Judy Garland on Judy Garland (47 page)

Kay Thompson, Judy's longtime friend from the old M-G-M days and a consultant on her recent TV show, says, “Most people still think Judy is helpless, with people waiting on her and doing things for her. She not only conceived and selected her own concert program, but she made all the musical arrangements, designed her own clothes, and supervised the lighting. She has an executive's mind. She goes in, gets the thing done and leaves.”

About this, Judy says, “If I didn't know how to do these things, I'd be pretty dumb after all these years. It's a protection for me to have technical knowledge. It makes other people around me happy, because they don't have to worry about
all
the millions of details.

“I design all my own clothes because I got bored with couturiers poking at me and murmuring, ‘We understand your fitting problem.' I can never wear the expensive dresses they create. I put them down in the cellar. I don't flatter myself. I do my best to overcome my basic problem by my own designs. For one thing, I'm so short that I should wear a narrow skirt. I choose the material and send my designs for suits and dresses to a good tailor.”

As for the spell she casts on audiences, one of her musicians says, “She sends out yoga waves. She has every heart with her. One of the reasons is that she's a real musician. I respect her so much I'd work for her for nothing.”

Judy herself says she “hasn't a clue” as to her mesmerism. “It
may
be my power of concentration. I really mean every word of every song I sing, no matter how many times I've sung it before. But then in Paris and Amsterdam, I didn't sing in French or Dutch, and the same audience uproars took place. So I really don't know what it is. Something wonderful takes place between me and all the people out there. It's like a marvelous love affair. All you have to do is never cheat and work your best and work
your hardest, and they'll respond to you. Such satisfaction can't apply to many other things in life.”

In Berlin, for the premiere of
Judgment at Nuremberg
—for which she received her second Academy Award nomination—she was trailed by photographers and fans, gave a mass interview to the German press. “There's a trick about handling crowds,” she says. “If you try to push your way through in a panic, they'll mob you. The psychology is to walk very slowly, talking and joking as you walk. Then they are nice and sweet, nobody gets hurt or pushed, or mad at you—and we all end by loving each other.”

In takeoff from Toronto, after two concerts there, Judy sits next to her husband, praying and clutching photographs of her children. “I'm just a sentimental and superstitious old Irish biddy at heart,” she says. Between travels (“It's the traveling that knocks me out”), they live mostly in the East, in New York City and Scarsdale, NY. Last summer, they lived in Hyannis Port, Mass, in a house near the Kennedys' (they are friendly with President Kennedy). “I'll never live in California full time again,” she says.

With director Norman Jewison, Judy watches a playback of her recent TV show. She performed each number in one “take,” without mistake or mishap, as in her concerts. When she struck a note she wasn't pleased with, she'd joke, “I sound like Andy Devine or the Andrews Brothers.” But she was exultant that her show “really catches the live feeling of being in a theater.”

After the last concert of her tour, in Washington, Judy and her husband threw a party for her musicians, later played poker (“baseball”) all night. Judy often has trouble sleeping and, at home, spends her sleepless hours reading and cooking. “When my body becomes immobilized from too much reading and sitting,” she says, “I get up in the quiet of the night and cook something delicious—which I never eat. I put my marvelous concoctions in the icebox to surprise the children in the morning.”

“It's a great thing to lose fear. I had an unreasonable block against television, and I had to break through this final block in my life. My previous TV shows were utter chaos to me, because I was so frightened. In those shows, I'd blow up like a fish—you know, the kind of fish that expands if you tickle its tummy?” When someone called her the greatest entertainer of her time, she said, “Oh, no. What about Jolson and Sinatra?”

The
Make Believe Ballroom
was a mythical venue debuting in 1935 on WNEW 1130 in New York. Williams B. Williams took the reins as host in 1958 and was known to buck the mainstream top 40 trends fueling other popular stations. He remained focused on and faithful to pop standards and the music of his friends, which included everyone from Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett to Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald. Judy was also among Williams' esteemed list of friends, and joined the host to play selections from her Carnegie Hall album in this “ballroom” setting for what proved to be a wonderful hour commemorating the first anniversary of her 1961 Carnegie triumph. A month later, on May 29, 1962,
Judy at Carnegie Hall
was awarded an astounding five Grammy awards, including Best Solo Performance by a Female and the prestigious Album of the Year.

Judy Garland:
This is Judy Garland. Welcome to the
Make Believe Ballroom.
Tonight, here at the
Ballroom,
we'd like to take you back exactly one year to Carnegie Hall and we'll recreate musically what happened when I walked out on stage and began the Carnegie Hall concert of April 23, 1961.

[Plays “Just You, Just Me.”]

William B. Williams:
That was some of the excitement attended to the Judy Garland concert a year ago, and we're going to re-create the concert for you here tonight at the
Ballroom
exactly one year later. Judy, before
we get to some of the music of exactly a year ago, I wonder—first things first—a lot of people have called in and written in and are worried about how you're feeling. How do you feel?

JG:
I feel
fine.
I was never sick, I just went in for a good rest. I was just there a few days.

WBW:
I'm sure you are aware of the kind of loyalty your fans have. You have fan clubs dotted all around the landscape around New York. And we've been receiving calls all week worrying about you.

JG:
Oh, how silly. Well, I've been working for two years without letup and I thought it might be a good idea to just go into the Presbyterian—

WBW:
Columbia Presbyterian—

JG:
Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and get a few days' rest and a checkup at the same time. Therefore, I couldn't answer phone calls. It was good for me.

