Judy Garland on Judy Garland (9 page)

“Well,” I asked, undaunted, “how about Mickey Rooney—is he your big moment like the papers say?”

“Oh, that's just
another
publicity story,” Judy smiled. “We've really never been a bit serious about each other. In fact, he pesters me with his practical jokes all of the time. Every time I have a serious scene he stands off somewhere and tries to make me laugh at something and spoil it. Really, at times Mickey can be a terrible pest—but he's so sweet at others. In our next picture together,
Babes in Arms,
I win him for a change. In our last picture I lost him to Ann Rutherford.”

Judy put on a little pink dress and seemed to be debating with herself before she spoke again. “If you really want to know a perfectly wonderful man, you should meet Victor Fleming,” she said with a dreamy-eyed smile. “He directed my last picture,
The Wizard of
Oz,—and he's perfectly marvelous! He has the nicest low voice, and the kindest eyes. Besides, he
realizes that a girl who is sixteen is practically grown up. He shows me all of the courtesies he would to Hedy Lamarr. That's very important to me. He rises when I enter the room and places a chair for me. He notices my clothes and the way I do my hair and remarks about them. After our first picture had been in production a week, I felt that I wanted to do something nice for him. I baked him a cake—and he was so appreciative. I asked mother if she thought it would be all right for me to give him a white carnation for his lapel. She couldn't see any harm in it—so I picked out the loveliest one in my shop (Judy owns a little florist shop in Hollywood) each morning and sent it to him. A man appreciates little things like that. Besides, it keeps him thinking of a person.”

I readily agreed and pursued the subject. “Were you romantic about Mr. Fleming—momentarily?” I asked, remembering my piano teacher and all.

“Well, I might have been if I'd been older,” Judy sighed. “He's such a wonderful man!” And the way Judy said that I knew distinctly how she'd felt—for I could detect a bit of “It might have been” in her voice, in the way that only a girl in her very early teens can express. Then the telephone rang.

Judy spoke in very low guarded tones. It was a local call from a New York swain. “He's the one who sent me those flowers,” Judy smiled after the call, pointing to an enormous basket—such as prima donnas receive on first nights at the opera. “It really takes a more mature man to do things for a girl. Why, back in Hollywood, no one would ever think of sending me such a large basket of flowers. The boys back home usually send me a corsage of baby pink roses or lily of the valley. Now that I'm sixteen I'd like gardenias at least. And I've always wanted an orchid. But if they ever bring me gifts it's usually candy—which
they
sit and eat!

“You've no idea how perfectly miserable I've been waiting to grow up,” Judy said wistfully. “And now I don't know
how
long it'll be before people will recognize the fact that I'm a young woman, and not an adolescent. Everyone calls me ‘Baby' and ‘Monkey' and no one takes me very seriously,” she lamented. “While I'm really as serious as can be. I'm practically sixteen, which means that in a couple of years I should be playing romantic leads in grown-up parts.

“I'd like to tell you my ambition in life—that is, if you'll promise not to laugh—because it isn't a bit funny,” Judy warned. I promised and she continued. “I want to play my first grown-up leading role opposite Clark Gable. I personally think this is a wonderful idea. Ever since I sang my song to Gable in my first picture our names have been linked together. I think the public would really like to see us together on the screen, don't you?”

I assured Judy that it seemed like a good idea—and in tune with my sympathetic understanding—because after all we're sisters under the skin with my memory of my piano teacher and Judy's crush on Gable, so Judy revealed to me her truly one
great
ambition in life. She wants to become another Bette Davis!

“I wouldn't care if I never sang again—if I could just become a great dramatic actress like Bette Davis. I don't care whether I'm beautiful or not. I want to sway the emotions of millions of people, make them weep and laugh and feel the things I'm feeling on the screen.”

