Chapter Four 
A STAR IS REBORN
MY MOTHER’S FUNERAL SERVICE WAS HELD IN NEW YORK CITY ON FRIDAY, June 27, 1969. A crowd of over 22,000 filed past her open casket to pay their respects to Judy Garland the performer, while those of us who knew her said a tearful good-bye to Judy the woman. Frank E. Campbell’s Funeral Chapel had not experienced such an outpouring of public mourning since Rudolph Valentino’s memorial back in 1926.
In the early morning of Saturday, June 28, a group of drag queens and their friends gathered at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the West Village of Manhattan. Whether shock or grief had anything to do with it, these men and women spontaneously retaliated when a police raid—the latest among many—forced them into the street and closed the bar, where they had every right to be. They stood their ground against the astonished cops, who assumed the crowd would be agitated, but docile—sheep in women’s clothing. But this final straw of police brutality had taken its toll. The crowd battled back. Stories vary, but the uprising carried on the next night, and the next. The rebellion was reported nationwide, the newspaper headlines and photographs documenting the conflict as a milestone for civil rights.
My mother’s funeral and the Stonewall Uprising may be only circumstantially related, but the two events are often connected. As a remarkable moment in history that is linked to my family, we carry this connection with pride. (I was privileged to make my first visit to Stonewall in 2016 and am proud to be on the advisory committee of the nonprofit organization Stonewall Initiative Gives Back.) I know that my mother would have said that everybody at Stonewall did the right thing: They stood up for themselves. The gay community fought back against years of abuse just at the moment when they lost their legendary icon. My mother raised me to give back and not to simply take. If my mother was a spark in the Stonewall Uprising, then I want to be a part of that legacy as a tribute to her and the people who love her.
Since her death, the gay community has been instrumental in keeping my mother’s star image, her movies, and her music, alive and thriving well into the twenty-first century. Her gay following was commented upon as early as the appearance of the Judy Garland cult, which dates back to the autumn of 1950 and began in earnest with her engagement at the Palace Theatre in New York in 1951. Around this time, a new awareness and admiration was blossoming for the adult Judy onstage; she was no longer the plucky teenager or the winsome young woman she had been on the screen. She had grown into the status of “living legend”—a distinction few performers ever achieve. Further, her persona was tinged with a new vulnerability and accessibility as a result of the recent headlines of her humiliating dismissal from MGM and her suicide attempt. In a period when gay men were, to put it mildly, repressed, many formed a strong attachment to Judy Garland.
Ten years later, at Carnegie Hall, Mama felt and acknowledged the intensity of her impact on audiences and the emotional connection that was established between her and the gay men who made up the better part of the crowd. I know because I was there and saw it for myself. My mother’s way with a song, her intimate improvisations, called out to the “Friends of Dorothy,” a triple-sided designation: a calling card, an endearment, or a slander. Judy Garland’s most famous screen character—Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz—became slang for a gay man. It’s no coincidence that the rainbow flag—a symbol of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender social movement—suggests “Over the Rainbow.” Gays were attracted to Mama’s rainbow of characteristics: her vibrancy, her humor, her insecurity, her vulnerability, and her self-consciousness. She played the asexual friend to Mickey Rooney in her early MGM days, as well as Dorothy Gale, the lonely and misunderstood young woman. Mama’s most well-known songs exploit a certain lonesome solitude, expressing an inner longing: “Over the Rainbow” and “The Man That Got Away” are perfect examples. The former finds her yearning for a place happier and more colorful than the drab world she inhabits, the latter has her yearning for a love that can never be.
My mother’s way with a song, her intimate improvisations, called out to the “Friends of Dorothy,” a triple-sided designation: a calling card, an endearment, or a slander.
