Judy Garland on Judy Garland (6 page)

I was so excited that I hardly knew what I was doing, but I managed to open my mouth and start singing. He evidently liked it, because he said he thought I'd be good for pictures and he'd try to fix it up for me.

Well, I had been home for a couple of days and was just about recovering from all the excitement when the phone rang and it was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios telling me to come down and see them right away. My mother wasn't home to go with me, so Dad and I went right on down. I just had on a pair of slacks and a shirt, but we were so excited and in such a rush that I didn't have time to change them.

When we got to the studio I found that they had thought that I was older than twelve years, and weren't sure whether or not they could use a girl of that age. But they let me sing, and then called Mr. Mayer down to hear me. Finally they decided that they liked my songs and signed me to a contract. That was certainly one of life's big moments for me.

The first picture I did was a short with Deanna Durbin called
Every Sunday.
We sang together in that and she and I were great friends and still see a lot of each other. After that I was in
Pigskin Parade
at 20th Century Fox.

My next picture was
Broadway Melody of 1938.
Sophie Tucker played my mother in it, and we had a lot of fun on the set while we were working. I sing a song to Clark Gable called “Dear Mr. Gable” in the picture, and I sure put my heart and soul into it because he is such a grand person. After I finished the song, he gave me a lovely bracelet.

Robert Taylor became a candid camera fiend while we were making the picture, and in between scenes he would go around snapping pictures of everyone on the set. He got behind tables and up on chairs to get unusual angles, and it seemed that every time you turned around, you bumped into him taking pictures. He was having a swell time.

I kept my fingers crossed for days before the preview and during it I was so excited that I could hardly see the screen. That preview was another one of life's big moments for me.

I love going to movies and see as many as Mother will let me. I like parties, too, and we have a lot of them at home. Most of my friends used to be in vaudeville, too, and when we have parties they all get up and put on their acts and it's grand fun. I don't care for dances very much, though,
because I think parties where you play games and do things are much more fun.

Ping-Pong is my idea of a swell game. I'm the champion Ping-Pong player at my house and pretty soon we're going to get up a Ping-Pong tournament, so I'm practicing all the time that I can.

Golf and riding and swimming are my favorite sports, and I'm crazy about baseball. I love going to baseball games and I generally cheer myself hoarse whenever anyone makes a home run.

I don't know if you have the same craze for roller coasters that I have. They scare me to death, but I love them. Whenever I can get someone to go down to the amusement pier with me, I spend most of the time on the roller coaster. Once my hat flew off, but fortunately the boy in back of me got hold of it as it soared over him. I hold on to the handrail so tightly that I wouldn't let go no matter what happened.

Well, I must go back on the set now, so I'll have to close this letter, but I want to tell you how much I enjoyed writing it and I do hope I hear from you in return.

Yours,

Judy Garland

If you will write to me and tell me whether you like musical pictures with singing and dancing best or if you would rather see just straight dramas or comedies without any music, I'll give ten autographed pictures of myself to the ten boys and girls who write the most interesting letters telling which type of movies they prefer and why. Miss Betty Turner and I will act as judges. Please write to me in care of
MOVIE MIRROR,
Junior, 7751 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, Cal., but be sure to mail your letter before December 5th, 1937.

In 1937, Gladys Hall, known as the “Grand Old Dame of the Fannies,” scored one of the first interviews with Judy Garland. The wife of noted Hollywood portrait photographer Russell E. Ball, Gladys was a founding member of the Hollywood Women's Press Club. The trusted friend and confidante of numerous Hollywood stars (including Judy), Hall was known to dine with at least three of her famous friends each week.

Here's the very first interview
[for
Motion Picture
magazine]
with Judy Garland, the new child wonder of Hollywood. Called the next “Red Hot Mama” by Sophie Tucker, Judy can put punch into a song

She still takes her Teddy Bear to bed with her. She puts her dolls to bed every night of her life.