WBW:
You look fine. You look well rested.

JG:
I am.

WBW:
In doing this concert again, we're letting a lot of people in on what some 3,145 people witnessed a year ago. What were your feelings? Was that the first night of the concert engagement?

JG:
No. You mean of the concert tour?

WBW:
Of the tour itself.

JG:
No, that came, actually, in the middle of the tour. I don't remember the exact date we started the tour. I know it was in February. Was it in February? Yeah. It was in February and this was in April, so it was sort of in the middle of the tour. And you asked me how I felt?

WBW:
Mm-hm.

JG:
Well, I don't think I've ever had a more
marvelous
evening for me. I hope the audience felt the same way. I had a great time, and the response
was so gratifying. I had never seen Carnegie Hall. I'd never even been inside of Carnegie Hall.

WBW:
Well, Carnegie Hall has known—through the years—concert artists, classical artists, violinists, pianists. I wasn't there that night, but people who were there said the love of the audience for you was almost a tangible thing. It was almost something you could
feel
come out of the audience.

JG:
Where were you?
[Laughs.]

WBW:
I wasn't there that night because, frankly, I couldn't get a ticket. Tickets, as you probably know, were at a premium.

JG:
I'm just fooling you, Bill.

WBW:
I wonder, can you as a performer feel that kind of love when it erupts from an audience?

JG:
You mean, something, as you say, something tangible?

WBW:
Yeah.

JG:
Well, I don't … It sounds rather difficult, without sounding egotistical. I do feel
love,
yes, and they show me love. You know, they demonstrate their love by applause and by saying lovely things to me. And, yes, I
can
feel it. I can feel it. I hope they feel the love that I have for them.

WBW:
Do you notice a difference in cities? Are there any cities that are tougher to get audience response from than others?

JG:
This last concert tour was … I don't know why, because I've done tours before and I've been on the stage before, but this somehow, chemically or whether it was the programming of the songs or the timing, whatever, created a lot of excitement wherever we went. Some audiences, naturally, were a little slower getting started and you had to work a little harder, but they all wound up quite successfully.

WBW:
I think the rapport that exists between you as a performer and an audience is something to behold. I know of no one else who has it. Let's
get to some of the music of that concert. We're not going to follow the program as it happened that night. Right now, for example, this tune is by Noël Coward. It's called “If Love Were All.” I remember reading an interview recently that contained dialogue between Mr. Coward and yourself about show business.

JG:
Yes.

WBW:
I think it was in
Redbook.

JG:
That's right. Yes. We're very good friends.

WBW:
Do you ofttimes do Noël Coward tunes? How do you select, for example, why did you select this particular Noël Coward tune?

JG:
Well, I think that it's a lovely lyric. It's one of the most interesting and one of the most poignant lyrics that I've ever heard. It's a beautifully constructed melody, and magnificently constructed lyrically. It's always been one of my favorites. The first time I did this concert was at the Palladium in London, sort of off the cuff, actually. I didn't take much time to prepare it, but I wanted to sing one of Mr. Coward's songs, and this happened to be the one I chose because it's one of my favorite songs.

WBW:
Here then, in concert at Carnegie Hall—staid old Carnegie Hall, I might add—Miss Judy Garland, as she did one year ago, Noël Coward's “If Love Were All.”

[Plays “If Love Were All.”]

WBW:
Our guest in the
Ballroom,
Miss Judy Garland. Judy, we're going to pause now and catch up on late news and weather and then continue with our concert, the re-creation of it, of one year ago.

JG:
All right.

WBW:
All of that here at WNEW in New York, AM and FM.

[Station break.]

WBW:
Our guest is “Miss Show Business.” Who first dubbed you “Miss Show Business,” do you know, Judy?

JG:
By golly, I can't remember. I think it was Alan Livingston with Capitol Records.

WBW:
Uh huh.

JG:
Yes.

WBW:
Incidentally, speaking of Capitol Records, the concert is on Capitol Records and has sold as well as any album this size has ever sold, I think. It's a great tribute to
you,
I think, as a performer, and also to the recording technique. I think they have captured all of the excitement that was there that night.

JG:
Yes, it was quite extraordinary that they could do that, you know, because under the conditions being in the theater—and actually giving a performance and not—I, as a matter of fact, forgot that they were recording. I was too caught up with the evening and the excitement, and probably, if I'd remembered they were recording, it wouldn't have been any good. I'd have been so busy with my pear-shaped tones that don't come out well at all. But I think they did a marvelous job, technically, you know.

WBW:
For example, on this next tune—I think it's a Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer tune, “Come Rain or Come Shine”—all of the things that were in the original recording, they captured, I think, at Carnegie Hall. Did Nelson Riddle do this arrangement for you?

JG:
Yes, he did. He did the orchestration. Roger Edens did the vocal arrangement.

WBW:
Uh huh. And this is Judy in concert with “Come Rain or Come Shine.”

[Plays “Come Rain or Come Shine.”]

WBW:
In the
Ballroom
this Monday evening, our guest: Miss Judy Garland. The occasion: the first anniversary of Judy's concert at Carnegie Hall. You've taken that concert tour practically all around the world.

JG:
Well, we've gone lots of places with it. It started in England and we've played many towns in England, and we took it to France and then Holland
and let me see … then I came back to America and we played forty-two cities.

WBW:
I would be remiss, as far as your fans are concerned—and, gosh, they're in the hundreds of thousands in this area—if I didn't determine from you whether you're going to work in New York or the environs in the near future, in concert or whatever.