I interrupted Judy to tell her that really she was doing something like this on the screen in her current pictures—but Judy said that she wanted to be
very
dramatic as a grown-up actress. I'm very serious. I want to study drama. I've mentioned this to the studio and they just smile—the powers that be—and chuck me under the chin and say ‘Run along, Judy, you're just a kid yet. You've got plenty of time for serious things.' They don't realize that I'm sixteen. They insist that I must wait for years and that you can't portray experiences you've never known. But they don't know the emotions I've already experienced.”

I could feel with Judy—remembering that piano teacher. But luckily schoolgirl yearnings have a way of vanishing and are soon forgotten—though I'm sure Judy doesn't think so at present. But she will in just a few more years.

A bell rang and a call boy said, “First curtain, Miss Garland.” Judy patted a bit of powder on her nose and hurried to the stage. I caught her mother, who accompanied Judy on the tour, coming up the stairs and we dashed down into the audience and stood in the aisle to catch Judy's numbers.

“Judy's been telling me that she wants to be a great actress,” I whispered as we waited for Judy to appear.

“Yes, and she's very serious about it,” her mother smiled. “Did she tell you she's got her heart set on being Clark Gable's leading lady when she's eighteen?” I nodded.

“Judy's just at that age where she's thrilled with everything,” her mother whispered. “She had a crush on Clark Gable for a long time—but that finally wore off. Then she became very much interested in her accompanist. He's more like a father to her since her own Daddy passed on. Then her dancing master caught her fancy but that only lasted for a week. She discovered that he was married and had daughters older than herself.

“Judy's such an impressionable child—she goes about singing and laughing all day, but when she starts sitting around waiting for the telephone to ring we know she's in the midst of another romantic crush. Probably the person she has a crush on never knows it—but mothers can always tell. I never worry about her, for these schoolgirl crushes never last long. Judy's very proud that she's a young lady now. The other day she went shopping by herself and came home with her first pair of high-heeled slippers. They really look so much better than the flat-heeled slippers that I let her wear them and buy some more. Judy's still girlishly plump—and she wants to be pencil-slim like her two sisters, but I tell her she'll slim down in another year. My other girls did.

“You should have seen Judy when she picked up this morning's paper. There was an article saying that Judy Garland, the youngster, would now step into Deanna Durbin's shoes—for Deanna was now definitely a young woman. Judy felt terrible at being classified as a youngster. ‘You'd think I was Jane Withers' age,' she said.”

Judy came on stage then, and the applause was terrific. She looked sweet-sixteen and appealing; she sang several songs and then told the audience how she'd broken into the movies. A talent scout heard her sing on a lodge program at Lake Tahoe and sent for her. Louis B. Mayer of M-G-M heard her audition and promptly signed her on the dotted line.

On the way back to the dressing room her mother continued, “Judy's an unselfish child. She wants to do so much for her family. Though both
of her sisters are married, she insists that they stay home and live with us. She wants us all to be together always. We have a new eleven-room house and there's plenty of room. Judy adores her two older sisters.”

Judy was going through a handful of fan letters and mash notes sent back to her from out front. She was smiling over some and suggested to her mother that she really ought to see the writers and greet them since they were so nice to write back and ask to see her. At the stage door there were hundreds of them milling about—all waiting to get a glimpse of her. A high-school youth was carrying a florist's box and another had a box of candy—Judy's suitors!

Judy returned home the other day and so I dashed right over to her house in Beverly Hills to check up on her, as it were. And darned if the telephone didn't ring, right while I was there—and it was New York calling. Judy talked sweetly for five full minutes and then with sudden concern, “Oh, we've talked for five minutes—just think how much that will cost! I guess we'd better hang up!” And after she'd placed the receiver on the hook, I asked her point-blank, “Well, which one was that?” And Judy replied, “He's a boy I met in New York. He took mother and me out to dinner and to see Katharine Hepburn in
The Philadelphia Story
[the play]. Really he's a wonderful boy. So thoughtful.” Meaning probably that he's another one of Judy Garland's romantic crushes!