Sophie Tucker (who ought to know) predicts that Judy Garland will be the next “red hot mama.”

She is a sort of “nut brown maid,” with dark hair and dark-brown eyes and rose-tan skin. She looks healthy and happy and wise without being sophisticated.

She adores the funny papers, with
Little Orphan Annie
nosing out the spinach-strong
Popeye
for her vote.

She reads “anything medical,” her most recent favorites being
An American Doctor's Odyssey, I Was a Probationer, Hospital Nocturne
and
The Green Light.
She also read
Gone with the Wind
and Noël Coward's
Present Indicative.

She reads all of the fan magazines. She is a Ping-Pong champion, beating the neighbor kids without much effort. She rides horseback, plays baseball, golf and tennis, the piano. She draws. She mimics other actors and actresses. She makes fudge.

Her hobby is collecting records and they include everything from swing music to the
Nutcracker Suite
and
the Afternoon of a Faun.
She adores Debussy.

She is a husky, hearty little girl with a huge appetite, an active body and an active mind. And she speaks her mind freely and frankly, without self-conscious fear of “what people will think.” She doesn't want to grow up. She wears short skirts, no makeup off the set. Her mother says that she forgets she is a picture actress immediately she leaves the studio. She becomes, at once, “just a little girl,” [when] roller-skating, making fudge, playing with dolls.

Judy is by no means one of those pathetic cases of all-work-and-no-play. If she were, her mother would see to it that No Work would be the verdict. She says: “If I study my script I get too stiff. I just sort of look at the lines. I never pose or make faces at myself in front of my mirror.” She says, too: “I used to play house all the time. Well, that's acting, same thing.”

She thinks that Hollywood is just the little old hometown where she has lived, between vaudeville tours, since she was three years old. It makes her “mad as a hornet” when people suggest that the little old hometown is mad and bad. She says: “That's crazy talk. I've been in lots of small towns and medium-sized towns and big towns when my sisters and I were a singing trio and Hollywood is just like any other small town, only better because it's more comfortable. You can go around wearing anything.

“People aren't stuck-up. People talk about other people but they do that everywhere. And they're not two-faced in Hollywood. One thing I can't stand is two-faced people—also onions and raisins and fruitcake. It also makes me sick about people with careers, even people in the movies, the way they say: ‘I've sacrificed everything for my career.' That
does
make me sick. You don't sacrifice things, you
trade
things. Like me, I can't skate and play Ping-Pong and read as much as I'd like to but then I meet Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Stewart and if that isn't a fair trade, what is?

“And Hollywood gives everybody a chance. Which is more than you can say for lots of other places. That's how I see Hollywood—as the place that gives everybody a chance. Hollywood gave me a chance. Which is really remarkable because, before Deanna Durbin made
Three Smart Girls,
fourteen-year-old girls didn't have a chance at all, in movies or on the stage. You might have thought, the way they acted, that there were no such things as fourteen-year-old girls. All fourteen-year-old girls were put away in mothballs and just not mentioned at all, except now and then by their families. Which is ridiculous as has been proven. Because fourteen-year-old girls are really very interesting people when you get to know them and they are also very interested people, which is a Point. They are the fans. They are the ones who fall in love with Clark Gable (like I did) and write most of the fan letters and fill up the theaters.

“It was very funny, the way I got my chance. As you may or may not have heard, Miss Hall, my sisters Suzanne (Suzanne is married now and Virginia, we call her ‘Jimmie,' is at home), Virginia and I were a singing trio. Mummie always played for us. We sang and everything at the World's Fair in Chicago and lots of other places. I was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, if you think anyone is interested. Well, our real name is Gumm, our parents being Frank A. and Ethel Gumm, professional people, being vaudeville people and “legit” actors and also musicians. And my father was a theater-owner, which all makes it possible for me to say that ‘the theater is in my blood.'