Especially in the film A Star Is Born, Mama was embraced by gay men and elevated to an integral part of their culture’s iconography. Indeed, Mart Crowley’s groundbreaking 1968 play The Boys in the Band, which became a famous gay film in 1970, drew its title from Norman Maine’s line of encouragement to Esther before her screen test: “You’re singing for yourself and the boys in the band.” This phenomenon is even the subject of scholarly examination. In her 1992 essay “The Logic of Alternative Readings: A Star Is Born,” Janet Staiger explores the relevant published material on the subject. Staiger considers how my mother’s suffering, her theatricality, her instability, her intensity, her problems with her appearance, her choices in men, and her somewhat androgynous look in A Star Is Born, invite comparison between my mother and the men who elevated her as an early gay icon. The essay also examines how my mother’s private life—rather than the life of the fictional character of Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester—informs her gay fans’ reaction to the movie.1
My mother—always forward-thinking—embraced her entire audience no matter what race, religion, or sexual orientation. She loved everyone. My mother even knew and loved Republicans, liberal as she was. When I appeared with my mother at that legendary last engagement at the Palace in 1967, the theater was always a sell-out and drew a diverse audience. Mama’s gay fans were vocal and passionate, but they were not the overwhelming majority. Child fans were an important part of her story, too. They saw her on television in The Wizard of Oz and became instant admirers of the film and Judy Garland. This continues today. People come up to me all the time with their children and say how much they love Mama as Dorothy. My grandchildren call me “GG” and their great-grandmother “Triple G.” My granddaughter, Jordan, told me in early autumn 2017, “I’m dressing as Triple G for Halloween!”
Mama soldiered on from crisis to crisis, often self-inflicted. The loyal “boys” couldn’t save her, however, no matter how much love they held in reserve for her. She was over the rainbow before they knew it. Their loneliness and sense of otherness matched hers, from Dorothy Gale to Esther Blodgett to “the lady onstage,” as Peter Allen affectionately wrote as a tribute to my mother many years after her death. Peter married my sister, Liza, in 1967, so he was my mother’s son-in-law. (Liza and Peter divorced in 1974.) “Quiet please, there’s a lady onstage,” Peter sang. “She may not be the latest rage/But she’s singing and she means it.”
My mother’s conviction to the lyric of a song was one of her great gifts. In a two-part autobiographical essay for McCall’s magazine in 1964, my mother wrote:
One of the finest assessments of my mother’s singing voice was provided by critic and author Henry Pleasants in his 1974 text The Great American Popular Singers. Pleasants describes her voice as follows:
Though just a young girl, my mother had the capability to tap into the emotional content of words wrapped in a melody. The Judy Garland of Kansas and Oz, at sixteen, turned an “I wish” song into a meditation on loneliness and longing. Before The Wizard of Oz, Mama was star-struck, in love from afar in “You Made Me Love You.” After it, she pined for “The Boy Next Door” in Meet Me in St. Louis. She headed out West “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” in The Harvey Girls, and took the stage to “Be a Clown” for The Pirate. In Summer Stock, she urged everyone to “Get Happy” with a conviction that implied she was trying to convince herself as well. And then, suddenly, she was older and wiser, thanks to having her heart broken by “The Man That Got Away.” Her life and personality can be found in her music. She was, by her own admission, most alive and her true self when she was singing. This personal truth even made it into A Star Is Born: “I somehow feel most alive when I’m singing,” Esther Blodgett tells Norman Maine early in their relationship. As Roger Edens composed in his lyric of special material for my mother’s first appearance at the Palace Theatre, and reworked for the “Born in the Trunk” sequence of A Star Is Born, “The history of my life is in my songs.”
As the longing in her voice indicates, Mama was a searcher. She was always looking—looking for the right time to be a mother, for the right audience to appreciate how much she had to share, for the right man to be her partner in whatever came next, and for the right place to call home. She was still searching when she died.
