Judy Garland on Judy Garland (46 page)

JG:
I don't know. I was asked that a minute ago. It's a matter, I think, of working very hard and very diligently and being at your best whenever you do work, you know. And in order to do that, you have to enjoy your work. You have to enjoy what you're doing and believe what you're doing. And then there's always an element of luck and timing, and I seem to have gotten caught up in a lovely whirlwind that is quite invigorating.

MW:
Well, I would say, every once in a while in show business this kind of thing happens. It's not really a comeback, but it's an exciting thing that
happens to a performer that has happened to you, as I say, over the past year [or] year and a half, and it is a tremendous amount of satisfaction to you, I suppose.

JG:
Oh, well, it's
most
satisfactory. It's the best thing that's ever happened to me, you know, because things went quite slowly for a long time. And I thought that that was all right. It was all right. I'd worked for so many years anyway. But then all of a sudden when this just started to roll, and all the concerts were successful in Europe, and I lived in London and I got back to America and there was so much work to be done. Well, it's a marvelous thing to sit and say “How am I going to get time to do this, that, and the other?” instead of having too much time on your hands.

MW:
What do you
work for,
Judy?

JG:
I work for, I suppose, what we all work for. We work for a monetary value, of course. Then, beyond that, I work for … you see, I worked for so many years that it would be rather foolish to say I never want to work again, you know, at this age. Neither could I afford to financially and emotionally. I'm not prepared for that right now. I work for the satisfaction of knowing that I've worked hard all my life and that at least I'm making people happy sometimes during the day or night.

MW:
Do you feel very successful? Do you feel that you are a successful person, a successful performer, and a successful human being?

JG:
Yes, I do. I do, I have to say. I don't mean to sound egotistical when I say that, but I'd be rather neurotic if I didn't feel that. It's been proven to me, and I have my children, who are very attractive and happy and warm. So I, obviously, am doing very well as a person and my work is going well.

MW:
Bless you.

JG:
Thank you, Mike.

MW:
And you have never seen the
real
Judy Garland until you have seen her on a charter plane
[Judy laughs]
at 5:00 in the morning in green tights and a blue silk nightgown. And Kay Thompson's dog along with her.

J
G:
[Laughs.]
Oh, Mike!

MW:
Thank you, Judy.

JG:
Thank you!
[Laughs.]

For this prominent cover story in
Look
magazine, a popular biweekly, Judy sat down with the publication's senior editor, Jack Hamilton. Hamilton later co-authored the popular book
They Had Faces Then: Annabella to Zorina, the Superstars, Stars and Starlets of the 1930s.

Judy Garland concluded her now-legendary one-woman-show tour of 42 cities last December in Washington, DC. When the sound of unrestrained
bravas
had died away, she told the people waiting for her in her dressing room, “This is the first time I've ever felt a sense of accomplishment from a job really well done. I'm free now. For a few days, even my voice is my own. I feel like sitting in a draft in a wet bathing suit!”

But Judy's backbreaking work schedule (“I'm so strong now that I can make my muscular husband say ‘Uncle' when we wrestle”) went rolling on. After a few days' rest, she flew to Berlin for the world premiere of
Judgment at Nuremberg,
her first film in seven years. On her return, she began taping a TV spectacular,
The Judy Garland Show,
with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. When that was done, she went before the cameras again, as Burt Lancaster's costar in
A Child Is Waiting.
She plans to go to Spain with her husband, Sid Luft, for a month's vacation and then to England for another movie,
The Lonely Stage,
a “drama with music.”

This is a time of triumphant vindication for Judy Garland, after what she calls “seven years of rotten luck.” She says, “Isn't this pretty good for
somebody Hollywood thought was too old, too fat, and too undependable to offer a job? For an ‘undependable,' I certainly made a lot of pictures. The only time I was undependable was when I was ill and couldn't work. Everybody is undependable when they're ill.”

Today, she is a wryly humorous, still-complicated woman who has, after much bludgeoning by “rotten luck,” worked out a new appraisal of herself as a human being. What happened this past year to bring her and her career back to life? Judy answered our questions without hesitation and with fresh candor:

“Now is the first time in my life I've felt like a mature woman, and I'm damned near 40 years old. Some people never reach maturity, and I'm lucky I found it at 40, instead of at 70. I was raised in a film studio and had no normal school or family life. I didn't see anything of life beyond the studio, and I think that's the reason I was so slow in growing up. Maybe it was just
me
—I still don't know.

“All my life I refused to accept the love that people wanted to give me. But after the satisfaction of my work this past year, I at last can understand and evaluate my abilities. I know I'm a kind person. I know I'm a good mother. I know I'm a good actress and singer. I realize now that people like me. I'm always afraid of sounding conceited, and this is the first time I've ever talked this way. But it's better than the years and years when I thought of myself in the most negative and destructive way.

