Judy Garland was the little girl who made everybody happy but herself. When she came out onstage—small as a wounded bird but with that huge, gorgeous voice that reached the back of the house—everyone wanted to take care of her. Nobody in show business was more loved than Judy Garland, and sometimes it seemed that everyone but Judy knew that.
I had been her fan since I was a boy and she was a child star on the silver screen, so vivacious, wholesome, and gloriously talented. Nobody threw her heart into a song like Judy Garland. You could hear her heart beat and quiver with every note.
She came backstage to meet me after one of my shows at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1958. To be told “Judy Garland wants to say hello” was like hearing that a shooting star wanted to stop by.
The Judy I knew in person was rarely like a wounded bird. She bubbled. She dazzled and joked with a wicked sense of humor that would have made young Dorothy and her pal the Scarecrow blush.
It’s funny that the woman who charmed so many childhoods never really had a childhood of her own. She was performing with her sisters in a vaudeville act (the Gumm Sisters, before they changed the name to Garland) before Judy was three years old. She had not only talent but star power—that hard-to-define quality that makes people want to look at you. It made her career but didn’t always leave much over for her life.
Judy was thirteen when she sang “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart” at an audition and signed what amounted to a development contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She sang “You Made Me Love You” to Clark Gable at his studio birthday party and made such a strong impression that they wrote a scene for her to reprise the tune, singing to Clark’s smiling photograph, in Broadway Melody of 1938.
Judy became one of MGM’s biggest stars in the five films she made with Mickey Rooney, even before The Wizard of Oz. But she never felt that the studio protected her as the extraordinary asset she was. She made a dozen films in three years, including the Andy Hardy films with Mickey, The Wizard of Oz, and Busby Berkeley’s Babes in Arms (she started shooting Babes just after Wizard; these days that would be like a star athlete going from one Super Bowl season to the next without rest).
Imagine all the songs and dances she introduced in those films; then try to reckon up all of the rehearsals and early calls that went into achieving Judy’s special level of perfection. Then add the five shows a day to promote the films in more than twenty cities across the country. It’s a formula for exhaustion, stress, and killing pressure.
It was during that time, Judy always said, that she began to take drugs to go to sleep and drugs to wake up. As she got a little older, she added drinking to relax. Mickey Rooney, who loved her and tried to protect her many times, said that the MGM executives didn’t get her started on that road. But I don’t think a kid working twelve hours a day in major studio productions enters that downward cycle all on her own.
For all the adoration she received, Judy was insecure. She was not even five feet tall and was on the same lot as other glamorous young stars, such as Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, and Ava Gardner. The studio toyed with Judy’s appearance so much, she was made to feel ugly and unappreciated. Louis B. Mayer supposedly called her “the little hunchback,” but he still relied on Judy to carry some of his biggest productions.
Judy never saw the money she made. It went directly to others, and she had little idea of what a success she had created for herself. I went backstage at one of her stage shows and told the promoter, as a nice gesture, to pay Judy in cash that night. I went to her dressing room after the show and found her playing with the money like a kid with a board game. She jumped onto her couch and spilled the bills over her head, over and over.
“Tony, look!” she exclaimed. “For the first time in my life, I’ve got money!”
One night, a few years later, I was about to go onstage at the Waldorf-Astoria when the stage manager stopped me. I knew it had to be important. He held out a phone. “It’s Judy Garland,” he said.
Her famous voice was rushed and strained. “Tony, I’m in my room at the St. Regis. There’s a man here, and he’s beating me up.”
Some people would have called the cops. I went one better: I called Frank Sinatra. I knew Frank was at the Fontainebleau in Miami, and the moment I stepped offstage, the stage manager held out the phone. I was glad to hear Judy’s voice. She was almost giggling.
“I wanted help, but this is ridiculous!” she said. “There are nine hundred cops downstairs and five lawyers in my room.”
(The story never made it into the papers. Unthinkable today.)
Judy should have made more movies. She should have won the 1954 Oscar for Best Actress for A Star Is Born, which is one of the great musical and dramatic performances of all time (Grace Kelly won for The Country Girl—a fine performance, but watch them both and cast your vote), and maybe another Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1961 for Judgment at Nuremberg, where she steals the show in a courtroom cameo.
But Judy’s troubles took a toll—on herself, of course, most of all—on producers, directors, and other actors in her films, and she lost out on a lot of work.
Her love of live performance endured, though, and the more the world heard of her problems, illnesses, and busted romances, the more people wanted to see her, embrace her, and cheer for her. The more they wanted to help Judy reach a safe place somewhere over the rainbow.
Her appearance at Carnegie Hall on the night of April 23, 1961, has been called the greatest night in the history of show business. I wouldn’t want to disagree. Judy pulled some magic powers from all of her troubles and delivered a historic performance. The double album of that night won four Grammy Awards, was on the Billboard charts for seventy-three weeks, and has never been out of print since. Every song in the show seemed to resonate brilliantly with her career and life. In the space of an amazing two hours, she was the innocent young Judy of “The Trolley Song” and “Over the Rainbow,” the wounded and weary Judy of “The Man That Got Away” and “Stormy Weather,” and the dauntless, resilient Judy of “When You’re Smiling (The Whole World Smiles with You).” That night, it sure did.
Judy had a gorgeous contralto voice, and she packed feeling into every note. She told me once that it was a good idea to put at least one number into a show that lets you hit the back of the house with your voice—it makes everyone feel that they’ve somehow met you.
No performer was ever closer to her fans, and they ached for her when she asked, so famously, “If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?”
I last saw Judy in London, in April 1969. I was doing a television special with Count Basie, and she came backstage.
“You know what, Tony?” she said. “You’re pretty good.”
We lost her just two months later, much too young, at the age of forty-seven. Of course it was tragic. But like the great performer she was, Judy Garland always left us wanting more.
Golden Gate Bridge