Judy Garland on Judy Garland (55 page)

GL:
You have?

JG:
Yes. That's why I wanted to do the picture, and I was very flattered to be asked by Stanley Kramer to be in it.

GL:
I believe, in 1949 you were in a hospital in Boston.

JG:
That's right.

GL:
And you met a retarded child.

JG:
Yes, I met a whole hospital full and they really are so full of love and unquestioning affection. Many of them have very high IQs. The fact that the muscular coordination doesn't work sometimes doesn't mean that, in other words, they shouldn't be just shuttered away and be ashamed of. And I think the Joseph Kennedy Foundation is helping a great deal. I hope you like the film when you see it. I hope many people go to see it.

GL:
Did it help you in your own case? I think you had a nervous breakdown at this time in 1949. Did this help you, getting to know a retarded child?

JG:
Yes, yes.

GL:
How did it help you?

JG:
Well, it helped me by just getting my mind off myself. They were so delightful. They were so loving and good, and I forgot about myself for a change. And they liked to hear music. And they liked to display a kind of an unlimited approval of you; whether you approve of them or not, doesn't make any difference.

GL:
You're quite a legend. A legend in what you do and what you're able to do with audience. Miss Garland, what is it you do to an audience? What do you give an audience?

JG:
I just sing, so [
laughs]
I don't know. I just …

GL:
No one else has quite been able to do this. Or very
few
people have been able to do what you do with an audience.

JG:
Well, I like my audiences so much. I have great respect for them. I think anybody who'll sit in a chair and look at one person and pay money to see that, I think that's a great tribute. There's a kind of … a maybe a marriage between the audience and myself.

GL:
Do you become very emotionally involved with an audience when you're performing?

JG:
To a point. If I became emotionally involved I'd go sit in front and applaud, I suppose. Or else boo!
[Laughs.]
The only thing I can say is I'm involved to the extent of wanting to
please
my audience as much as I can.

GL:
You've had many bouts of illness and you've made many comebacks.

JG:
About a hundred and eighty-five up to now.

GL:
A hundred and eighty-five comebacks.

JG:
Yes, yes.
[Both laugh.]
I don't think I ever went anywhere, did I, really?

GL:
You're always coming back.

JG:
I'm just always coming back. [
Laughs.]

GL:
Well, this is how the press seems to treat it.

JG:
I know.

GL:
Does it worry you very much?

JG:
No.

GL:
Do you care very much about what you read about yourself in the press?

JG:
I don't read too much about myself. I'm working too hard.

GL:
You work hard. You work so hard that you become ill sometimes. You have been ill in the past.

JG:
Oh, no, I haven't been ill for a hundred and eight years!
[Laughs.]
I've done every job they've thrown at me.
[Laughs.]

GL:
All right, why do you do it? Why do you drive yourself so much?

JG:
Because I was born to do that to work and to try to entertain, take people's minds off their troubles for a while, if I can.

GL:
And where do you derive—

JG:
[Interrupting.]
Why are you looking at me this way?

GL:
Well, I can't see you any other way. [All
laugh.]

JG:
Just staring—you haven't blinked
once! [All laugh.]

GL:
I have, believe me. [All
laugh.]
What gives you satisfaction when you're singing and you have an audience?

JG:
Their approval.

GL:
Is this what you live for?

JG:
Yes.

GL:
Do you live for other things?

JG:
Money.

GL:
Anything else?

JG:
I don't think so. No, what would you think?

GL:
Your children?

JG:
Well, that money's for my children.

GL:
You've established a fund for the children, I believe, for your children?

JG:
Oh, yes, yes.

GL:
Do you want them to go into show business? One of them has been, I believe.

JG:
One is an
enormous star!
Yes, she's a great recording artist and she's now understudying Barbra Streisand in a Broadway show.
*
And they're writing a show just for her to do. That's Liza, my oldest daughter.

GL:
Does it make you happy they're in show business? That
Liza's
in show business?

JG:
Yes, it makes me very happy. I think it's something to be very proud of.

GL:
You started in show business yourself when you were about twelve. Or two and a half or something.

JG:
Two!
Two. Yeah. That's a bit young.

GL:
Does it make life more difficult for you when you start at this age?

JG:
No, no, no. I don't think so. I think the sort of climaxes and payoffs are much, much more important than any little minor difficulty that might happen, you know.

GL:
What are you like as a person? Some people think you're rather temperamental and they're afraid of you.

JG:
I know. I've always heard that.

GL:
They're afraid if they rub you off the wrong way you'll run out of the door.

