Judy Garland on Judy Garland (61 page)

JG:
Well, I wear those four-and-a-half-inch heels so I can look like I have some status and … [To
Lorna.]
Come on, let's stand up and be counted, shall we? Will the real Lorna Luft stand up? Now, this is ridiculous, you
know, when I try to say,
[looking up to Lorna]
“Liza [or] Lorna, you shouldn't stay out so late!”

BW:
It's not like you can bawl them out when they're an inch or so taller than you are.

JG:
Well, I'm only four feet eleven, you know. I'm glad that my daughters are taller.

BW:
A lovely daughter. I just wanted everyone to see how tiny …
[Judy stands on tiptoes, looks down at Lorna and kisses her on the cheek.] There
we go!

JG:
Can we sit down?

BW:
Yes! You can sit down.

JG:
[
To Joe.]
Do you want to stand up?

JL:
No.

JG:
OK!
[Laughs.]

BW:
Should we point out—I'm about to—that you're wearing your daughter Lorna's clothes today?

JG:
Yes!

BW:
A very pretty little dress and coat. [To
Lorna.]
How do you feel about that, Lorna?

LL:
Well, we wear the same size clothes. I can't fit into Mama's clothes, but she can fit into mine. When I get a dress I usually get two!
[Judy laughs.]

BW:
We all remember
The Wizard of Oz
with so much joy and it's such a happy picture. Was it happy for you to make it?

JG:
I enjoyed it very much. And I enjoy it today. [To
Lorna.]
I think you and I looked at it last time and it was all this
crying! [Laughs.]

BW:
I wondered. I was going to ask Lorna. What do you think of it?

LL:
Oh, I just love it, you know. It's a classic, you know. It'll never die. You know?

BW:
Do you feel as if you're looking at your mother?

LL:
Oh, yes! But when you look at it you can really believe that's happening. It's not like something like a cartoon. You can
believe
there is a place called Oz.

BW:
And your mother was just the age that you are now when she made it.
[Lorna nods her head.]
That must make you feel a little odd, doesn't it?

LL:
No, not really.

JG:
[
Laughs.]
Oh, darling …

BW:
What about you, Joe, have you seen it?

JL:
Yeah, and I could just watch it for a million times. [
All laugh.]
I never get tired of it.

BW:
Aww.

“The sob queen of all time, Judy Garland had come to town,” John Gruen recalled in his fascinating memoir,
Callas Kissed Me … Lenny Too!
“I instantly alerted the
[New York] Times
and asked to do the interview. I was overjoyed and hastened to prostrate myself at her feet, because, needless to say, I was one of her most ardent fans…. I desperately needed to come face to face with this forty-five-year-old monument to suffering, this paragon of survival and showbiz glitz and glitter.”

Gruen's interview with Judy was conducted on March 9, 1967, but never appeared in the
Times.
Instead, the encounter was detailed in the
New York
magazine supplement to the short-lived
World Journal Tribune,
a hybrid newspaper with circulation limited to newsstand sales around the city. The publication survived a mere eight months, but
New York
was soon revamped as a glossy standalone magazine and has remained popular for many decades. This particular issue was one of the first known appearances of the now familiar
New York
typeface.

Garland was in town, staying at the St. Regis Hotel. She came for two reasons: to attend her daughter Liza Minnelli's wedding to actor Peter Allen and to hold a press conference, arranged by 20th Century Fox, about her forthcoming role in
Valley of the Dolls,
Jacqueline Susann's epic tribute to Hollywood and Broadway stardom at its most drug-drenched and sex-besotted. Miss Garland's role will be that of Helen Lawson, an aging queen of Broadway musicals who, as a recent ad informs us, “had the talent
to get to the top—and had the claws to stay there.”