“It was my long bout with illness and near death, and the thoughts that went with them, that forced me to take stock. I knew I couldn't go on the disastrous way I was headed when I was at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1959—giving a terrible concert. I behaved like an automaton. Everybody was saying, ‘Well, she's always been
strange,
anyway.' I collapsed and gave in to being ill.

“What I had had all this time was hepatitis, and nobody had diagnosed it. A young doctor, a liver specialist, finally told me that this was my illness. He said, ‘I think you're going to make it, with luck. But you'll have to adjust yourself to the fact that you'll be a semi-invalid for the rest of your life.'

“My first reaction to this was, ‘You couldn't have told me anything better. I've worked too hard all my life anyway.' But even when he was
talking, I knew, subconsciously, he was wrong. I knew I would be able to sing again someday. I just needed a long rest to get away from the pressure of set engagements. Pressure alone can bring about fears and breakdowns.

“I finally got well for good and felt strong enough to work. The real reason I got well was for my children. I couldn't be a semi-invalid, or die. I had to live to protect and to love them. My first breakthrough, as a worker, was my new format of concerts, which my husband and I conceived in Europe, and, later, Freddie Fields managed in America. Then Stanley Kramer asked me to play a part in
Judgment at Nuremberg.
He never looked at me with a doubtful look and never asked questions about me. He treated me as a working actress. This was the final vote of confidence I needed.

“I no longer dwell on the bad years. I feel no vengeance against anybody. If you have the intelligence, you try to go on to better things. I don't even ‘hate' the people in Hollywood who wouldn't give me a job by accusing me of being ‘late,' among other things. I was always at work on time for years.

“My children are the most special thing in my life. They are very portable. I've uprooted them, dragged them from one country to another, because I'll never leave them in the care of servants. They are happy only as long as their mother and daddy are with them. You try to keep them as long as you can and prepare for the day when they'll leave. You have to be ready not to be an idiot about it when they do leave, because they will. They must have a life of their own.

“But, right now, we're just a family of baggy-pants comedians. We have lots of fun, lots of love. Even at our lowest moments, we are really very funny together. The kids are even amused by Momma's bad Irish temper. They think it's funny when she explodes and apologizes the next minute. At least, I don't sulk and get ulcers.

“Liza is 16. I've always known she was a marvelous dancer, but she dazzled Sid and me with her performance as Anne Frank at school. She was very professional about rehearsals, took direction only from her director and wouldn't let Momma butt in with free advice.

“Lorna is nine. She looks like a rose, and she's destined to be an actress. She has an actress's mind, with its imagination, fiendishness and curiosity.
Joe is six, and he's going to be interested—like his father—in machines. He's also interested in music, although he goes to sleep halfway through my concerts. He may go to MIT and then decide to be a symphony conductor after all. He knows every note of the orchestration of
West Side Story.

“My children never play my records at home. They aren't too interested in my career. Little Lorna once, quite sharply, told a patronizing English newspaperman, who had asked her if Judy Garland sang lullabies to the children at bedtime, “No, she doesn't, and we don't call her Judy Garland, just Momma.”

Judy's role in the movie she is making now,
A Child is Waiting,
has a particular meaning for her. “It's a story of the problems of retarded children. I wanted to role so badly because I've done work with troubled children and I know a bit more about them than most people. A disturbed child once helped me to get well.

“In 1949, I had a nervous breakdown and went to the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. Next to the hospital was another for children. I visited these children one day, all alone. Later, I started daily visits. There was one particular little girl, a disturbed child, who aroused my curiosity. She was six years old—my son Joe's age now—and she hadn't talked for many months. She had come from a family that had obviously mistreated her. She was punishing them and the world by refusing to speak.

“I stopped by every day to talk to her especially. For some reason, I was smart enough to know I shouldn't ask her any questions. I just
told
her things. I told her about Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz,
about Mickey Rooney and Clark Gable and about my family's old vaudeville act. Once in a while, she'd smile, but she would never say a word to me.

“After eleven weeks, I was well enough to go back to Hollywood, and my manager came to get me. I went to the children to say goodbye. They gave me flowers. My own little special friend was waiting for me, with flowers she had crumpled and torn in her nervousness. I sat down with her and told her I had to go home because I was well now, and I told her how much I would miss her. She began to cry. Then, for the first time in months, she spoke: ‘Don't go, don't go away!' She began to scream, and people ran over to us, astonished. My manager came and said, ‘We'll
be late for the train.' I told him we'd have to take a later train, because I wanted to have a long conversation with my friend. Then she talked and talked and talked to me. She told me some of the things that were troubling her. I made her promise to tell these things to the doctors and nurses after I had gone, and told her they would do everything to help her.

“This was one of the greatest triumphs of my life. She had helped to make me well, and I had helped her.”