Apologies and Regrets
Rick’s Flicks post, scheduled for today, is delayed for two weeks. We regret any inconvenience.
Thank you for checking in.
Next FRIDAY Post , including continuation of Harry Richards’ THE JUDY WATCH, will be July 5.
New York Times photo
Until then,
Enjoy a movie,
Rick
Rick’s Flicks continues its serialization of Harry Richards’ book THE JUDY WATCH, but first . . .
A TELEVISION JACOB
Rick’s Flicks, as policy, does not review or discuss television dramas or films made for television, but JACOB cries out for a response.*
One would not think that the telling of the Biblical patriarch’s story could ever be bland.
But . . .
Matthew Modine’s Jacob bears no charisma. Actually, it all right if Jacob appears ordinary. He was Yahweh’s darling and would succeed — no matter what. But there needs to be some kind of specialness. And the Bible’s great lover should look special.
Lara Flynn Boyle is attractive and talented but does not have the makings of the most beautiful woman in the Hebrew Bible — at least in the eyes of Jacob. Most surprising of all, Irene Papas shows no strength or force as manipulative matriarch Rebecca. She is a whining nag. With Leah as the most likeable character, there IS something wrong with this picture.
*Acknowledgment to Margaret Mitchell for my borrowed paraphrase.
Jacob Turner Pictures a Lube production teleplay by Lionel Chetwynd
* * * * * * * * * * *
Harry Richards is a free lance writer out of Missoula, Montana. He has spent much of his life observing, studying and analyzing the work of Judy Garland. There are now fifty plus books about Judy Garland, but Richards believes that his is the first devoted to her live concert performances. Richards enjoys being a father and grandfather. He likes flowers, reading and viewing films.
New York Times photo
JUDY THREE
The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles was a clumsy old barn showing its age. The proscenium arch embraced a dramatically wide area. The evening I chose from the five-night engagement proved an unusual and uneven concert.
Friend John L. was unable to accompany me and do his usual generous driving. Bob, a Judy fan — though not in my hysteric league — drove us there. I had been clutching my third row center ticket for weeks, but Bob bought a balcony seat that night twenty minutes before the show. This would be the first live performance he had seen by the great Lady as he called her.
My luck, or lack of it, as to audience members near me continued. There were scattered vacant seats downstairs though the balconies were full. In my third orchestra row, believe it or not, I had no one on either side of me. But two loud, crass women took seats behind me just before the performance began. One, with a sharp beak of a nose, said to her shorter companion, “I’m glad we’re right down front. I want to see every one of her wrinkles.” It was when I turned to glare that I saw her mean nose. She added, “I shouldn’t say that when she was just so nice to me.” Just? It sounded as if she had been backstage; but if she had just seen Judy Garland face to face, why hadn’t she checked out the wrinkles then?
I had heard her remark. Were people meant to hear? Was she showing off?
In the second row, just to the left of my third-row perch, sat two former New Yorkers. One phrase from each gave away their geographical origin. They looked like tired floozies and were probably respectable Bronx matrons. At mid-show, during the ill-fated Born in a Trunk when Judy tried for a vibrato that didn’t work — it seemed not to work when she tried for what usually came naturally — the one closer to me turned to her companion and said in a loud voice, “Well, she cracked that time, didn’t she?” The trumpet player in the orchestra pit, who was not playing at the moment, leaned over the pit railing towards the two women and mimed drinking from a bottle.
It did not appear to me that Judy Garland was drinking. But there was something fuzzy about her. She acted mildly dazed. She stood and moved as if she had wakened from deep sleep. Her speech was lively enough and distinct.
But the theatrical mystery of the evening, for me, was her sudden appearance. I never saw her enter. Then, there she was, standing left center, for some reason turned sideways to the audience. She wore what I remember as a reddish-brown (maybe wine-colored?) wide-skirted evening gown that looked velvet. If it was meant to conceal extra poundage, it did not. Her face was not quite so full as it had been at the time of her Coconut Grove engagement, but her figure was at least as wide.
