Judy Garland on Judy Garland (54 page)

“I didn't want to do a variety program, either. I thought we could use movie techniques to get away from pure television quality. But everyone kept telling me, ‘This is television, Judy. It's not like movies or concerts. You have to get used to this medium. Just take our word for it; we know what we're doing.' And I took their word for it. I believed they
did
know what they were doing.”

Judy sat down, tucking her frail legs beneath her. She wore a gray sweater and white Capri pants. Her fragile appearance—she now weighs 95 pounds—cloaked an inner strength compounded of instinct and a will to survive. Her enormous eyes seem to work almost independently of her thought processes. They tell you things she cannot, or will not, say herself.

As she spoke, her eyes revealed that the failure of her show was less a professional disappointment than a personal blow. Judy needs to be loved. Indeed, she dies a little without it.

The absence of an overwhelmingly large and impassioned audience for her show was a new experience in her 39 years of show business. (She started at age 2.) She had given everything. And for the first time the affection of the concert halls did not come rushing back to her. This plaintive longing to give and receive became apparent on the show, resulting in mass hysteria on the part of CBS brass.

“They told me I was a
toucher,”
giggled Judy. “They sent me back to New York and called me on the carpet for kissing my guests and for touching them with my hands.

“The room was full of executives. Dozens of 'em. Maybe even some from NBC. They said, ‘Don't touch the guest stars.' I explained that I've always been demonstrative. Some of the guests were nervous and I'd give them a pat of reassurance or hold their hands. But the executives showed me letters from viewers accusing me of being either drunk or nervous or both. They even wrote that there were supposed to be some sexual implications.

“So I said, ‘OK, I'll be absolutely sterile. I won't touch a soul.' But on the very next show Zina Bethune kept touching me. So did Vic Damone. They were nervous I guess. And so was I, for fear I'd touch them back.”

George Schlatter, the Garland show's first producer, says: “Judy's physical reaching-out was an extension of the emotional reaching she does every day to friends, and sometimes strangers. It's not a quality that lends itself to television. The camera gets in the way; it comes between Judy and the viewer. The audience remained untouched.”

But if Judy was baffled by her inability to transmit her warmth to viewers, she was fantastically rewarded financially.
CBS paid her more than four million dollars.
The money went to her production company, which paid for production costs and salaries. The network provided the airtime. Judy spent freely, giving each segment an expensive, dressed-up polish. But she banked a fortune too, and owns all 26 tapes outright. Profits from reruns are all hers.

There were crises and clashes, and nervous calls from the insomnia-plagued star at 3 and 4
AM.
People were fired. There was a procession of four producers, two directors and nine writers. But, to a man, they worked in awe of Judy Garland.

Says producer Gary Smith, who lasted 21 shows (longer than anyone else): “Everyone was afraid of Judy. I was, too. We checked with her before making decisions. Judy gobbles up people emotionally and intellectually. She wears everybody out. But she is a magnificent performer and she adapted herself beautifully to the weekly TV format.”

Judy's emotional peaks and valleys are well known. But, says Smith, she managed to be
up
for every show: “She's a
red-light
performer. When the camera's red lights blinked on, she was at a peak and ready. We had some disastrous dress rehearsals, but the same material came alive the minute we had a studio audience for Judy to react to.”

Smith was fired; he presumes by Judy. But, like the others, he has only praise for her. “She's a great creative star and an awesome personality.”

A note to Judy from CBS-TV president James Aubrey illustrates the network's regard for her—or, at least, its technique in handling stars: “It has been a tremendous thrill working with you. The tube will not shine as brightly with you off the air…. No one has ever fulfilled a commitment with more dedication or more integrity. I look forward to the future when we work together again.”

Judy is less sentimental. She looked for the amusing elements of her video experiment. “I'd really like to know who this guy Nielsen really is—and what's his first name?” she said. “Is it Ned Nielsen? I don't think there is such a person! I think there's just some guy who didn't make good with a network once and then just named himself Nielsen and became very important somehow.

“I don't know about ratings. But I
do
realize you don't do a weekly show for pure art's sake. You go in for the money, too. And if you accept as much money as I did, then you do your best.

“We made some mistakes, like the expensive turntable stage. It had a lot of noisy machinery under it and turned in a full circle so they could build back-to-back sets and swing me around. But I suffered dreadfully from motion sickness. I'd get violently ill. Or the table would come to an abrupt halt and I'd lose my balance. Once I stepped off while it was still going and staggered around like I'd jumped off a train or something. We quit using the turntable after seven shows.

“They'd edit the tapes without my knowledge. So a song with a guest star would pop up in a completely different show. My hairdo and wardrobe would mysteriously change from scene to scene.”

Jerry Van Dyke, woefully miscast as “host,” and the tea-pouring ceremony with guests were other goofs.

“The network wanted
familiar spots
like those on
The Garry Moore Show,
something people could look forward to. That's where the tea party came in. Jerry was supposed to help give a
family
feeling to the show.

“But we had nine different formats. We spent four or five weeks drifting around on the air looking for a format. They never consulted me about changes. They didn't want to upset me, they said. I followed orders until I began to listen to my own instincts.”

One thing her instincts told her was that the music was hideous.

“We had bad audio problems from the beginning,” she said, her tone serious once more. “Half the time I couldn't hear the orchestra because it was off to one side. I was told it was a unique television technique. It left the stage free for sets and backgrounds.

“I got tired of the
television look.
And I wanted to hear the music. So I yelled and they finally put the band on stage behind me. I also insisted on a hand microphone because I can control a hand mike. Nobody could turn a knob somewhere to balance out the sound.”

Judy poured another vodka and tonic. Her television problems seemed far behind her. She was happy and talkative.

