Judy Garland on Judy Garland (33 page)

AF:
It's “Sweet Sixteen” from one of the Andy Hardys.

JG:
Oh, my goodness. That was 108 years ago!

AF:
No, it wasn't. It's a wonderful record. And here she is now, Judy Garland, playing her own record of “Sweet Sixteen.”

[Plays “Sweet Sixteen.”]

AF:
And there you have Judy Garland and “Sweet Sixteen.” Well, I think one of the nice things about Judy is, as you can tell from speaking with her, and I think you sort of feel that you are tonight, audience, because I know that I feel that she's talking to you, not to me. And that's the way she's always been in pictures and in the way she's always sung. She's sung to each and every one of us, whether playing to a small group or playing to herself. So I think all we've got to do with Judy is say we wish her all the best of luck, because I think any one of us would hate to walk out there that first night at the Palace and start the two-a-day going again. But who else can do it besides Judy? So I know that you and I feel very close to her and we're going to see her while she's in New York. And start pestering the Hollywood boys to make sure she gets the right picture and gets back on the screen there, because most of the country wants to see her again, too.

JG:
Oh, that's very nice of you! Are you gonna come to the show?

AF:
I'll be there the very first day. Opening day. I'll be right in the first row, because that's where I watched you at Loew's State with Roger Edens playing away in the pit. And that's where I'll be at the Palace Theatre, Judy. And any time you get tired with this thing, feel free to come back and become a disc jockey and join us.

JG:
All right!

AF:
We like you. I don't care if you are a star, we like you! Good-bye, Judy Garland.

JG:
Good-bye. And thank you very much.

AF:
Thanks for being with us. And good luck to you at the Palace Theatre.

What began as a four-week engagement at the Palace quickly turned into a triumphant 19-week record-breaking run of 184 performances grossing nearly $800,000. In March 1952, Judy was presented a special Tony Award for her “important contribution to the revival of vaudeville.” She and Sid Luft took the Palace show on the road for four-week stints with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, but further tour plans came to a halt when Judy discovered she was pregnant. She and Sid were married on June 8 between shows in San Francisco.

“A woman needs a man to protect her and love her,” says Judy. And it looks as if she's found him—at long last

For Judy Garland, the past few years have been filled with frustrations and unhappiness, but the nightmare was blotted out by the cheers and bravos of a tear-swept audience one April night last year at the Palladium. In the wings, the man she loved stood proudly by. The presence of Sid Luft made her happiness complete.

He was standing by her side again a few weeks ago on Judy's closing night at the Palace Theatre. In her dressing room, in one of her rare interviews, the twice-divorced star told this writer why she had chosen Sid Luft to be her husband.

“Any woman who's a real woman wants a man to protect her and love her,” she said. “That's what Sid Luft does for me. We have accomplished so much together.”

The facts are there to prove it.

Directly over her brown head, as she spoke, was a new but permanent fixture on the wall, a gleaming, gold plaque which read:

T
HIS WAS THE DRESSING ROOM OF
JUDY GARLAND W
HO SET THE ALL-TIME LONG RUN RECORD OCT
. I
6TH,
1951 T
O FEB.
24TH, 1952, RKO PALACE THEATRE.

For 20 exciting, song-filled weeks, the star who had tried to end her life in despair before she met Sid Luft had made show business history. Not only had she become the world's highest-paid performer, but she was acknowledged by all to be tops in her profession. Sophie Tucker, the grand old veteran of song, had wept on opening night at the comeback drama of the glorious Garland voice and sense of showmanship.

Looking back over those satisfying weeks, Judy said, “This whole thing at the Palace has been magical.” Huddled in her cotton dressing gown, she looked youthful and slender once again.

“Sid has done it for me,” she said simply.

He reentered the room which he had left when Judy started to discuss her feelings for him.

“That's my fella,” she praised as she watched him adoringly through the dressing-table mirror. Brown-haired, brown-eyed, with much the same coloring as Judy, the soft-spoken Luft is tall, slender and handsome.

There is no inordinate display of affection from this couple in love. Just a quiet acceptance and understanding of what each means to the other.

The telephone rang. It was for Luft, who was arranging some last-minute details for a closing-night party in the theater. Judy had been disappointed earlier that they might not be able to hold it in the Palace, but Luft with deft, able management had smoothed out the wrinkles, much to Judy's pleasure.

He explained to her in amusing detail how he had accomplished it. Her upturned nose crinkled in gleeful delight at this recital, and she doubled up in joyous laughter.

The happy secure girl was far different from the frightened, bewildered, overweight creature she had been before Luft and love changed her life.

Before they first went out together, each was living a day-to-day existence. Luft, too, was at loose ends.

The romance between Judy Garland and Sid Luft was almost over before it began.

It happened like this:

“Judy Garland, please. Sid Luft is calling.”

“Just a moment, sir. I'll see if she's in.” The New York hotel switchboard operator left the line. When she returned, she said briskly: “Miss Garland has gone out.”

Disappointed, Sid Luft hung up the telephone. Perhaps he hadn't been definite enough about the date he had arranged for that November night in 1950. Maybe Judy misunderstood or maybe she was just kidding a few evenings before when she agreed to go out with him. They had met at a party. Later when the group went to El Morocco, he and Judy had danced together and laughed together, too.

