Judy Garland on Judy Garland (57 page)

GRL:
I did it with Shirley Jones. Shirley Jones left some pictures when she was on the show and they weren't autographed, and I was in there forging her handwriting on all of them.
[Laughs.]

JG:
Don't leave your checkbook behind!
[Laughs.]

GRL:
But it was so funny this morning before Judy got here.
Everybody
was in my dressing room cleaning up the place. They hid
everything!
They took all the Kleenexes and threw them away because Kleenexes, this is an ugly-looking thing, you know? It's utilitarian! They swept the floor, they cleaned the mirrors, they hid all my old clothes.
[Judy laughs.
] Finally they saw this list of pictures that belonged to Shirley Jones and they started throwing those away, and I said,
“Wait
a
minute!
After all, she
did
win an Academy Award, you know!”

JG:
That's more than I did, you know. I've been …

GRL:
If it'd been a picture of some naked girl sitting there or something that could have
offended
Judy….
[Judy laughs.]
But believe me, this is the cleanest my dressing room has been since I've been up here.

JG:
Really? Well, it's very clean.

GRL:
I know, but they were squirting us with something to make it smell good and everything. Did you notice that?
[Laughs.]
It doesn't smell like that as a
rule! [Laughs.]
I mean, just at the last minute, somebody forgot and left that great, huge garbage can right outside the door! [All
laugh.]
And what do they do with the garbage can? They put it in the elevator and then Judy … [All
laugh.]
We'll be back in one minute.

[Commercial break.]

GRL:
[
Laughs.]
No, but I was saying how we got everything all cleaned up and everything. I've known for about three days that Judy was going to be on the show, so I figured I am not going to
capitalize
on this, but I
couldn't
resist and I got on the phone and I called
everyone.
I called Hedda Hopper, I called the AP. I called the UP. Everybody I
know,
I telephoned! Then I started calling a few people I didn't know because I thought this is a great excuse. So I called, finally, New York to get the telephone number of Judith Anderson, who is going to be playing in
Medea,
and I thought, “Oh, how I'd love to have her on the show.” So I thought, “What a good excuse,
you see,
to telephone her.” So I said, “Hello, darling.” I said, “I'm so hoarse. My throat
[coughs]
… But it
is
Gypsy Rose Lee. Remember, I met you twenty-seven years ago at a cocktail party? [All
laugh.]
And I said, “Please forgive me for being so hoarse, but I've been talking to Judy Garland.
[Clears throat.]
She's going to be on the show tomorrow. [All
laugh.]
I called my sister in New York. I called
everybody
! I was so excited about the whole thing. Then, of course, I must tell you the tragic thing. Last night, Mark Herron called and said, “Judy can't make it, she still has a cold,” and I almost committed suicide.

JG:
I had a
streaming
cold.

GRL:
I know. Bless your heart … the fact that you came here at all, really … because, it's true, she did have a cold. She came up here [to San Francisco] to rest, really.

JG:
And I'm appearing at that great big theater.

GRL:
Yes! The Greek Theatre.

JG:
No, right here. The Circle Star [Theatre in San Carlos].

GRL:
Oh, Circle Star. That only seats about four thousand or five thousand people, but the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles seats sixteen thousand!

JG:
Yes. And a lot of moths. [
Audience laughs.]
Can I tell you a story? [
Laughs.]

GRL:
It's outdoors, isn't it?

JG:
It's outdoors, and really, I'm quite frightened of bugs and things that fly toward you, and when you're outdoors and entertaining and the lights are on you and bugs are attracted to you. So I'd gone through my whole show, and I was being sort of very pitiful and just darling, you know, and sitting on the stairs with the tramp makeup and I was singing “Over the Rainbow,” and everybody was sort of going
[makes crying sounds]
and I was really just perspiring. Right in the middle of “Over the Rainbow” this moth flew right into my mouth.
[Audience laughs.]
Right into my mouth! Now, in the middle of “Over the Rainbow” you can't go [
makes spitting sounds].
You can't do it! [All
laugh.]

GRL:
Oh, you didn't! You didn't!

JG:
So all of a sudden I went
[gestures]
and parked him there, and he was with me all the way through! [All
laugh.]
It's absolutely true! And he flew and fumbled around and I just went on and sang … until finally the lights went out and it was such a spitting and stamping of feet. I just had to let him
stay
once he was there!
[Audience laughs.]
What do you do, spit it at 16,000 people?
[Audience laughs.]
I couldn't very well do
that.

GRL:
Have you ever done any of these
[coughs]
… I've laughed so hard … between the telephone and laughing, I've just ruined myself. I'll never sing tonight! [All
laugh.]
I hate to disappoint all those people at the Greek Theatre, too, but …
[laughs]
it isn't really the Greek Theatre, it's a Greek coffee shop where I'm doing belly dancing. [All
laugh.]
No, but this whole thing reminded me, when I was doing a number in Syracuse at a fair. Mike Todd was with me there. It was between jobs for both of us, you know, and somebody had to be working. And I dressed in the room where they curried the horses during the day, literally, and in order to get to the stage you had to cross the whole racetrack.

JG:
How do you curry a horse?

GRL:
With a curry comb…. you know, to get the bugs off and … horses are dirty, you know. Oh, of course they are. Anyway, it had rained the night before …

JG:
I hit one once. I hit a horse once.

GRL:
Oh, darling, please don't tell anybody because I don't want to have to report you.

JG:
I did. I hit him in the nose.

GRL:
I don't want to have to report you, Judy, to the ASPCA.