I still have my program from this Shrine Auditorium appearance, but I find it is not always assisting my memory. Tt does not show an overture. Was there not one? The first item on the program is “At the Opera,” and that puzzles me. The credits for this specific number show, first, the electrician! (Paul Ely), then boy and girl dancers, next boy and girl singers. I am guessing, these many years later, that this was an introductory extravaganza of arrival which, at the end, brought Judy on in the now explainable gown. This Los Angeles show had originated at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.
When the applause for her entrance had finally died she sang I’m in Love With a Wonderful Guy. This was the only time I heard her sing the South Pacific song. I assume that she did not sing this only in Los Angeles but had made it part of her touring show out of New York. (See JUDY NOTE # 1 at the end of this WATCH.)
A long while later in an interview she would talk about being on stage at the Met and feeling that she was giving what she termed “a terrible concert.” On this evening at the Shrine Auditorium I never felt that Judy Garland did any poor singing, much less terrible singing; but this is the only live performance about which I cannot remember being thrilled by anything she sang. There was much that did not work. There was misjudgment in concept; the program seemed ill-conceived. The night’s highlight would be her two encores.
After her opening number she pattered to us about liking to sing a song for the city she was playing. Since no one, she said, had written a song about Los Angeles she would sing what she had sung in Manhattan and she did a fine job of Cole Porter’s mordant I Happen to Like New York.
Gordon Jenkins was in the pit for her that evening and would probably have kicked the trumpet player’s ass if he had seen what I witnessed. She next did four of Jenkins’ songs, having just recorded an LP for Capitol (acted scenes with songs; rather, acted songs with occasional interpolated scenes of dialog). The much-maligned album was called “The Letter.” All the songs and instrumental music were by Jenkins, and it was fun watching him lead her, or follow her, through his own compositions. She had changed from her opening number, and I clearly see her doing the four songs from the album in a sky-to-royal blue taffeta dress with a flaring skirt falling just below her knees.
My friend and driver of the evening Bob would later describe this whole portion of her show as silly schmaltz. My other driver friend, John L. of the earlier Greek Theatre evening, after hearing my 33rpm recording of “The Letter” would say that Jenkins had shown himself undisciplined as to what he expected an American pop singer to be able to execute. The script for the little record drama runs close to the schmaltz friend Bob had claimed; and Judy Garland’s acting co-star John Ireland is as wooden as he is in All the King’s Men and every other movie in which he appeared. But musically knowledgeable John thought that Judy acquitted herself admirably in the difficult vocals.
At the time it was impossible for me to dislike anything the Great Lady sang; but I did genuinely like, and still do, four songs from “The Letter” : Beautiful Trouble, The Worst Kind of Man, The Red Balloon and That’s All There Is, There Isn’t Anymore. There is something else, too, towards the end. It begins, “Come back before the summer is gone . . . ” I don’t know that it is correct to call it a song. What would, what did Jenkins call it? A bridge? A recitative? It’s good, and so is he. I especially admire one line: “Your love has never left its home within my secret heart.”
Judy Garland next proceeded to perform live on stage her Born in a Trunk sequence from her film A Star is Born. Though the Shrine Auditorium was bound to evoke memories of the opening of the film, Born in a Trunk did not work on stage. Pauses between segments were painfully long as blackouts sought to replace film editing. And there was an interesting change. For Swanee she wore a version of the svelte short-skirted black costume she wore for Get Happy in Charles Walters’ Summer Stock. The Judy audience broke into Judy applause when the lights came up and discovered her in the legendary garb. Her audience was willing to suspend the evidence that the costume now revealed Judy’s present weight to the maximum. She stood stock still while delivering Swanee, no doubt having concluded that at this moment of her life, the once-legendary legs look better not in motion. (See JUDY NOTE # 2 at the end of this WATCH for an anecdote concerning the song Born in a Trunk.)