“Well,” Luft reasoned as he walked away from the phone, “I guess it's just one of those things.”

The same unhappy thoughts were sifting through the mind of singing star as she paced the living room of her hotel suite. In a wall mirror she caught her reflection, all dressed up and obviously not going any place.

“You might as well take your hat off, Judy,” she told her shining self. “You've been stood up.”

It might have ended there except that a few nights later, the two met again at a New York party, this time a bit frostily. But nobody can be indifferent for long when Judy Garland's around.

“What happened to you the other night?” Luft got up enough courage to ask her.

Judy's famous cascading laugh rang out. “What happened to
me?”
I like that. “What happened to you?
I
was there!”

In the midst of relieved explanations they made another date and kept it.

The Garland laugh, which had been stifled too long in the months of personal tragedy and turmoil, rang out more often after that and it was no coincidence that she laughed longest and happiest when Sid Luft was at her side.

The sparkle was back in her deep brown eyes, her voice and her smile.

Judy Garland was in love!

Her millions of fans who sat in judgment on everything she did took a dim view of this new man in her life.

“Did Judy do the right thing in divorcing her director-husband, Vincente Minnelli?” they asked querulously. “Should she have terminated her contract with M-G-M? Will this Luft, Lynn Bari's ex-husband, break her heart?”

The valiant singing star heard these rumblings. In the hectic years before when she was a public puppet whose talent and destinies were pulled and tugged at by many, she might have listened, but in her own emotional upheaval of maturity she had broken the strings that had made her bow and sing and dance to others' biddings.

At long last, she was a free soul.

“Judy and I never had any doubts,” Luft told this writer.

“I love Judy. I want to protect her from the trauma she once knew. I don't want her to be bewildered or hurt again. I want her to have happiness. She knows now what she wants and that's to be free to make her own decisions, not to be tied down to any studio. I, nor anyone else, can never force her to do anything she doesn't want to do. When she was a child and a star, everyone was telling her what was good for her. She listened. The only security she knew was that she had a talent, one that she takes for granted because singing is as much a part of her as breathing. She has no desire to retire because she always has to sing.”

Whenever Judy enters a room, even if it's filled with glamorous women in jewels and furs, somehow Judy involuntarily takes over the room. That's the magic of her talent.

It was in London, where Judy had cabled Luft in Hollywood to join her “for moral support,” that the star asked him to manage a tour she was to make in the English and Scottish provinces. He realized that physical health and exercise were as essential to her well-being as emotional security. In Scotland, Luft, a good golfer, introduced Judy to the game that originated there.

“Her fourth time on a golf course, she shot a 48 for nine holes,” he recalled with pardonable pride. “In Glasgow I had a set of clubs made to her measure—she's not very tall, you know, and needed special clubs. We had a little set made for her daughter, Liza, too, with her name on them.”

After her endurance test of 20 record-breaking weeks at the Palace theatre, Judy proved she is in top condition again.

That last night as she sat in the dressing room and discussed her plans, she admitted with a peaceful, gentle smile that for the first time in many years she had no problems. She was no longer the puppet on the string. No one was tugging at her.

Her future had been planned at her own bidding; marriage to Luft at a then-undisclosed time and place, and a sunny sojourn in Florida with rest and golf her prime requisites.

In the latter part of April, she said, she was scheduled to appear at the Philharmonic Auditorium for four weeks in her show, which carries the credit line, “Production under Supervision of Sidney Luft.” After Los Angeles, she planned to take her act to San Francisco. In late fall, she hopes to make her first movie since
Summer Stock.

“None of this would have been possible,” she said glowingly, “without Sid. He and I have accomplished so much in the last year. He's the kind of person you can lean against if you fall down. He's strong and protects me. I respect him. And most important, I like him as much as I love him.”

By the time the Lufts welcomed baby daughter Lorna on November 21, 1952, everything seemed to be on track for Judy's return to films, a musical remake of
A Star is Born.
She and Sid formed their own production company to co-produce the film, which took several years to make and more than nine months to shoot. The result of the $4.8 million Warner Brothers endeavour was nothing short of phenomenal, a unanimous success, with
Time
calling
Star
“a massive effort. Judy Garland gives what is just about the greatest one-woman show in modern movie history…. A stunning comeback.”

Variety
concluded “the tremendous outlay of time and money is fully justified. It is to the credit of Jack Warner that he kept his mind and purse strings open and thus kept the project going.” But it was Jack's brother, Harry Warner, that sliced and diced
A Star is Born
to pieces shortly after its promising premiere. He ordered nearly a half hour be cut from its run time, seriously compromising its continuity. Judy never got over the hack job that many felt cost her the Oscar that year. In private she was known to call him “Horseshit Harry,” exclaiming that he “cut
A Star is Born
with his gums!”

“Timpani!” may not mean much to you—but it set the stage for one of Hollywood's greatest comebacks

Judy Garland and Sid Luft, two young people very much in love, sat close together in their parked car on a promontory of Lookout Mountain. Below them glittered the lights of Hollywood.