Judy Garland on Judy Garland (65 page)

DC:
I think that's a great story!
[Laughs.]

JG:
Can you believe that? “The best piece of apple pie in my whole mouth!”

DC:
You know Lee Marvin, don't you?

JG:
Yes, I do.

DC:
He'll be here in a minute, and maybe between us we'll coax you to sing. But I don't want to say that because I know we weren't supposed to. We'll be back after this message.

[Commercial break.]

[ … ]

DC:
Can't you sing something for us? I know that it wasn't meant for tonight.
[Audience applauds.]

JG:
I think I probably would have
died
if you hadn't asked me.
[Audience laughs.]

DC:
How did you get that mic in your pocket?
[Audience laughs.]

JG:
Somebody handed it to me … and with my eyesight … Oh, dear heaven! No, this is … do you really want me … well, of course you want me.

DC:
Yes. Obviously the audience doesn't want you to, but we do. That burst of applause was …

JG:
[To
audience.]
Don't you? Oh, yes you do.
[Audience applauds.]
There's a new song which is an innovation for me because I've been singing cavalcade for years. But there's a marvelous songwriter by the name of Johnny Meyers, [sic] who wrote [what] I think [is] a lovely song and I might as well crack my way through it if it's all right with you.
*

DC:
Give it a crack.

JG:
OK.

[Sings “God Bless Johnny” and “Prayer”.]
†

*
Cavett was referring to the morning show's cancellation and his impending move to a late-night time slot.

*
As Meyer explained in a recent interview with this editor, “Judy and I were both blind to the offensive implications of singing ‘You Lousy Jippy Jippy Jap' on a TV show that would be seen by an international audience. It's a tribute to Judy's immense and legendary star power that the team sent to interview us before the taping didn't call us on this and bring to our attention the racist aspect.”

*
“After two months of sleeping with me,” Meyer wrote in
Heartbreaker,
“she still didn't know there was no S on the end of my name.”

†
Accompanying Judy to the Cavett taping was one of John Meyer's last contributions to her career. “A day later I was flat on my back with a debilitating case of the flu, so severe it took me weeks to recover,” he recalls. “I had to watch from my sickbed as Judy sang my songs on
The Tonight Show
[‘It's All for You' and ‘After the Holidays'] and
The Merv Griffin Show
[‘I'd Like to Hate Myself in the Morning']. This period is a bittersweet memory, as it marked Judy's leap from me to the man who became her final husband, Mickey Deans. But he didn't watch her closely enough.”

Clive Hirschhorn was the film and theater critic for
Sunday Express
when he interviewed Judy Garland during her five-week run at London's Talk of the Town nightclub. “She was very late, and got a slow clap from the audience,” Hirschhorn recalled to Michael Riedel of the
New York Post
in 2012. “She went up on her lines, and you really didn't know if she was going to make the top notes without cracking.”

Hirschhorn went back to see the show again the following week and found Judy to be in better voice. “I met her backstage after the show, and she was in a good mood. She joked that my socks were too short. She talked about how M-G-M had hooked her and Mickey Rooney on drugs to keep them awake during filming … but she didn't moan about it. There was no malice or sense of exploitation.”

Two months later, Hirschhorn attended the wedding reception for Judy and fifth husband Mickey Deans at Quaglino's, a popular West End restaurant. The star-studded guest list included Albert Finney, Margaret Leighton, Veronica Lake, Bette Davis, James Mason, and Eva Gabor, but none attended. Waiters with serviettes on their arms were standing by waiting to serve champagne, “But nobody came,” he remembered. “There were more waiters than there were guests. Judy Garland getting married for the fifth time—who gives a shit? It was very, very sad.”

The next day's headline read: J
UDY WEDS BUT STARS STAY AWAY.
Judy was in disbelief. “I can't understand it,” she told the writer. “They all said they'd come.”

It was a splendid performance Judy Garland delivered the night I saw her in London's Talk of the Town, and a capacity audience kept yelling for more.

And who can blame them? For when 46-year-old Miss Garland is on form, there is no star in the world today more exciting to watch or more thrilling to listen to.

Her singing is a rare combination of private agony and affirmation of pure physical joy. You cannot simply sit back and take her artistry for granted; you have to participate in it—share it with her. And if you're not quite sure why the atmosphere in the room is never the same after she has left the stage, you are probably being affected by the fallout of her stardust.

She was thrilled by her reception, and when we spoke together in her dressing-room after the show, I found her endearingly playful, warm, forthcoming, and relaxed … the very opposite, in fact, of so much of her publicity.

She had changed out of the gold trouser suit in which she appears on stage into a more feminine pair of black leotards and a red sweater. It suddenly struck me that not even in her youth, when she starred with Mickey Rooney in such films as
Babes in Arms
and
Strike Up the Band,
had she ever looked more appealing, and more vulnerable than she does now.