“Well, George Jessel changed my name. It was when we were touring and he named us the Garland Sisters. I guess the name of Gumm just didn't appeal to him, even though it was so well known. Now, Mummie has changed her name to Garland, too. Because people kept calling her ‘Mrs. Garland' so she became Mrs. Garland to save explanations. Then Suzanne got married, and as I say, that broke up our act.

“Then we were in Hollywood and a Hollywood agent saw me and heard me sing and said, very kindly, that he wanted to manage me. He took me around to lots of the studios and no one would look at me. That is, they'd take one look and then say, more loudly than was necessary: ‘I can't use her—get her away from here!'

“Then one day, after this had been going on for some time, my agent called me and said he wanted to take me to the M-G-M studio. For once, for the only time in my life, my mother wasn't home to go with me. My father went with us. Well, I just thought, oh, another old studio! I had on a pair of old slacks and an old polo shirt and I just went the way I was.

“Well, we got to M-G-M and I sang a song for Roger Edens, the musical director. I sang “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart.” My first surprise, not to say shock, was when he didn't sort of sink back like he felt sick and sort of groan: ‘Get her away from here.' No, he called Mrs. Koverman who is a Very Important Person (put that in capitals, please) in this studio. I sang “Dinah” for her. And she didn't say ‘get her away from here.' No, she called Mr. Mayer and asked him to come and hear me. Well then, Mr. Mayer, Mr.
Louis B.
Mayer, came in. He was in a Dark Mood and had a ‘get her away from here' look on his face. So then I sang “Eli, Eli” for Mr. Mayer. He didn't seem to be looking at me. I couldn't tell whether he was listening or not. It was just like a big lull flew in. I thought, so what? Now I can go home and roller-skate some more. The next day I got my contract.
The very next day.
*

“That's how I see Hollywood, too, as a place where Anything Can Happen, one big Surprise Package.

“So that was one of the Big Thrills (all the Thrills should be written capitals, I think, Miss Hall). But then, after that, nothing happened. They had Deanna Durbin under contract—at the time. Then after a while she wasn't there anymore. It looked like the fourteen-year-old girls were going back to the mothballs. I was doing radio broadcasts and things and I got so discouraged. I never get too discouraged, though, because I'm not the discouragable kind. I never mope or have Moods or interesting things like tantrums and all.” Judy's mother says that the child has such a good disposition that she doesn't really remember her as a small child because she never Made Scenes. “Anyway,” Judy added, “I did get kind of
discouraged about my Career. I'd think, when I was on the stage I used to
accomplish
something.

“Then Mummie and I went to New York for a holiday and also because I'd never been to New York. There I had another Big Thrill. We went to Coney Island and it was wonderful. But while I was in New York M-G-M sent for me to come back. Which is one of Hollywood's peculiar characteristics, as I see it. When you are right here they don't seem to want you and the minute you go away, they do want you. I thought, At Last! But when I got back I found that they wanted me to make a
short,
a short with Deanna Durbin called
Every Sunday.

“Deanna and I saw quite a lot of each other then but we haven't seen each other much lately. She is always busy. I guess she works harder than I do.

“Then I got loaned out to 20th Century Fox and played in
Pigskin Parade.
I hated myself in that. They wouldn't let me see the rushes which was too bad because if I had seen them I could have improved myself. I didn't wear any makeup and I sure looked it. I was afraid my freckles would show. Of course they didn't but I was conscious of them. But I have now got over my freckle-fear since I have observed that Myrna Loy and Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford also have freckles.

“Well, after a while Deanna made
Three Smart Girls
and then the motion picture industry rubbed its eyes and awoke to the fact that there are such things as fourteen-year-old girls and that they can be very smart girls, too, and what is known as Box Office. In the meantime, though, I went to Junior High School for a year, to public school which I had never been to before because I had always had tutors or gone to school on the M-G-M lot. But I wanted to go to public school so badly that Mummie asked the studio and they let me go. I graduated from Junior High and that was the Best Year of My Life. I loved it.