“I'll miss CBS Television City. It must have been built by the same guys who designed the fun house. I could never find anything in that building. I had to get there 45 minutes early every day so I could get lost for a while. I went on the sightseeing tour with the crowds three different times just to find out where my office was.”

Judy rehearsed only two days a week, Thursdays and Fridays, taping the shows Friday nights. Often last-minute changes were made after dress rehearsal, throwing the crew of 40 into mild panic.

“I remember once we were doing a Japanese version of
My Fair Lady,
and 15 minutes before taping began, I told [producer] Bill Colleran that I thought the number was too long,” Judy recalled. “Bill hollered, ‘It's not long. It's out!' So I had to learn a couple of extra songs in a big hurry.

“Vic Damone and I never did rehearse our
West Side Story
songs. We pre-recorded them and went right on the air. A couple of times I learned the music as I sang it on the show, reading the words from idiot cards. I don't know how to read music. Never have. But we got by. How? Black Irish luck, I guess.”

Judy will return to her concert tours, grateful to television for exposing her to new fans, and hoping they I will come to hear her sing in person.

She winced when I asked if she would do another series.

“No,” she answered. “All in all, the show was a good thing to have happen to me. I learned a great deal. But if I had known what I was in for, I would never have tried a weekly series. Not ever.”

With the television series debacle only a couple of months behind her (the final episode aired March 29, 1964), Judy was booked for several concerts in Australia “to clear up some of my financial problems,” she explained. Earning a reported total of $52,000 for three shows, she was said to be the highest paid entertainer that country had seen to that point, and her reception in Sydney was deemed superior to that given Queen Elizabeth II a year prior.

Judy gave this interview to local television news personality Gerald Lyons the day she touched down in Sydney, and participated in several others during a press conference welcoming her to the city. The response to her shows was overwhelmingly positive, with
Variety
claiming, “Miss Garland won the greatest audience ovation in the history of Australian showbiz. She had the audience in the palm of her hand from the moment she stepped on the rostrum.” And a reviewer for Sydney's
Sun Herald
asserted that “The Beatles may come and go, but the past week belongs to Judy. The little figure under the lights conquered all.”

Judy's travel companion on the Aussie tour was new boyfriend Mark Herron, thirty-three, whom she had met at the very beginning of 1964 at a New Year's Eve party. The two traveled by train to Melbourne, where the response was a stark contrast to that she had received in Sydney. Judy's medication had been confiscated upon arriving in Australia, so she was trying to adjust to another variety and hadn't slept for several days. Struggling medicinally and vocally, she arrived more than an hour late (exactly sixty-six minutes, according to one reviewer) for her sold-out concert at Festival Hall. Unaware of the reasons surrounding her tardiness and unusual behavior onstage that evening, members of the restive audience became aggressive and some even shouted insults at her from their seats. Halfway through the show, while singing “By Myself,” Judy began to weep and soon bolted from the stage. She did not return.

“The legend of Judy Garland was sadly and brutally shattered,” wrote Raymond Stanley for
Variety.
“She talked and aimlessly wandered about the stage and the last thing she seemed to want to do was sing. Her total time on stage was sixty-five minutes, and she refused to take any bows or encores.” A gathering of two hundred ill-wishers convened at the Melbourne airport for a send-off when Judy and Mark fled for their next stop: Hong Kong. She was terribly ill upon arrival and was asked by the local press what she was suffering from. “Australia,” She responded.

The Australian tour was detailed by Judy in a self-penned piece that appeared in the August 1967 issue of
McCall's:
“I didn't know that Sydney and Melbourne are like Los Angeles and San Francisco. If you're a success in Sydney, you've got to be killed in Melbourne. And vice versa. I just went and tried to sing. Sydney was a tremendous success. But the Melbourne crowds were brutish, and so was the press. At my hotel in Melbourne, the press bored holes through the walls to spy on me. They'd taken the suite next to my bathroom and bedroom. So I went around with Q-Tips and stuck them through the holes. I heard screams on the other end where I'd jab the peeper in the eye. I think that is one of the reasons the reporters got mad at me.”

[Scene from
I Could Go on Singing
(1963).]

Gerald Lyons:
What Judy Garland is saying, in effect, in that scene is, “Here am I and there are you, so let's go,” something she says before every performance and something she's probably saying right now, right at this moment in Sydney, as the Australian spotlights fall on her for the first time for her Sydney opening. That film is a widescreen production, a recent one, which hasn't been released here, and it's called
I Could Go On Singing,
which could well be the theme of Judy's troubled and brilliant career in show business. Well, this picture, then, her TV shows, and her many state appearances during the past three years have been a triumphant vindication or what Judy herself has called “seven years of rotten luck.”

Now here are some scenes from another picture in which she co-starred with Burt Lancaster. It's a controversial story about retarded children called
A Child is Waiting.
In it Judy displays her talents as a dramatic actress.

[Scene from
A Child Is Waiting
(1963).]

GL:
On her arrival in Sydney, Judy received and accepted, rather never steadfast, the full star treatment from press, radio, TV reporters, and curious fans, first at the airport, then at a lavish press conference in her hotel. Show business, for all its pomp and sentimentality, is often pretty cynical, a condition that derives from broken or unfulfilled promises over the years. When anyone is as successful as Judy Garland, somewhere there are people who are just dying to ask, and often do, whether all the success will last. Press conferences like this one, even with the meddling and influences of champagne and caviar can, beneath the surface, be quite savage personal intrusions. I asked Judy if the film on retarded children held any special significance for her.

Judy Garland:
Well, I think it's a very important picture. I don't know whether people will be able to
bear
some of the truths in the picture, but it's a very fine cause, retarded children. I've worked with retarded children many years.