Comedian Alan King and John W. Bubbles, dancer, were on the bill. Together Bubbles and Judy performed Me and My Shadow, reprising Ted Lewis’ version in which Lewis sang while his gestures and movements were mimicked exactly by his small, sexy black sidekick Charles Whittier whom those days and times thought it amusing to nickname Snowball. (See JUDY NOTE # 3 at the end of this WATCH.) Judy Garland did not successfully complete this number. Wearing way-too-tight coat and pants, clearly uncomfortable and sweating, she began the gestures and bodily movements, working as best she could with her partner, but she could not sustain the synchronization. She gave up on all but the singing. She did complete the song.
Then Judy and Alan King executed We’re a Couple of Swells. This left her in her tramp costume for the “Oleo” and Over the Rainbow for which she made dramatic point of not using the microphone. She finished the show with Chicago.
At the end of the show when I connected with my friend, realist and anti-romantic Bob and asked how he felt after his first live Judy Garland performance, he still had not recovered from “The Letter.” He said he had thoroughly enjoyed her last numbers “after she dropped the schmaltz and developed her unique rapport with the audience.”
And I had to admit to myself that during her last quarter hour, right down front with us there (she was in the orchestra pit), she had seemed physically more alert and gave a sense of having gotten her act together.
* * * * * * * * * * *
JUDY NOTE # 1: A recording of the song (from a Bob Hope radio program in 1951) is now available on the four-disc set “Judy Garland, Lost Tracks 1929-1959” (compiled and annotated by Lawrence Schulman, London, JSP Records).
JUDY NOTE # 2: In the fall of 1972 I watched on television the Idaho-Idaho State football game which was played in Pocatello. The pre-game show, brief in those days, began with an appropriate pre-game shot which I cannot recall, but I remember the sound behind it. Judy Garland was singing Born in a Trunk. (The opening words of the song: “I was born in a trunk in the Princess Theatre, in Pocatello, Idaho.”) I was so elated by the originality of this opener that I sent a complimentary letter to ABC Sports, and I received the following generous response:
Please accept my long-delayed thanks for your kind letter of December 27. Mr. Chuck Howard passed it along to me because I produced the telecast of the Idaho-Idaho State game from Pocatello and particularly enjoyed putting together the Judy Garland opening.
Just as an aside, Mr. Jim McKay, the host of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, has written a book (My Wide World by Jim McKay) which is about to be released and in it he makes a brief reference to the opening you liked so much.
Thanks again for taking the time to pass along your compliments. They have been deeply appreciated.
Sincerely,
Doug Wilson
Producer/Director
JUDY NOTE # 3: Polly Miller, formerly of the Ted Lewis Museum in Circleville, OH informed me that over the years Lewis had four different shadows who cavorted with him during this one of his two signature songs. My reference is to the shadow of my memory, the delightful Charles Whittier, whom nationwide movie audiences saw with Abbott and Costello in the film Hold That Ghost.
NEXT Friday POST June 14
Until then,
Enjoy a movie,
Rick
Today Rick’s Flick’s continues its serialization of Harry Richards’ book THE JUDY WATCH. But first some recommended reading.
RECOMMENDED READING
Director Ed Zwick, writing about staging and photographing and editing a battle sequence in his film GLORY:
“This kind of directorial sleight of hand has now been rendered obsolete by the dominance of CG, and sometimes I can’t help but feel something ineffable has been lost in the absence of real time and scale. These days you can fill the frame with as many Orcs or Elves as you wish , but the minute an audience senses fabrication or falseness, they retreat to an intellectual appreciation of what’s happening rather than remaining emotionally connected.”
This passage is among countless perceptive ones in Zwick’s book Hits, Flops and Other Illusions. Gallery Books, 2024.
Another, about Leonardo di Caprio whom he directed in BLOOD DIAMOND:
“. . . Eduardo Serra [director of photography], a lifelong idol of mine, said something about our lead actor that I’ve never forgotten: ‘No matter how many bad things he says, or even the cruel things he does, the audience somehow knows there is good inside Leo. He is a fallen angel, but he still reaches for the stars.”
Pinterest photo
And a spot-on passage about LISTENING:
“The scene where Jenny coaxes Leo to tell her the story of his traumatic and violent childhood is a master class in active listening; such a level of concentration is much harder than it appears. Without her avidity, her keen interest in his every word, the moment could easily have become clichéd, or worse, bathetic. Audiences tend not to recognize that listening is a skill, but other actors recognize its irreplaceable value. Playing opposite an active listener makes both actors better. If you look closely, you can always tell who is really listening and who is just getting ready to say their line.”