This is the first in a series of Judy's “as told to” stories by prolific Hollywood fan magazine writer Gladys Hall. Based on Hall's personal interviews and meetings with Judy (and in all probability some of M-G-M's press material, too), this
Child Life
feature gives a charming look at
The Wizard of Oz
through the eyes of its “Dorothy.”

It is, of course, impossible to determine how much of these stories were made up of direct Judy quotes versus amalgamated passages shaped by Hall and other writers. Regardless, the idea of a sixteen-year-old Judy communicating the joys of her experiences on the
Oz
set—even if by proxy—makes for a rare and delightful reading experience.

I'll try to be calm and tell you about
Oz
—the movie, I mean—as sensibly and sanely as I can. Although it's a little bit too much to expect a girl who has really been in the Land of Oz to talk sensibly! Anyway, the picture tells the story of
The Wizard of Oz,
which was the first of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. Now there are thirty of them.
*
We follow the book very faithfully. There are a few little differences at the beginning and at the end. And there are songs which have been written in for some of us to sing.

I'm not going to tell you the whole story, because you've probably read the book. And if you haven't read it, I don't want to give away too
many of the surprises in store for you when you see the picture. I'll just tell you about some of the characters and about some of the things that happened while we were making the picture. I'll begin with Toto because Toto is certainly important. He's not only an important person and, as our director, Mr. Victor Fleming, said, “a very
great actor,”
but also he is in just about every scene of the picture. Toto is played by a little cairn terrier whose real name is Terry. And you can't imagine a more clever little dog! We all wanted to buy him from his owner. Two weeks before we went to Oz—before we began the picture, I mean—they let me take Toto home with me so he'd get used to me. He slept in a little box in my bedroom. I fed him every day. After a few days he followed me everywhere, just as if I were his mistress.

It took him quite a time to get used to the Cowardly Lion, who is played by Mr. Bert Lahr. And no wonder! For Mr. Lahr just
is
the Cowardly Lion. He wears real honest-to-goodness lion skins which weigh fifty pounds. And though it seems a funny thing to say, Mr. Lahr really has a
liony
face so that he hardly needed any makeup on his face. It was the funniest sight in the world to see that great, big cowardly lion eating salads for lunch!

Near the beginning of the picture, I land in the Munchkin Country, the
loveliest
little country you ever saw, with ninety-two tiny, real houses, a bridge over a tiny river, a fountain, streets, and giant flowers to make the Munchkins look even littler. And the Munchkins themselves are real midgets. I think there are about 250 of them. Some of them are [Leo] Singer's midgets.

The Tin Woodman is Jack Haley, though I certainly got to believing that Jack Haley is really the Tin Woodman. He was
so
grateful to me when I oiled his joints! He kept offering to buy me ice cream cones every minute. He really had a hard life because his entire costume, from his jointed shoes to his funnel hat, was made of metal so that he couldn't sit down without the greatest difficulty, and when he did manage to sit down he couldn't get up again without help. One day it took thirty Munchkins to get him out of a chair. Every day his face was painted with ten dollars' worth of real silver. Every now and then it had to be polished with a soft cloth, the same as shoes are shined. He had to drink soup for lunch every day because he couldn't open his mouth for solids.

Ray Bolger is the Scarecrow. He was stuffed with dry straw and he said he was a fire hazard. Everywhere he went he was followed by men with fire extinguishers. He went around begging people not to light a match near him because of what might happen. When we did the scene where the Wicked Witch sets fire to him, three men with extinguishers stood by in case the fire spread past his arms, which were protected by asbestos under the coat and straw. Mr. Bolger didn't bat an eye, but Miss Hamilton, who did the black deed, was so unnerved that she had to lie down for half an hour. She took off her long, green metallic nose and just stretched out. One night, by the way, Miss Hamilton went to the theater and lost her purse, and her nose was in it. She was noseless and desperate, but the next day the nose came back in a package, and there was a note with it which said, “I found this. So this is Hollywood! I'm going back East
—today!”