Judy Garland on Judy Garland (18 page)

Well, it was Mr. Gable's birthday, the first day I met him. Roger took me onto the set of
Parnell,
which Mr. Gable would like to forget but I have to just mention it, and I sang “Dear Mr. Gable” to him—and he cried! Imagine making Clark Gable cry! Imagine being
able
to! And then he came up to me and put his arms around me and he said, “You are the sweetest little girl I ever saw in my life!” And then
I
cried and it was simply heavenly!

Just a few days after this, came my first pieces of real jewelry—my charm bracelet from Mr. Gable. It's all tiny, gold musical instruments, a tiny piano, harp, drums, violin and so on—and the only other charm is a
teensy golden book which opens and there is Mr. Gable's picture in it and an inscription which says: “To Judy, from her fan, Clark Gable.” As long as I live and no matter how many jewels life may bring me I will always keep that bracelet, along with the little diamond cross my Dad gave me on my last birthday before he died, and my first wristwatch which was from Mother.

My first premiere came along about this time, too. It was
Captains Courageous
and it was at Grauman's Chinese Theatre and I went with Mickey! I wore my first long dress and my first fur coat, a gray squirrel, which I wore for daytimes and evenings, too. When I was seventeen, Mom gave me a ruby fox which I was only allowed to wear on special occasions and when I was eighteen she gave me my wonderful, white fox cape, full length! I got my first car on my seventeenth birthday, too, a
red
job, like I'd dreamed.

But I was talking about my first premiere—Mickey sent me a pikake lei instead of just a commonplace corsage. Pikakes are like small, white orchids, only with a heavenly fragrance, and they grow only in the tropics and Mickey'd had them flown by Clipper from Hawaii!

I suppose I'd call that first premiere my first date, too. And if there is anything more important than a first date in a girl's life, I don't know what it is.

Here's what I think about a first date: first of all, a girl should
act her age.
I mean, if you are fifteen or sixteen, you shouldn't go out looking as though you had just graduated from kindergarten, of course, but neither should you try to look like a Senior at a Glamour Girl School. If you are wearing your first long dress, or even any new dress, I think it's a swell idea to try it on several evenings before your date, just to sort of get acquainted with it. So that you can practice being nonchalant. So you won't fall on your face when you go into a theater or restaurant. And I don't think First-Daters should overdo the makeup stuff, either. I know I just used a little thin powder, just a touch of rouge because the excitement made me look like the ghost of my grandmother. And a very light dash of lipstick. And NO MASCARA! ‘Cause if you forget and rub your eyes or laugh until the tears come, your face gets all smudged up. Most of all, on a date, I think a girl should
be herself.
It's a temptation not to be, I know. I've
had my moments when I thought I'd try to act like Marlene Dietrich or even Garbo. And then I'd figure that it was my natural self, such as I am, that attracted my date in the beginning, so why take a chance on changing into something
he
might not like as well?

Well, anyway, lots of first things were happening, three years ago, like I said—I played in
Broadway Melody of 1938
and that was the first
real
step forward in my Career. Not to mention that it was then that I first met Robert Taylor!

Then I made
Love Finds Andy Hardy
and I really believe that's my favorite of my pictures. Mickey and I had lots of fun together while we were making that, same as we had fun making
Strike up the Band
—we'd tear down to the beach weekends and “do” the amusement piers, and we'd come home loaded to the gills with Kewpie dolls and Popeyes. Mickey is an expert shot with the rifle and I'm a dead-eye aim with baseballs, so we'd be pretty even-Stephen on prizes.

We had our “crowd” by this time, too—Mickey of course, Jackie Cooper, Bonita Granville, Bob Stack, Rita Quigley, Helen Parrish, Ann Rutherford, Leonard Seuss, most of them were in our gang then and are now—and in the evenings we'd get together at my house or one of the other kid's houses and we'd play records, dance, “feed” on hot chocolate, chili and beans, wienies, brownies, popcorn, Cokes, our favorite items of “light” refreshment!

We had jolly times, we still do—it was mostly all fun and nothing very serious. We'd all sort of date each other, I'd go out with Mickey, with Jackie, later with Bob Stack; the other girls would go out with them, too; there were very few jealousies—we were pretty deadly in earnest about our work—of course, I often thought I was in love—but I used to worship people from afar more than those who were dunking their doughnuts in my hot chocolate. I'd have crushes on people who thought I was a little girl—my doctor, for instance, I was
insane
about him—he's fifty, I think! And every time I'd have a crush, I'd think, this is real love! But in saner moments I know I have never
really
been in love, I always recover too quickly. Columnists and gossip are always trying to make out that I'm serious, about Bob Stack, for instance, or Dan Dailey, or this one or that. But
I'm not, I never have been
and
I don't intend to be,
for quite some time to come!

Now, let's see—dear me, I
hope
I'm getting what serious biographers call “Chronology” into this manuscript! Well, after I was fifteen, first things happened to me so sort of fast and furious, I get
addled.
Anyway, two very important first things come or [sic] in here, I know—I played Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
and
that
was a dream I'd dreamed ever since Daddy read the
Oz
stories to me, backstage, when I was just a kid. And just before I stopped being Judy and became Dorothy, I built—my own home! It's sprawling and it's white and it's surrounded by trees and flowers and a tennis court and, this year, we put in a swimming pool which is the rendezvous, every Sunday afternoon, for the crowd. My bedroom is all done in chartreuse and brown and the walls are lined with my favorite books. I have my own dressing room and bath, too.

