Judy Garland on Judy Garland (22 page)

“Ella's savin' it all, for our marriage when I git back from overseas,” he said then. “She's a swell girl, a good cook and thrifty. We'll have a house then, and lotsa kids.” He blushed then, and said, “I hope.”

Then suddenly he said reverently, “I gotta thank the Army for alla this, really. You see, I was kinda wild, just a wild kid until it come along. I joined the Army—and it got me to thinkin'. Fella's gotta have something to hook onto times like these. So first chance I got I asked Ella to marry me and I put those savin's in her name and my mother's, which I'd really been savin' for a bumming trip around the world. Now I'm goin' around the world with Uncle Sam, looks like; and I got an aim in life—Ella, and a home. And I—well, I'm a different guy now and I got the Army to thank for it. I'm thinkin' of staying right in it when we've beat those Germans and Japs, long's I live. It's give me everything.” Then he added, “Believe me, I'm grateful.”

And that was about it. Maybe it doesn't sound like much to you—just another soldier's ideas on living. But as Joan walked away from his bedside, she was thinking of Joe and his gratitude—and his clear-cut version of why they were fighting, and planning, and living for freedom and the right to a home and wife and children. In some strange way it seemed to include her. And Joe was the voice of ten million soldiers—Joe
was
ten million soldiers. Out of his loneliness and need in the Army he had become a man, with a man's philosophy and aim—and somehow he seemed to have given it to her. Why could not she too keep on plugging until she found the basic things she needed?

Thoughtfully she left the hospital and headed across the parade grounds for her rough boxlike dressing room. A milling crowd of khaki had already gathered outside. “We want Joan!” they were howling. “Where's your autograph, Joanie?” “Kiss the boys good-bye, Joan, like a good girl!” They were all kidding, boisterous, noisy—until suddenly the thin sound of music came over their shouts. It was faint and distant, but the boys instantly fell into deathly stillness. Lifting her head, Joan could hear plainly the strains of a Negro spiritual, high and sweet in the throbbing dusk. The backs of the soldiers were turned to her now as they silently watched a nearby road. She looked, too, with something prickling along her spine.

For there, swinging along in march time with full packs and ammunition were two thousand Negro soldiers—marching to the docks to board a boat for overseas. And as they marched they sang. The sergeants sang the verses, and two thousand rich, strong voices came in on the choruses—“Swing low, sweet chariot,” they sang, “comin' for to carry me home!” Sweet and full came the song to Joan—and long after the two thousand marching black men had passed, with their song growing fainter and fainter in the distance—long after that came the rattle and clank of armored cars, tanks, guns, following them to the docks.

Her first sight of men actually going forth to battle lines…. This was it, she thought; this swelling, unbearable lump in her heart that must come forth or she would burst. Now at last she knew what she would do if they would let her. She would sing as those men had sung—not to soldiers in a distant, safe camp where she, too, was safe and distant, but to men riding to battle; shoulder to shoulder with them on the boats carrying them through the enemy-infested seas.

This was Joan, truly come to life!

And that's the story I've written for you. I hope you'll understand the things I've tried to explain, and I hope most of all you'll understand Joan, who is really happy now, I know. And she owes it all to a million men in uniform—and to one private in particular, named Joe!

A cover story for
Movieland,
the following is a “fill-in-the-blank” style interest inventory that allowed Judy to touch on some of her likes and dislikes not often addressed in other features.

I USED TO:

… Work in small-time vaudeville theaters.

… Be called the leather-lunged blues singer, I'm ashamed to say; the little girl with the big voice.

… Dream that I was singing with a symphony orchestra—I felt as if I were still dreaming when at last it came true and I stood up to sing with Andre Kostelanetz.

I REMEMBER:

… Getting in the way of a forward-passed cheese sandwich one night when I was singing in a small-time vaudeville house and how furious I was; all I could say, over and over, was “Someday!” … My Christmas dinner when I was ten. I was singing at Warner's Hollywood theater and couldn't have dinner at home. Mother promised she'd let me choose where I would eat and what I'd have. I went to a drugstore and ordered hot tamales.

… The white party dress I wore to the Academy dinner when I won my Oscar.

… Wearing that dress again when I was footprinted at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and how Mickey Rooney held it up out of the cement for me.

MY FIRST:

… Appearances were made in our backyard shows where my sisters and I charged ten straight pins a show.

… Poem was composed when I was four and heard my sisters making up verse. I went in for rhythm not rhyme and the result was:
Bookie, Bookie, I saw a star. Money, money, salt, salt, salt.

… Car was a Lincoln Zephyr convertible, a present on my sixteenth birthday, and I loved it, but I wasn't big enough to see what was behind me when I backed up, so after four months I was persuaded to give it up

… Friend was Betty Jane Graham, who is still my closest girlfriend. We were four years old and met when we tried out for a part at Universal Studios. Betty Jane thought I would get the part, and I thought she would, so we brushed each other off. But when Cora Sue Collins got it, we fell into each other's arms.
*

I LIKE:

… Bonfires on the beach… Baby chicks … Walking in the rain … Anything chocolate … Men who know how to handle head waiters … Christmas Eve.

