or on solid earth.

At one time, when I was a mere sixteen or so, I think I wanted to be rich more than anything in the world. And for the obvious reasons. So I could buy lots of swish clothes and jewelry and streamlined cars and things. Well, I've never had time to buy lots of clothes. My engagement ring and wedding ring comprise my “collection” of jewels. I have a good car, but people don't stop and stare as I drive by. And it
really
doesn't matter anymore. Not that I'm the “spiritual” type now, any more than I was when I starved myself at Jackie's dinner party. But I do know, now, that being happily married, being
happy,
is what I want more than anything in the world. Having money makes it all nicer, yes, but it's not necessary. For if you can't be happy without money, you haven't got the Bluebird by the tail, anyway.