Judy Garland on Judy Garland (19 page)

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This seems to be inaccurate. As previosuly established, Judy performed on the Shell Chateau Hour the night of her father's hospitalization.

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The story surrounding the birth of niece Judy “Judaline” Gail Sherwood is quite deceiving. Although it is true that little Judaline, daughter of sister Jimmie and first husband, Bobby Sherwood, was born May 28, 1938, just four days after Judy's auto accident, birth records confirm Judaline's arrival occurred in La Porte, Indiana, some two thousand miles from Hollywood.

Though she claims there were no marriage plans in the near future, by the cover date on this issue of
Motion Picture,
Judy was preparing to marry musician David Rose. The two had dated since February 1940, and announced their engagement on May 28, 1941.

Don't class Judy Garland among the kiddies any longer. A big girl—going on 19—she's the same age as Deanna, and old enough to know what she wants. Like getting married.

We know people who are horrified to read in the gossip column that Judy Garland may be a bride before the year's over. The trouble is, they still think of Judy as a little girl in a pinafore and pigtails, singing “Over the Rainbow.” They can't realize that she's a big girl now. Though there's a chance that they can after they see her
latest
picture.

She doesn't play a glorified schoolgirl. She plays a glorified showgirl. The title of the picture is
Ziegfeld Girl—a
title that refers to Judy just as much as it refers to Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner, who are also present. In other words, she's old enough to be convincing as someone who would have caught the eye of the late great Florenz Ziegfeld, a connoisseur in alluring young womanhood. So she must be old enough to get married.

According to her birth certificate, Judy is 18. (An age which many girls become brides. As Anne Shirley, for example, did.) On June 10th,
Judy will be 19. (The age of Deanna Durbin, who, by the time you read this, will be a bride.)

If it seems like only yesterday that Judy was a child, that's because it was less than two years ago that she made
The Wizard of Oz,
in which she sang “Over the Rainbow.” But she was 16 even then. She looked 12 only because the M-G-M makeup, hairdressing and wardrobe departments made her over for the role of
Dorothy.

The makeup, hairdressing and wardrobe departments all contributed to Judy's appearance in
Ziegfeld Girl.
But they didn't have to make her over. We found that out, first thing, when we went out to her house the other day—to check up on those rumored marriage plans and/or whatever else was new in her life.

A year ago, Judy would have rushed into a room, betraying nervous excitement at the prospect of an interview. She would have been wearing a sweater-and-skirt outfit and sports shoes. Her hair would have looked windblown. She would have given the general impression that she was fresh from a high school hockey match.

Now there was a vast difference. She walked into the room. Calmly, gracefully. She was wearing a smartly simple one-piece dress—all black except for some gold embroidery near the neckline. Toeless pumps adorned her feet. Her reddish-blond hair, loosely waved in a long bob, had a freshly-combed look. The general effect suggested a well-groomed college girl. Someone interested in being considered adult, though young.

The effect wasn't that of a child in grown-up garb. She didn't wobble on her high heels. And her dress fitted snugly enough to reveal that she had trim curves —which un-grown-ups don't have.

Yet the effect wasn't that of A Glamour Girl At Home, either. She didn't glitter.

That has always been one of the refreshing things about Judy—she has never looked so much like a movie star as like a normal young girl. Even on the screen. (That's probably one of the secrets of her success.)

The last time we talked with her, a year or so ago, we had asked her how it felt to be halfway through the terrible teens—and she had been eloquent on the subject. So now, hopefully, we asked her how it felt to be grown-up. She gestured vaguely. “I don't feel grown-up,” she said, “and I don't feel
not
grown-up. I don't know how to express it. I don't feel so much as if I've changed. It's more a sensation that things around me have changed.

“A year ago, for example, my contract specified certain types of roles for me—and I didn't even dream of having it revised. It seemed like a pretty good contract to me. But one day the Front Office called me in and said they were tearing it up and giving me a new one, because they had ‘a little older' roles in mind for me, beginning with
Little Nellie Kelly.
‘You're eighteen now,' they said. So suddenly, my roles started being different—even though
I
didn't feel any different from how I had felt at seventeen or even sixteen.

“And Mother is letting me take over more and more business details. Like keeping my appointments straight, myself, and talking to agents and people myself. I used to depend on her to do everything. Now I feel as if I'm taking a little of the responsibility. Which is a good thing.

“She still takes care of the financial things,” Judy continued, “but she's teaching me how, by degrees. Only sometimes I think she must get pretty discouraged. As a business manager, I'm as bad as she is good. I'm not extravagant. I don't throw money away. But I have an awful habit of not writing the amount on the check stub when I write a check. I can't be trusted to know how much I have in the bank.” She smiled a self-chiding smile. “Though I can be trusted to drive a car by myself now,” she added in self-defense.

Perhaps you have visions of Judy blithely tearing around the countryside in a sporty red roadster with the top down. Kindly disillusion yourself. She drives a sedan, if you please. And not because she can transport more of “the gang” at one time in a sedan, but because she feels safer, driving a heavy car. Which is good proof of Judy's sanity.

She denied having any ideas about taking up flying—which has become the great Hollywood urge. (It has supplanted ranching.) “I don't like flying,” she said. “The
thought
of flying frightens me. Any form of transportation frightens me. The thought of trusting your life to machinery. It's almost a phobia. Maybe it is a phobia. I can't bear to go in an engine room. All that pounding machinery seems like a bunch of ominous monsters.

“When I'm on a train, I get to thinking about that one man up front, making everything go. What if he went crazy, all of a sudden, and decided to wreck the train —because things were so monotonous? And I've always been afraid of boats. I keep having a recurring dream about a boat.