This talony description does not really fit our Judy. Indeed, the character named Neely O'Hara comes much closer to the mark. Neely's blurb reads: “To her, stardom was too many minks, too many martinis and men.” In effect, since the appearance of Susann's best-seller, the guessing games as to who was modeled after whom have been running rampant and Judy Garland's name has been high on the list as approximating the beautiful, desperate Neely.

Be that as it may, someone else will play that role because Judy has grown too old for the part. She is 45—not really old, not really young—about midstream in a life which, in terms of emotional investment, has left inner scars.

I appear at the St. Regis at 7
PM
on the last day of Miss Garland's visit to New York. The plan is that we quietly dine together and talk about a million things. When I arrive, her suite is alive with children, grown-ups, ringing phones, and with Miss Garland herself, the center of all the commotion. Her daughter Liza, now Mrs. Peter Allen, greets me at the door. The Garland energy, enthusiasm and humor clings to this girl as to a magnet; she's an uncanny duplicate of her legendary mother.

Also on hand are Miss Garland's two children by Sid Luft, 14-year-old Lorna and 11-year-old Joe. They are both beautiful, Lorna in a paleblonde, blue-eyed way, and Joe in a dark, intense, essentially mysterious way. Delores Cole [wife of Judy's conductor Bobby Cole] is present too, as is Liza's husband and a producer-friend of Miss Garland's.

Suitcases are open on the beds, clothes hang from hangers or lay on chairs and couches. Phonograph records, mainly of Judy and Liza, are strewn around the room. There are flowers, letters, bills, messages, photographs and empty glasses on the various tables of the three-room suite.

There, in the midst of this last-minute-in-New York chaos, stands Judy Garland. She's rail-thin, her sleeveless black dress emphasizing the thinness. Her face is gaunt; the eyes, enormous. There is electricity in her presence, but she seems disconnected just now. She reels around a bit, her speech comes in splutters, but she's cheerful, friendly, apologetic for the mess—and she's frantic. She had forgotten all about our dinner.

It takes one hour before children are sent off to their friends, before she finishes a private chat with her producer-friend, before she finally settles back on the couch, ready to talk to me.

“I can't keep track of time,” she says, running her fingers through her hair. “I'm completely discombobulated. Let's please not go out to dinner. Let's have something sent up. I'm in the mood for some shrimp. And let's have a drink!”

“You know something? Someone came up to interview me this afternoon and said that people are saying I hit the bottle. Now, what does that mean—hit the bottle? Does it literally mean smacking the bottle? Or does it mean that I like to drink? I told the girl that I like to drink iced tea, like to drink soup, like to drink vodka and tonic. And, anyway, what kind of a question is
that?”

Miss Garland is touchy on the subject of drinking. She has a natural anxiety about it. There is, alas, some truth to the gossip. But on this evening, while a glass or two of vodka and tonic does get put away, and while food arrives and does not get touched, Judy Garland seems very much her infectiously cheerful self. If I sense anxiety, it seems centered on one immediate problem, a problem that becomes more and more intense as phone calls from California keep interrupting our talk. Finally the subject of the California calls becomes clear, as Miss Garland in a somewhat shaky voice announces that the banks are foreclosing her Hollywood house.

“People are always keeping reality away from me. It's perfectly awful! It's awful finding out about things after the wolf is at the door. I don't understand it at all. This house thing is just like some of the other experiences I've had. Like the time this dear friend called to say that he was going to rent a car for me for life! The car was a lemon to begin with, but I was glad to have it and I thought it was marvelous of my friend to pay the bills on it.

“So I rode it around, never dreaming that after some months a huge bill would arrive charging me for the rental. I mean, that bill was astronomical but nobody ever bothered to tell me that I was now paying for it and not my dear friend.

“Or the time CBS rented a piano for my use while we were taping my television series. Again, after being reassured that CBS was paying for the rental, bills started pouring in charging the piano rental to
me!

“I really don't know what happened with the house. Well, if worse comes to worse, I can always pitch a tent in front of the Beverly Hilton and Lorna can sing gospel hymns! That should see us through, somehow.