JG:
Yes, I know. Well, it's just what you see here! [
Laughs.]

GL:
This, obviously, doesn't worry you.

JG:
No, I don't know why they think that. I suppose they are told that by other people. Maybe they read it. In the papers.

GL:
I think, somewhere, you said that you were a temperamental Irish biddy.

JG:
No, I said I was just an Irish biddy.
[Laughs, puffing a cigarette.]

GL:
Are you superstitious?

JG:
I don't
dare
be now that I'm flying. I didn't fly on airplanes till three years ago. I don't
dare
be superstitious. No, not really superstitious.

GL:
What do you like doing when you're not performing? When you're not resting?

JG:
I like to be with my children. Cook. I like to cook. I'm a good cook. I am quite a good cook.

GL:
There's a story about you cooking for yourself at night, relaxing.

JG:
Yes, it's good. It's a good thing.

GL:
And you do this to relax after a show? You go home and you cook something?

JG:
Yes, I make up recipes.

GL:
Which you don't eat.

JG:
No, I don't eat them.

GL:
Who eats them?

JG:
My children. I put them in the icebox.
[Laughs.]
Then they taste them, and if they like them I know that I'm a hit with the kids.

[Scenefrom
The Wizard of Oz
(1939).]

GL:
With that song [“Over the Rainbow”], which she made, and which made
her
at the age of seventeen, and her chaotic years behind her, Judy Garland still seems to be looking for the rainbow. We're indebted to United Artists for
I Could Go On Singing,
for the extracts from that, and from the Burt Lancaster-Judy Garland movie,
A Child Is Waiting,
and to M-G-M for being allowed to show the extract you've just seen from
The Wizard of Oz,
which was done twenty-three or twenty-five years ago, I think.

*
At the time of this interview, Judy was under the impression that Liza was Streisand's
Funny Girl
understudy.

Filling in for an ill Nat “King” Cole, Judy flew to Toronto on February 6 for a weeklong engagement at the O'Keefe Centre. The following day, she visited privately with Canadian broadcaster Laurier LaPierre before participating in a press conference at the King Edward Sheraton Hotel. Both discussions were edited into a segment for
This Hour Has Seven Days,
a television news magazine broadcast on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

John Drainie (host):
Judy Garland rocketed over the rainbow to stardom when she was twelve. Now, three marriages, several breakdowns, and three hundred concerts later, Judy's still in there pitching with the same old magic.

Judy Garland:
[Closing eyes.]
Oh, dear.

Laurier LaPierre:
But you have such lovely eyes. No, leave them open. And could you tell me what you feel as you walk on that stage and face all these thousands of people?

JG:
I feel
marvelous.

LL:
Do they give you a feeling of accomplishment?

JG:
They give me a feeling of love.

JD:
But what are those times, Laurier wondered, when the audience may be hostile?

LL:
Do you feel frightened of them?

JG:
Terrified.

LL:
Terrified. Completely terrified.

JG:
Yes.

LL:
But the courage amount—it must be amazing to carry on.

JG:
Well, I've been doing shows for many years and it's my business, and so I have to kind of expect anything, you know. But I'm a very lucky woman.

LL:
Madame—mademoiselle, rather—your daughter …

JG:
Yes.

LL:
The world has discovered the very great talent that she has, and I understand she's about to be in a new production
[Flora, the Red Menace]
directed by Mr. [George] Abbott and so forth.

JG:
That's right.

LL:
If you were to look back, Madame Garland, on your life, what sort of advice would you give to your very talented and very beautiful daughter Liza?

JG:
I don't give her any advice. She's very wise. And she's seen my mistakes and my fears and so forth. And she has her feet on the ground all the time.

LL:
Is the search for publicity a drive in an artist or does it come naturally that people would be interested in you? Or do you seek out [publicity]?

JG:
No, I don't seek out … I'm quite shy, really.

LL:
You're a quite shy person, aren't you?

JG:
Yes.

LL:
And you are overwhelmed, perhaps, by this? Angered?

JG:
Not angered. I just I don't know what they yell about when I sing.

LL:
But, for instance, you could not even have a love affair, you know, without the whole world knowing about it …

JG:
Who said that?

LL:
[You could not have a love affair] without the whole world knowing about it, madam.

JG:
Well,
really!

LL:
I mean, you are capable of a love affair, no doubt, but without the whole world knowing about it?

JG:
Well, that's all right. It makes it sort of
classy,
I think.

LL:
It gives a certain tone to the love affair, which might not have happened otherwise.
[Both laugh.]
In your life, can you tell me a very happy, blissful moment you have had? Could you describe it?