Well, when I made
The Wizard of Oz
not only did I actually live in the Emerald City, not only did I pinch myself black and blue every day to make sure I was awake, not dreaming, but also Dorothy won me my first Academy Award for a performance by a Juvenile Actress! And Mickey presented me with the golden statue. Mickey and the statue looked like they were swimming, because of the tears in my eyes.

Next I think of
Babes in Arms
and, especially, of the preview which was at Grauman's Chinese and which was the first premiere of one of my pictures that I ever attended. Again with Mickey, naturally. And that was the night I was invited to put my footprints and handprints in the forecourt of the theater. Mickey's were already there and, of course, Clark Gable's, Harold Lloyd's, Shirley Temple's, oh, all the
big
stars'!

I wanted to look glamorous that night, as I had never wanted to before, or since. Well, I bite my fingernails and I felt sick because I couldn't have long, glittering ones like Joan Crawford's. So the manicurist fixed me up with artificial ones. After I placed my hands in the wet cement I went into the theater and after a while I thought a creeping paralysis had set in, beginning with my fingers! They felt all numb and heavy. I was in cold sweat until we left the theater and then I realized some of the cement had got under my nails and
hardened on the false ones!
I went to a party afterwards feeling like Dracula's daughter, with talons! The next day I had to have them
chopped off!
That was my first and last attempt at being glamorous.

After
Babes in Arms
the studio sent Mickey and me to New York on a personal appearance tour. We did six shows a day so, of course, we didn't have much time to sightsee. Mom said 10:30 was curfew and Mickey kept to that schedule, too. But we did manage to spend one evening at the Rainbow Room. We wanted to know how it felt to dance “on top of the world.” That trip was the first time I really shopped in New York, too. Boy, did I sweep in and out of Fifth Avenue's finest! It was the first time I bought semi-grown-up clothes.

And that was the time Fred Waring asked me to appear as a guest on his radio program. Of course I accepted, thinking he just wanted me to say “hello.” Do you know what he did? He had his entire program dedicated to
me!
And his theme song for the evening was “Over the Rainbow,” which happens to be my favorite song. So I sang all the songs from
The Wizard of Oz
for him and a good time was had by all, most especially by me!

Oh, and I must tell about my sixteenth birthday. We had a party at my house and my brother-in-law, Robert Sherwood, brought along his La Maze orchestra. Mickey was the master of ceremonies and we staged an entertainment program of our own. I sang two numbers, and Jackie, Bonita, Ann, Helen, Buddy Pepper, all of them did turns. We had a Ping-Pong tournament, too, and Mr. Rooney walked off with the honors! At midnight we served a buffet supper. I wore a new, white, sharkskin sports dress with flowers appliqued on the pockets. And in my hair I wore the gardenias, which Mickey sent me—oh, and in the midst of the festivities, two blue lovebirds in a blue and white cage were delivered to me. And the card attached read, “Happy Birthday to My Best Girl, Judy—Clark Gable.”

But I guess the
most
important first thing that happened in 1938 was that, for the first time, I became an aunt! Jimmie says it's really a little more important that
she
became A Mother than that I became an aunt. I wouldn't know about that. I only know that I always wanted to be an aunt. And that the circumstances of my aunthood befell me under circumstances which were pretty extraordinary! 'Cause
I
was in the hospital, too! It was right after my automobile accident. One bright morning, a few days later, my nurse told me she was going to take me “visiting.” She bundled me into a wheelchair and we headed for the “baby floor.” There,
for the first time, seen under glass, so to speak, I first beheld my first niece, Judy Gayle [
sic]
Sherwood, my namesake as well as my niece! Born in the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital while I'd been recovering from my accident—both of us under the same roof!
*

So now, I guess, I'm pretty much up to the Present. I made
Andy Hardy Meets Debutante
and then
Strike Up the Band.
And did we have ourselves a time, Mickey and I, while we were making that. After doing our “Conga” number, talk about being in a lather! Between scenes, Mickey'd mostly play the songs he was writing to me, and I'd make recordings for him and all. I was
just
like the character in the picture, where Mickey was concerned.

And now I'm playing my first grown-up, dramatic character part in
Little Nellie Kelly.
I even
die
in
Nellie.
And—and this is a VERY important first in my life,
I play my first grown-up love scene
in this picture, too! I'm really blushing even as I write about it. I, who have said I was never embarrassed on the stage, in front of a mic or a camera, take it all back now. George Murphy plays my sweetheart (and my husband,
I
play a dual role, too!) in the picture. And he was certainly the most perfect choice, for he is so kind and tender and understanding—and humorous, too. But just the same, after we made that love scene, I didn't know what to
do
or where to
look.
I'd just kind of go away between scenes because I
couldn't
look at him. He kept kidding me, too, saying he felt like he was “in Tennessee with my child bride!”

And—well, my goodness, I guess that's about all! I guess a girl hasn't
much
of a Life Story when she's just eighteen because, of course, she hasn't had much life! Although I do think I've had quite a Past and I know I'm old enough so that it's been fun to Remember. And I also know that, at the end of my first eighteen years, as I write “Finis, The End” to my first Life Story, I'd like to say some Thank Yous, quite a lot of Thank Yous—first of all to Mom and Daddy, of course, for all the things they did for me, for everything they were and are to me; and to my sisters for their patience
with me, and the fun we had; and to Mr. Mayer for believing in me; and to Mrs. Carter and Roger Edens and all the directors who have helped me and all the people who have worked with me—and to Mickey, naturally—I don't know what
for,
just for being Mickey, I guess—and to all the magazine and newspaper people who have been so kind to me—and to my fans, who are my friends, and who have made me what I am today—to—well, to just about everyone and everything—yes, to everything and everyone who have made my first eighteen years of being alive so swell, and such fun!