I DISLIKE:

… Dull pencils … That put-on Southern accent … Salted peanuts … Getting telephone connections … Attending to details … Mayonnaise … Popcorn.

I'M GUILTY OF:

… Losing my keys … Eating too many chocolates … Forgetting appointments or being late.

… I've never worn a watch because I'd rather not know what time it is.

… And I'm the worst backseat driver in the world.

I HATE TO:

… Have my nails filed … Go home when the party's getting good … Wait for people who said they'd positively be on time … Hear a baby cry and nobody do anything about it … Grow lovely long fingernails and then have one break off … Get up early.

I LOVE TO:

… Cook, but I hate to clean up afterwards … Make over hats and remodel clothes … Play tennis, Guggenheim, Ghost … Keep the radio going or records playing whenever I'm in the house … Spoil my sister's baby—but I never do!

I'VE LEARNED:

… From my mother—practically all I know, including singing, playing the piano, cooking, and managing a house.

… From my sisters—How to get along with other girls, not to acquire a star complex.

… From Mickey Rooney—Anything I know about screen technique. The first day we worked together on a picture he said, “Let's promise each other never to work at each other but always with each other!” and we always have. He's given me plenty of good advice, including, “Don't worry!” But I'm still the world's champion worrier.
*

… From Roger Edens (Who does all my musical arrangements) the songs that are best for me. When I was a child in vaudeville, my favorite numbers were tunes like “Stormy Weather,” which I sang wrapped in a black shawl, sitting on a piano on a dark stage, only my face spotlighted. At the song's conclusion, I threw off the shawl and the lights came on. I then did my six-year-old curtsy. I wanted to do “Drums of My Heart” for my first screen song, but Roger said no. Simple songs were best for children. He wrote “Dear Mr. Gable” for me; he was right. The people liked it, and it started me on my real screen career.

I'M LEFT-HANDED:

… When I write, my hand smudges the ink as I cross the page. I've discovered that putting talcum powder on my hand will permit it to ride along without smudging. Southpaws, attention!

I'M FOND OF:

… Penny candy … John Frederics cologne … Novelty jewelry … Good Humor ice cream … Biographies … Surprises … A Tuesday special (a hug and a kiss from my little niece).

I WONDER:

… Where all my best answers go when I wish I could think of them … Who invents those frightful lipsticks some girls wear … Why weeds grow so much larger than anything else in a victory garden … If hair that's flat on the top of the head will really come back soon … And when the war will end.

WHEN I WENT TO SCHOOL:

… At Lawlor's Professional School for children, twelve years ago, my schoolmates were Mickey Rooney, Anne Shirley (then Dawn O'Day), Jackie Cooper, Frankie Darro, Diana Lewis; they all made good, and we're all still friends…. I was always so busy trying to get out of studying that I never really learned anything.

I THINK IT'S FUN:

… To wash my own hair … Dust furniture that gleams after you dust it … Go into a shop and buy what I want without tiresome delays … To cry at movies and eat candy while I cry.

MY NICKNAME:

… “Judaline” was given me by Director Victor Fleming in
The Wizard of Oz,
but only my family uses it. My sister, Jimmie's baby, Judy Gail Sherwood, is also nicknamed “Judaline.”

MY BIGGEST THRILL:

… Was my twenty-first birthday party last June. My sister, Jimmie, Danny Kaye, Keenan Wynn, Dore Schary, and Betty Asher surprised me by making records of a script they'd written called
The Life of Judy Garland.
It began with my first cry, which Danny Kaye gave to the tune of “Over the Rainbow” and continued in a kidding vein to tell what had happened to me in twenty-one years. It was terribly funny, but it ended with a serious little speech given by Keenan so beautiful that I cried—I was so touched and so happy.

MY SPECIAL HEROINE:

… Is [First Lady of the Republic of China] Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

MY FAVORITE FICTION CHAR.:

… Is [Rose Franken's] Claudia. And I want a little farm in Connecticut like the one she had, and a little house exactly like hers.

MY SECRET AMBITION:

… Is to write fiction. I've written a book of verse, and I love to write stories. I don't believe I'd care for literature as a living because I can't write unless I'm in the mood. But when I am in the mood, I can write for hours.

I'D LOVE TO:

… Do a big musical show on the New York stage.

I ADORE:

… Richard Tauber's recording of “Vienna, City of Dreams.” I wish I could have seen Vienna as it was in his time. I'd like to have been part of that life where all women were glamorous, all men romantic, everything was exciting, and no one was ever dull or lonely or sad.

*
The Universal film was
The Unexpected Father
(1932), and Judy was certainly older than four years old. It's likely that she was nine or ten at the time of the audition, and Betty Jane Graham was a year her junior.

*
The picture was 1938's
Love Finds Andy Hardy,
their second film together. “Watching the rushes,” Judy later recalled, “I saw that my scenes were more sincere and believable. I've kept that thought in mind ever since. But not until I played in that picture did I commence to enjoy myself and feel that I was beginning to find myself…. I learned from Mickey Rooney to be a natural, to be myself before the camera.”