JG:
He had a policeman on his back.

GRL:
Oh, well, of course you're lying! [All
laugh.]

JG:
It was a good shot, anyway.

GRL:
But I was in the middle of a field, all during my number, and it was a very quiet number. I tried to get the audience in the proper frame of mind … for me to take off my clothes … [all
laugh]
and there was a cow tethered—I think that's what you call it—right next to the ramp leading up to the stage, and all during the number he's going “mooooooo, mooooooo.” [All
laugh.]
Trains are going by, the “toot-toot-toot….” [All
laugh.]
And then, as I lift my skirt to roll down my stockings, two great huge moths flew out! [All
laugh.]

JG:
Ooh! How
funny!
Really!

GRL:
It was such a laugh, I wanted to keep it in the act, but I could never train a moth to do it again! [All
laugh.]
I tried doing it with those Japanese paper moths, but it wouldn't work.

JG:
Yes, not the same.

GRL:
No, it wouldn't work. It looked false. [All
laugh.]

JG:
Well, I bet they have moths around the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles that are as big as anything Bela Lugosi could dream up. Great big fat moths.

GRL:
Moths are all around. They're talent scouts.

JG:
Well, I shook hands with several of them! [All
laugh.]
Well, I'm going to miss that at this engagement here at the Circle Star. It's a very pretty theater.

GRL:
Have you worked this sort of theater before?

JG:
No, well, I did it once in Australia, which we won't even talk about. Australia—well, we might as well talk about it—was agony because no one told me if they like you in Sydney, they
loathe
you in Melbourne. And if they like you in Melbourne, they hate you in Sydney. If you just go there, two cents plain, and sing away, they go
“Yeah!
” in Sydney, and they just say, “
We don't like her!”
in Melbourne. And you come in and say “hello,” and they say, “GET
OUT! GO AWAY!”
And you say, “Well, I can't get out until I've
sung.
Because I'm supposed to sing here!” [They say,] “We don't want you to sing, lady. Just get out.” So then they all got loud and drunk because they'd closed the bars.

GRL:
Talking about beers?

JG:
Yes. Kangaroo beers, I suppose.

GRL:
Oh, my God, that beer has
hair
on it! [All
laugh.]

JG:
And I carry a hand mic and some members of the press sitting along here would just take great pleasure in grabbing the cord of the hand mic, and I'd start waltzing across and all of a sudden,
BOOM
I'd get pulled back. So it was sort of a tug-of-war between the press and me. The press was saying, “Why don't you come down here and get drunk instead!” [All
laugh.]

GRL:
Oh,
really!
You know, before I went to Australia, they warned me. They said, you know, the Australians are sort of the Texans of the Pacific. Well, I never saw anything like that in Texas.

JG:
Well, they're brutish.

GRL:
But pretty healthy with all of it, you know.

JG:
Oh, I didn't think …

GRL:
You didn't think so. Of course, I was booked in Melbourne, but all I played was Sydney.

JG:
Oh, Syndey's nice.

GRL:
But they wouldn't book me anywhere else. They canceled me right after Sydney. I have no idea
why. [All laugh.]

JG:
No, seriously, Sydney is quite lovely.

GRL:
But they loathed me so that they wanted to ban me before I ever went on the stage. So I said, “How can you ban me when you haven't caught the act yet?” So in all the newspapers were big front-page stories about “Are we going to allow this disgraceful thing to take place in Sydney, Australia,” and of course when I went on stage it was such an innocuous act, you know, really. You see more on the beaches than I showed in my last encore. [
All laugh.]
And then everybody was so disappointed. They said, “Is
this
what they get all excited about in Los Angeles and New York?” I tried to explain to them that they didn't really get excited, that I just barely scratched out a living. [All
laugh.]
The only one who was excited was
me!
Oh, we have a commercial for just one minute. I was only kidding about Australia!

[
Commercial break.]

GRL:
I was just telling Judy Garland that I wish she wouldn't diet so much and get so thin. Not that you don't look wonderful on television, but even when you put on a little weight, your legs stay lean.

JG:
Yes, well, I just
demand
that they stay lean. They have to get around so much. They're a moving target.

GRL:
You have
wonderful
legs!

JG:
Yes, well, they're straight. I think that's the thing.
[Laughs.]
They're just legs, you know!

GRL:
No! Not really. Not really. I think that I saw the picture of you in the paper a few days ago and I'd talked to you on the phone and you said, “Oh, I've gained weight again.” But you haven't gained that much weight.

JG:
No, I've gained some.

GRL:
You do remember, darling, you were
really
heavy when you played London, and that was one of the great big smash successes of your life.

JG:
Yes, I was very heavy. It was quite a while ago, as a matter of fact, when I fell down at opening night.

GRL:
Wasn't it wonderful?

JG:
Wasn't it awful?

GRL:
Wonderful!
Oh, it was a buzz that just resounded all over the world.

JG:
I was supposed to go out and sing three songs, and just bow slightly—sort of a curtsy—and go off and then come back and sing three other
outrageous
arrangements. They started to play my overture and my knees locked
[Gypsy laughs],
just like Frankenstein's bride. And they wouldn't bend! And I really walked on with two stiff legs, you know, and I just stood there in terror and sang the three songs. Then I thought, “Now it's time to bow.” So I bowed and I just kept
going! [All laugh.]
I did one little curtsy and one nerve undid, and I just wound up sitting on the floor.

GRL:
I thought what you did was trip and then you really took a real fall.