“In a way I'm glad they're taking the house. It's too big, too impractical. Besides, the man who lived there before didn't love his wife. That sort of put a pall on it from the beginning! There are acres of gardens, and a swimming pool, and the place needs at least four servants and four gardeners to keep it in shape. I never really liked it. It looks like a Gloria Swanson reject. I say good riddance!”

Everything is spoken with an anxious laugh. There is no bitterness, no anger. There is nervousness, however. A continuous lighting of cigarettes, an abrupt rush into an adjoining room to fetch a jacket, a tense choreography of gestures, all contrive to charge the atmosphere with a tension at once distracting and distressing.

Judy Garland has not appeared in a film since
I Could Go On Singing,
made in England in 1962. It was not a success, although Garland fans would have it otherwise. In the meantime she has concertized widely and her fame remains undisputed. Still, there have been arid periods, difficult periods during which creditors, an unkind press and personal traumas have somewhat tarnished the image of a glowing, courageous personality.

When Fox asked her to sign for
Valley of the Dolls,
she accepted immediately.

“So I'm cast in the part of an older woman. Well, I
am
an older woman. I'm not an ancient woman, but I can't go on being Dorothy for the rest of my life, now can I? Besides, there are bills to be paid, groceries to be bought and children to feed. I'm delighted to be in
Valley of the Dolls
although my slanderous press already has me walking off the set! Mind you, the set hasn't even been built, but already they have me walking off it!

“It's this kind of ugly slander that keeps me out of work. What am I supposed to do about it? I really need to work. I'm happiest when working, and when I work I give a lot.

“Sure there are mishaps, but what performer doesn't meet up with them? Sure it was awful when I arrived for a concert in Chicago and my voice gave out. I felt awful, but I swear to you I wanted to sing like anything. And I told all these people, all 5,000 of them, I told them I just
couldn't sing anymore—that nothing would come out. I mean, I offered to do some acrobatics. After all, I did start out in show business as an acrobat. Besides, I couldn't bear losing all that money! Well, they understood. They let me off the hook!

“My job is entertaining. Fortunately I'm mad about an audience. I really, truly appreciate anyone taking time out and spending money to hear me sing and, believe me, I love singing for them. No matter how many people hurt me, when that orchestra starts playing …
I sing!”

Judy's eyes light up and her words, spoken with that poignantly familiar break in the voice, ignite countless images of Garland singing all her songs, responding to the cheering crowds, transporting those who have cherished her ever since
The Wizard of Oz
and “Over the Rainbow” have made her name synonymous with heartbreak and bittersweet joys.

We touch on her legend. Garland gets up with a short laugh. She walks around the room, takes another sip of her drink, lights another cigarette. “If I'm such a legend, then why am I so lonely?

“If I'm such a legend, then why do I sit at home for hours staring at the damned telephone, hoping it's out of order, even calling the operator asking her if she's
sure
it's not out of order? Let me tell you, legends are all very well if you've got somebody around who loves you, some man who's not afraid to be in love with Judy Garland!

“I mean, I'm not in the munitions business! Why should I always be rejected? All right, so I'm Judy Garland. But I've been Judy Garland forever. Luft always knew this, and Minnelli knew it, and Mark Herron knew it, although Herron married me strictly for business reasons, for purposes of his own. He was not kind to me.

“But I bear them no malice. Sid Luft turned out to be a nice man, after all, and Vincente is also very nice. They've given me beautiful, talented children. I haven't made out so badly, even though I often find it hard raising my kids without a father.

“I'm glad Liza is married, glad she's got a good career ahead of her, glad we're friends. As for Lorna and Joey, well, I guess I've uprooted them a lot, and I've not been very progressive about their education. I've even spanked them at times. But they're marvelous children and Lorna is
already showing fantastic signs of becoming a fabulous singer. I think Lorna will make it very, very big one day.”