Beyond the initial New York City television broadcast in 1961, my mother refused to watch A Star Is Born after the 1954 premieres in Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago. Once the film had been butchered, it was difficult for her to sit and relive the making of this scene or that, that number or this, knowing what had been on the screen and could never be again, knowing what so many viewers had missed. It was too painful for her. George Cukor felt the same way. In a letter to production designer Gene Allen in 1979, Cukor revealed that he refused to see the shortened version. Although he had never seen it, he was aware of all the cuts and what scenes were lost. He wrote Allen that the film’s final edit was “Jack Warner’s last crime! I’ve been used to cuts in pictures that I’ve done but this one strikes me as irreparable and tragic. Maybe tragic is too pompous a word—but it was awfully sad and unnecessary.”4
I agree. It was sad, and I thought, as Mr. Cukor said, “irreparable.” There was nothing to be done, too much time had passed. I had to let it go. When I first saw the film, I remember my favorite scene—very short, but sweet. Within the movie-studio gates, the Southern California sun shines brightly. Esther, in a cute little dress and perky hat, gets in line at the payroll booth, at the “A through K” window, but is told to go the next one, where she repeats her name, “Blodgett.” The clerk finds her under L, then spells out the name: “V-i-c-k-i L-e-s-t-e-r.” Esther is at first perplexed, then thoughtful, then resigned, then pleased, speaking the name aloud, as she walks away with her paycheck. My mother, I think, did that many times, both inside and outside the studio gates. Blindsided by circumstance, she would gather herself and move on.
I was very touched by the ending of A Star Is Born, but I was struck by how strange it was that Esther didn’t sing. This was a musical disguised as a drama, with no grand finale. I was entranced by the scene in the little motel room, where Esther sings, partly a cappella, to Norman Maine, “It’s a New World.” It’s a lovely ballad, tender and optimistic. It’s my favorite song in the film.
The movie also left me pondering very personal questions. I was startled by the scenes in which Esther/Vicki desperately attempts to care for and save her addict husband. The sequence in the dressing room, where she’s dressed in the costume of a freckled, ragamuffin newsboy, was devastating to me. Esther is confiding to her friend (and Norman’s), the head of the studio, and holding back tears, venting her frustration and desperation. Explaining how much she loves him, yet sometimes hates him for failing. Then she goes on, “But… I hate me, too.” She feels a sense of shame for failing, for not being enough for the man she loves. Esther breaks down in an emotional spiral that was very familiar to me. I had been a similar caregiver for my mother in her later years. I knew exactly what had driven Esther to tears.
After watching A Star Is Born for the first time, I immediately called my father in Los Angeles to inquire about this particular scene. “Did she know what she was saying?” I asked. “Did she know she was talking about herself?” Without a pause, he responded, “You bet she did. That’s why it’s so good.” I realized at that moment that in real life, my mother was Esther Blodgett and Vicki Lester, but there were traits in her—especially her drug dependency—that strongly echoed the character of Norman Maine.
My father agreed with me. My mother was an unpredictable woman. He came to know her after her MGM contract was cancelled and the subject of Hollywood gossip, rumors, and blind items published in the magazines and newspapers. After they met, my mother and father worked together to put the star back on her feet for some very successful concerts. These events raised her profile once again, sparked new interest in Judy Garland, and paved the way for a comeback in movies. It didn’t get past Dad that there was a twist here. The comeback, A Star Is Born, was filled with overtones—dark and light—that echoed my mother’s life.
My father knew the great risk they were both taking, but had confidence that his new wife could pull it off—even under the spell of drugs and alcohol. Dad admitted to ignoring the bottom line, the movie, as everyone in town knew. He allowed it to go way over budget. Then after premiering, the re-cut movie failed, and my mother failed, too, sending her careening into a downward spiral of depression and deeper drug dependency. My dad always said, “I know that I did the best I could do, and it still wasn’t enough.”5
As my mother’s sometimes-caregiver, I had experienced her at her worst. The Nembutal, the Seconal, and the Tuinal were supplemented at some point with Ritalin. She was taking fifty to one hundred milligrams per day—more than double the normal dose. With no turnaround in sight, she kept forging ahead, digging deeper ruts as she spun her wheels. At that time, there were only a few sanitariums and clinics for treatment, the kind Norman Maine is subjected to in the film. There was no Betty Ford Center, no comfortable private retreats. So, the story of A Star Is Born was a very personal, and unfortunately biographical, tale.