“You know,” she said to me, “there are a lot of people around who think if you happen to know Judy Garland, or are friendly with her, you're someone to be pitied. They say—‘You mean you actually
know
the woman? Ugh!' I really don't see why this should be. As far as I know, I'm a nice person, I do my best, and I don't try to hurt anybody.

“I guess that when you're well known or famous, people tend to be frightened of you. Or in awe of you. Either way, they don't understand you. They put you in a different category altogether. Either they think you're great, and they worship you—which is really rather silly—or they think you're a freak and treat you like one, which is just ridiculous.

“Sure, I've had problems, and temperaments and tantrums. But which one of us hasn't? If you want fame you have to pay for it—and brother, I
have. Even from my earliest days at M-G-M, when I was a child star with the great Mickey Rooney—who, incidentally, I consider to be one of the finest talents ever to come out of Hollywood.

“The growing pains of a young girl are bad enough in private; where they're exposed to the public … and when everything you say or don't say is reported in the press—well, it hardly makes for a smooth, easy life, does it?

“Mickey and I were prisoners at Metro. We were overworked and underfed. I remember they used to starve me whenever they thought I was putting on too much weight. Not that the food in the canteen at Metro was worth eating, mind you.

“Still, I mustn't complain. And I think it's wrong to be nostalgic about those ‘good old days.' We all did well out of Metro, and Metro did well out of us. There were lots of good times, too, of course. Mickey and I had a lot of fun together.

“It's the fun,” she said, “that gets you through life. That sees you through the heartache, and the tears, and the miserable periods. You just have to be able to laugh at everything—most of all at yourself. I'm always laughing at myself. I think I must be a very funny person to live with. Funny ha-ha …” she quickly added.

I asked her in what way.

“I don't know. If you spent 24 hours in my company, you'd know what I mean. Anyway, take my word for it. A sense of humor is everything. Without one you may just as well give up because you'll never be happy.”

Is
she
happy?

“Sure I am. Don't I look happy? I'm just happy being in London. I love the place because I get this marvelous sense of well-being whenever I'm here. Though so far I haven't managed to move around very much. The only scenery I see is my hotel room, the hotel elevator, and my dressing
room. That's because I sleep all day. But I'll get around to a bit of sightseeing sooner or later. After New York, London's positively therapeutic! I don't know what it is about New York, but it seems to me to be going helter-skelter toward oblivion. Know what I mean? It's become so darned aggressive. D'you know something? I was once thrown out of a cab in New York—just because I asked the driver to go a little slower. And he had the nerve to make me pay the fare as far as he'd got! People in this country seem to have more manners. I guess it's because you're so much older than we are. And with age comes breeding.

“I'm also here because of the audiences. They still want me. Obviously there's something about me that appeals to them. I don't know exactly what it is, but it's nice to know that whatever it is, I've got it! Without my audience I'd be nothing. They honor me by paying to see me, and in return I try hard to do my best by them. If I feel I've succeeded in pleasing them, that's my justification and my happiness.

“But it is happiness of a certain sort only. A professional happiness. My private happiness is another matter completely. And I've found that in Mickey Deans (the man she plans to marry in the next couple of weeks when their license is granted). A good, responsive audience is all very well, but you can't take it home with you after the show.

“A woman needs more than applause to keep her going. It's too superficial, too frustrating, too soul-destroying just to live off applause, as I have often done that in the past, and to try and draw strength and security from it. It works for a while—but only a while. Because, late at night, when the paying customers have all gone home, the applause becomes a booming, empty echo, and that's not so pleasant. And then, even the echo dies away. And you're all alone. And frightened. And scared stiff.

“It's in moments such as these that you need another human being with you … somebody who really cares about you, and not just what you stand for. Someone who
loves
you. Fame is all very well, but it doesn't secure companionship and the feeling of possessing and being possessed.

“With Mickey I feel that at last I've found the love I've been searching for all my life. Searching and waiting for. (She has been married four times, and has three children.) I have made lots of mistakes in the past, but not this time. Mickey cares about me, and this is what I want now. I've been through the mill, as everyone knows. But I can take it. Especially now that Mickey's around. Life becomes so much easier to face if there's someone to face it with.”

Judy married Mickey Deans at noon at the Chelsea Registry Office on March 15, 1969. A short ceremony followed at St. Marylebone Parish Church, and this interview was conducted later that day.

It's a good day for you then?

Judy Garland:
A lovely day.
Perfect
day.

How long have you known your husband?

JG:
I've known my husband as long as he's known me!
[Laughs.
] For about three years.

And what are your plans now that you're married? To go on working?