Judy Garland on Judy Garland (58 page)

JG:
No, I just, for no reason … if they'd had a wire going across or a rope or something, I could have made something of it. This way, I was just standing there and I simply sat down on the stage. I was trying to bow.

GRL:
You know, there are some people at home that'd say, “Oh, Judy Garland. Oh, boy, she'll do
anything
to get her picture in the paper.

JG:
A lot of people asked me if I did that on purpose, which flabbergasts me.

GRL:
Well, you weren't here to see it, but there were headlines like
this! [Gestures.]

JG:
Yes, I know. Well, I hadn't made any for a long time.

GRL:
If you had killed the royal family it couldn't have made a bigger splash!

JG:
Yes, well, the only thing, once you fall … and I do fall a lot. My whole family has fallen. I have two sisters who fall down all the time, you know. I fall down. My mother was
always
falling down the steps. And my father fell.
Fall! Crack! Boom!
And we never get hurt, we just sort of get up and go on.

GRL:
That's incredible! See, there you go talking about that ghost mother again! [All
laugh.]
*

JG:
Are you gonna come to her rescue?

GRL:
No!

JG:
She can take care of herself!

GRL:
So close to dinner time, too.

JG:
Where's the gravy?

[Commercial break.]

GRL:
Twenty seconds to say good-bye to Judy Garland.
[Audience applauds.]
She opens next week at the Circle Star Theatre and then the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. Thank you so much, darling. And thank you!

*
It is likely that Judy told a story of her mother during a break or a portion of the show cut from the broadcast.

This interview dates to Judy's run at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas, June 1965, just one month after her divorce from Sid Luft was final. Although the writer indentifies her to be “a young-looking 41,” Judy had just turned 43. Liza was also interviewed.

Comer Clarke has met the biggest stars in show business and been in on their most intimate conversations.

He traveled more than 10,000 miles to meet them in their homes, on studio sets and backstage.

They confessed all—their secrets, fears, ambitions—exclusively for
TITBITS.

Today Judy Garland tells how her daughter Liza saved her show business life… and Liza gives the secret behind her mother's flops.

It was two in the morning. The delirious, packed nightclub crowd sent wave after wave of cheers and applause surging across the floor. The beams of the spotlights spun again from their temporary resting place on the sweat-soaked band as the tiny, waif-like figure ran on the stage again and stood hands clasped and head bowed before the wildly excited crowd.

Then, in spontaneous unison, the audience rose to its feet in final, roaring tribute. Men threw roses from their buttonholes and women
wept. Judy Garland, her sad, wistful, [brown] eyes brimming, too, with tears, took a last bow and ran back to her dressing room.

It happened in California. But, after Judy's brilliant, flawless, one-and-a-half-hour performance, it would have happened anywhere.

Later, Judy Garland, a little tired but smiling joyfully, told me: “At last I've found my crock of happiness and contentment. You know there have been many times when I've been in despair.”

Then she admitted: “I've been a fool in many ways. I've let my hopes, my feelings and my fears get on top of me so many times.

“I know I have sometimes put on a show that wasn't good enough. That I have let my emotions run away with me. I couldn't help it.”

For a woman who became a dazzling Hollywood star while still in her teens, it was a bitter confession. But it was true.

To most people Judy Garland has been one of the most puzzling of Hollywood's great stars. Few of her millions of fans throughout the world have followed the breakdowns and emotional crises which have marred her career without a feeling of sadness and pity.

Her successes were golden from the moment she captivated the world as the wide-eyed, wondering girl in
The Wizard of
Oz.

Many other achievements followed. Then, somehow, the rocket climb faltered. Her crashes were as painfully public as her successes. And they became more and more frequent. Within the last couple of years the emotional crises appeared to have deepened.

Near-collapses and seeming
uncertainty
on stage …
fluffed
lines …
failure
to hit the right notes …
late
appearances … inability to finish acts …

Judy's Australian tour last year seemed little short of disastrous.

Millions of British fans remember her performance in the TV show
Judy and Liza
from the London Palladium, when she several times failed to hit the correct notes and seemed to lean heavily on daughter Liza Minnelli. But, at the end she received a standing ovation, for few stars are as warmly liked as Judy.

This year, in Cincinnati, Ohio, some of her audience became angry when she unexpectedly stopped during her act, announced a surprise intermission and later walked on stage with her doctor, explaining that she couldn't continue.

Another time she was rushed to hospital for observation and it was explained she was “emotionally upset” after “allergic reaction to a drug.”

Eleven days after, at Las Vegas, oxygen was rushed to her hotel cottage when she became ill.

The incidents were only a few of many. Fans watched with sadness and sympathy. The once dazzling star was becoming one of the fastest-falling stars in show business. A brilliant meteorite burning out and streaking to oblivion.

In the dressing room of that West Coast nightclub, I knew I was looking at a new Judy Garland. She said quietly and thoughtfully: “Yes, my daughter Liza and my two younger children saved me …”

She paused and then went on: “I suppose the song ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow' [sic] in
The Wizard of
Oz is what people most associate with me.