Once I saw the parallels between the movie and Mama’s life, I began to wonder: was there more to learn in the rumored missing pieces of the puzzle? The precise storytelling that I was used to seeing in a Hollywood movie was absent in the first half. It was confusing and disorienting. What happened between Esther’s trancelike walk up the stairs after informing Danny of her decision and the big jump to the makeup room at the studio? Where did the plot go, the logic, the motivations? Where was the love story? I was so close to the heart of the matter, I wondered if anyone else cared about this movie the way I did.
A Star Is Born was kept alive in a butchered form as late-night television programming and remembered fondly by those lucky few who had seen and remembered the film in its original full-length version.
I’ve always been clearheaded about the great highs and shattering lows that being Judy Garland’s daughter has brought with it. The responsibility I feel to my mother’s legacy is to always ensure that her talent and image are held in high regard, with respect, and with honor—for her work and what she gave as an actress, a singer, and an entertainer. One of the most extraordinary comebacks my mother ever made happened after her death. A Star Is Born was kept alive in a butchered form as late-night television programming and remembered fondly by those lucky few who had seen and remembered the film in its original full-length version. It was also revered by Judy Garland fans. By the 1970s, Mama’s A Star Is Born had become a cult classic rather than a great film.
Near the top of my list of things I wanted in life was to see A Star Is Born as my parents and George Cukor had crafted it and intended it to be seen. All the “shoulds” apply here. It should have been seen in its full 181-minute glory in its initial general release. It should not have been so harshly cut, and the resulting remnants scattered so carelessly. It should have been the high point of Act II of Judy Garland’s career, not the vast disappointment that shadowed Act III. I (and many others) also felt it should have been nominated for Best Picture. It should have won Mama the Best Actress Oscar, and, along with it, Hollywood’s approval. The movie should have confirmed in everyone’s eyes that, when my mother was good, she was the very best. Finally, in 1983, my wish came true: A Star Is Born was transformed and reborn into a treasured happy ending for me.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was an evolving atmosphere of concern for the state of Hollywood classics. Cable television and the advent of home video began generating a greater interest in older films. Those who cared about film history were appalled to discover that old negatives and prints of some of the greatest films were often missing, uncatalogued, or sitting deteriorating in studio vaults and rented warehouses. Ronald Haver, at the time head of the Film Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), thought he might have a chance to rescue one of his favorite films, A Star Is Born from 1954. He thought maybe he could restore the film that everyone knew was incomplete—“a vandalized masterpiece,” as Christopher Finch aptly described it in his 1975 critical biography Rainbow: The Stormy Life of Judy Garland.6 Haver suspected the 181-minute premiere version might be out there somewhere. This was a film preservationist’s golden opportunity to combine the love of his job with the love of this movie he had first seen when he was sixteen years old.
In 1974, Haver had already curated a George Cukor retrospective at LACMA. The director had declined his invitation to attend the screening of A Star Is Born. In October 1981, Haver was involved with a tribute evening to Ira Gershwin at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the highlight being my mother’s superb interpretation of “The Man That Got Away” in an original 35mm four-track stereo print on Eastmancolor film stock. Also included was her audio recording of Gershwin and Harold Arlen’s jingle for the Trinidad Coconut Oil Shampoo commercial, unearthed by the singer and music revivalist Michael Feinstein (who at that time was working as the archivist of Ira Gershwin). This audio was from one of the scenes that had been cut and discarded. Although the sound quality was poor and missing the visual component, the discovery was significant, and led to further interest in the film’s restoration.