“Did you ever have the same dream, time after time? This one is
awful.
I'm on the deck of a boat that's being launched, and everybody's standing at attention, and people are cheering and waving flags. A woman breaks a bottle of champagne on the bow of the boat, christening it, and it starts sliding down the ways. Only when it hits the water, it keeps on sliding down. I look around to see what everybody else is doing—and everybody else is still standing at attention, as if nothing is happening. I want to scream and I can't. The water comes over our ankles, then it's up to our waists—finally it's up to our necks. That's when I wake up. At least, so far, I have.” She shuddered. “Let's change the subject.”

She was willing to confess that she had become clothes-conscious, and that that was another proof that she was beginning to grow up. “Adrian has come into my life,” she quipped. (He designed her wardrobe for
Ziegfeld Girl.)
“But I was clothes-conscious before that happened,” she said, more seriously. “Though not long before. A year or so ago, I didn't give much thought to what I wore. One thing seemed as good as another, so long as it was decent. I'd wear a sweater and skirt with a fur coat. Then one day I went shopping and I saw a couple of smart things and—I just became conscious of the right ensemble. I guess that happens to every girl, when she reaches a certain age. Usually about the time she finishes school.”

Judy finished school last June. “That's a big change in my life,” she said, “—not having to combine schoolwork and screen work. Though after about a year's rest from textbooks, I'd like to start taking some college courses in the arts. There are some things I want to know that I can't learn any other way.”

Singing lessons, however, still aren't anywhere on the schedule. “I've never had any, and now I'm afraid to take any. They might change my luck. And speaking of being afraid, maybe you think I wasn't scared this last year when I had to have my tonsils out. I was never so frightened
in my life. The doctors couldn't guarantee that my voice would be the same afterward. It was more or less a gamble. But I had to have those tonsils out—they were poisoning my whole system. And the operation did change my voice. Only it helped. I can hit lower notes now, and higher notes.”

But that hasn't changed her vocal ambitions. She's still swearing allegiance to songs with a hot beat—because they've done all right by her so far. Not because life is simpler, singing hot songs. If anything, it's more complicated.

Judy told us about that “Minnie from Trinidad” number in
Ziegfeld Girl,
by way of illustration. “Busby Berkeley shot two choruses of that number in one long take. I started singing at the top of some steps, and had to walk down them, singing—without looking at the steps—and then, at the bottom, count thirteen, take two steps forward, then turn and weave in and out of lines of people, and reach a certain spot on a certain note, without being able to look down and see if I had hit the mark, then count eight, turn, take a certain number of steps and count five more. And singing all the time. You get galloping hysterics after about eight hours of that.”

On days like that, or on any other days, did she ever think she'd like to give it all up? “No, it's in my blood,” she said. “I don't want to quit for a long time yet. I mean, I hope it's going to be a long time before I start slipping—because I want to quit just before that happens. And even then I'll probably keep on working on the radio and the stage.”

But not nightclubs. It may be news to you, if you've been following the gossip columns, but Judy doesn't like nightclubs. “It's a funny thing,” she said. “When I wasn't old enough to go to them, I thought that when I
was
old enough, I'd go every other night. But now that I am old enough, I go about once every three or four weeks. People think I go oftener because, every time I do go to one, it's printed about twenty different times. In most nightclubs, there's nothing to do but sit and talk and drink—and I don't drink and it's hard to talk, because of the noise. Even in the places where there's room to dance, there isn't
enough
room.

“So going to nightclubs seems like an awful waste of time. Unless it's to see some special entertainer or hear some special orchestra. I don't have to leave home to talk with my friends; they're all welcome here. And
we have a radio, not to mention a phonograph. If we want to dance, we can dance right here.”

Every Sunday, the Garland house is still the meeting place for “the gang”—which has few screen members. Most of them are family friends, friends of her two sisters as well as Judy. And what do they do when they gather? “We relax. If somebody feels like working a jigsaw puzzle, or playing cards, or reading a book, or sitting out in the patio getting a suntan, that's what he's free to do. We play a lot of quiz games and word games. We make up a lot of our own, on the spur of the moment. Like the newest one. I point at you, for example, and fire a question at you, only you aren't supposed to answer; somebody else has to answer, but fast. Then I fire a question at that person, and you have to answer. Another gag is seeing who can make up the saddest story. The last time we had one of those sessions, I made 'em all choke up.”

She has taken to writing stories, also, this past year. She recently did a one-act play on the radio that she wrote, herself. And, for Christmas she gave her mother a specially printed volume of poems that she had written over a period of several months. All of which would indicate that Judy has unsuspected depths. A serious mind and an urge for serious self-expression—which she hasn't admitted even to herself, yet.

A year ago, she wasn't so serious minded. A fact made apparent by her being interested in no one boy. Whereas now she admitted, when asked, that she had only one male interest. For the benefit of latecomers, his name is David Rose, and he is a handsome and talented young music arranger.

“We met at a party, and started talking about music,” said Judy, “and discovered that we liked the same things. And—well,” she added, as if that explained everything, “we just sort of started going together. We have a lot of fun and a lot of mutual interests. And my family likes him, too.”

And what about those rumored marriage plans?

“There's nothing definite yet,” said Judy, seriously, “—nothing in the near future.”

But whether she marries in 1941 or not, it's important to realize that she isn't a child any longer. She's a big girl now. An inch and a half taller than she was a year ago, and immeasurably more grown-up.

Judy's plan to wed David Rose in September 1941 was quickly abandoned when, over dinner on the evening of July 27, they decided to elope. Accompanied by Judy's mother and stepfather, Will Gilmore, the lovebirds flew to Las Vegas that night and were married by 1:20
AM
the next day.