“But most people associate a rainbow with the fairytale crock of gold. I never sought for gold.

“What I have sought is what the little girl I portrayed in the film was searching for in that land over the rainbow—happiness, contentment and peace of mind. During these last few months, I seem to have found them.”

She spoke these words with conviction. The change is immediately noticeable, and close friends and casual acquaintances have noticed it, too.

What has happened in Judy Garland's life during the past few months to bring about this zestful happiness where, for so long, there seemed to be only bleak despair?

“I guess I've always been the nervous kind,” Judy said. “And I guess I've often worried and been upset when I didn't have cause.

“But much of my trouble has been due to the fact that my marriages have failed. For myself, this need not have been too upsetting, although, naturally, I regretted it. But it's different when you have kids. At least, it ought to be different, I think. It certainly had an effect on me.

“I was divorced from my husband, Vincente Minnelli, when Liza—she's 19 now—was only six. I know how much a girl needs her mother as she grows up.

“I guess that, as the years passed, I worried more and more about her. In show business, you're away from home a lot.

“Film and singing commitments seemed to take me all over the world. But, as often as I could, I worked here on the West Coast—in Los Angeles, San Francisco or in nearby Las Vegas—so that I wouldn't be too far away.

“I know the effect broken homes have on kids, particularly if they think parents don't care. Specially a mother.”

Then Judy Garland fell in love with Sid Luft and they got married.

“Everything was happy for a while and we had two children, Lorna, who's now 11 and Joseph, who's now nine,” said Judy. “But, as a producer, Sid was away a lot and so was I.

“Sid and I drifted apart. Showbiz is rough on kids, I guess. But neither of us knew anything else and that's the way it went. I had to earn my living.”

“I used to spend hours awake, when I should have been sleeping, thinking about the unfairness of it all to those kids.

“I tortured myself over and over again by asking, ‘Judy, did you do the right thing having them?'

“I had to take pills to make me sleep. If ever I overslept, there were rumors that I'd taken an overdose.

“But I knew those kids needed a mother most of all, even though their parents had split up. I knew, too, that to gain custody, some dirty linen would be bound to be washed. Sure enough it was. The legal battles seemed endless.”

Said Judy: “It all played on my mind. Every bit of tittle-tattle was a big headline. I knew the children would know. If you're a ‘name' there's nothing you can do about it.

“And, you know, when you're going through a bad time, there are always plenty of people ready to help push you further downhill.

“They try to ‘murder' you with all sorts of wild rumors. The worst interpretation is put on everything. When I was way out there in front of the footlights I often used to be thinking of my kids—and fluff my lines. And sometimes I was so distraught I just couldn't go on.

“Stupid? Maybe. But I guess that's how I'm made—a worrier.”

I knew what she meant. For, earlier, in New York, I had talked to her beautiful and talented daughter, Liza.

“I have the best mother in the world,” she said. “If she has faults, they are that she is warm and human. And that doesn't do in show business. It's easier if you're tough and hard.

“A lot of people have hurt her a lot of times and because she's thin-skinned and has taken lots of knocks in life, she's crumpled now and again.

“But, believe me, no children could have a kinder, more thoughtful mother.”

Liza went on to tell me what she meant.

“One night, when I was studying in Paris, my mother phoned from Los Angeles after the first part of her show to see how I was. I think she guessed I was a bit ‘down' and homesick. She's always really believed in that rainbow, you know, and that we all eventually find happiness.

“She said: ‘You just go on believing, Liza.' And there and then started to sing me a lullaby she used to sing me when I was just a little girl.

“After a few minutes I went to sleep, still clutching the phone. That's what she means to me and that's the kind of woman she is.

“She was always scared I might be mixing with Left Bank drifters. Once, when I told her on the telephone that I was going out in a sweater and jeans, she sent a complete wardrobe out from the best shop in Los Angeles.”

“With the clothes was a little note saying: ‘Just keep the sweater and jeans for lounging about in the apartment, honey.'

“I guess she spent thousands of dollars on phone calls. Yet, when we went on tour together, I realized how great the toll of worry had been.

“Yes,” Liza went on, “everyone is saying she's a new person now. It's all so wonderful.”

Liza said of Judy's just-announced intention to marry her actor friend, Mark Herron, 29: “I think it's so marvelous. They are devoted. And we
all
get on so well together. We'll be a family again.”

Back in her dressing room, Judy Garland, a young-looking 41, told me the real truth about the return after so long of the self-confidence and happiness which had once seemed to have left her.

She admitted, “Liza really saved me. Despite everything, despite the broken marriages and the upsets anxiety caused, she has grown into a self-confident young woman—a success in her own right and a fine actress.

“She says she's tougher than I am—and I'm glad. She says she doesn't want to be a great star—just to fulfill herself in life. That's what I lived and worked and worried to bring about for her and my two other children.