And a personal testimony from a creative director, a testimony for all us film appreciators and lovers and for all the filmmakers we love and admire:
“I came of age when movies were the only game in town. There were three channels on TV mostly showing crap, one football game broadcast on Sunday, one on Monday night, and no cable. No YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Instagram, iMessage or TikTok. Movies were ephemeral. My relationship with them was passionate. You only saw them once, unless you stayed in the theater, as I often did, and watched them a second time. There was no hope of renting them or streaming them or pausing them to look at your texts or check your email. If you were lucky, you’d catch one by chance on late-night TV. After going to a movie, you stayed up late drinking coffee with your date or getting high with your pals and talking about it all night long. Movies defined us. They mirrored us and inspired us.”
Personal notes from RICK’S FLICKS on LISTENING:
Listening was one of Rita Hayworth’s strengths. I cannot recall a better listener in American films. Child star/ teen Tommy Kelly was also good in this regard. Rick’s Flicks would like to hear from readers if anyone remembers and admires other good listeners.
LISTENING AND WATCHING:
In an informal poll conducted by Hollywood columnist Bob Thomas in which he asked actors their choice of the greatest screen performance of all time, Clark Gable chose Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. He commented that she so lived the part that reacting to her helped his own performance. I think especially of the scene where Scarlett visits Rhett in jail and eventually becomes furious with him when he detects her scheme to wheedle money out of him to pay the taxes on Tara. She even physically attacks him. If you look closely you can see that Gable is watching her with keen interest. It almost becomes Gable watching Leigh act, but he remains in character and our suspension is not broken. It is an interesting screen moment and verifies his comment about her influence on his own performance.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Edward Zwick, Hits, Flops, and Other illusions; my fortysomething years in Hollywood. Galley Books (Simon & Schuster), 2024.
New York Times photo
JUDY TWO
The Coconut Grove
Nightspot of legend where my Mom and I created legends of our own.
The Coconut Grove, celebrity hangout. Mom and I did see celebrities. I hung out with Dan Dailey. And we heard Miss Show Business sing.
During the second summer that I was living in Los Angeles, my mother flew out for an extended visit. She wanted to see me, she wanted to see California, and she hoped to see the stars. She had been plotting this vacation for herself since I had arrived in the Golden State. She bore up under my Dad’s apparent comment — “Don’t you know he moved all the way out there to get away from you?” — and on she came.
Near penniless student though I was, I had made a reservation for the closing night of Judy Garland’s two weeks at the Coconut Grove. I had wanted to surprise Mom, but it was always impossible to surprise my mother. She hadn’t been in my apartment fifteen minutes before she was telling me that Garland at the Grove was one of the main events she was looking forward to during her visit. She had read about the engagement in, of all places, my hometown newspaper. She had been saving from her housekeeping money and had accumulated enough for us to enjoy Judy Garland together.
Two interesting points: Mom’s “Garland at the Grove” became the title of the Capitol recording of the live performance. Next: To my own surprise the quite-okay dinner at the Coconut Grove was modest in price and, even more of a surprise, unpretentious. So was our waiter.
We began our dinner after a couple of daiquiris each. As my mother’s autoless escort I had taken her on the bus for our grand outing, pulled the buzzer’s cord too soon and found when we were off the bus and on the sidewalk that we were short of our destination. My mother was accustomed to no physical exertion, and I tended throughout her visit to be impatient with her complaints about any walking we needed to do. Older and slower and stiffer now, I am ashamed of that unkindness. But on this evening, aware of her heavy and short breaths, I was only concerned about how far we might yet have to go and about the loss of our reservation. I stopped a middle-aged man coming towards us on the sidewalk and asked him if he could tell us how far we were from the Ambassador Hotel. He confessed that while he had been there dozens of times he had no idea where it was. Mom and I would later find this amusing. Later.
He moved on. We did, too. And twenty paces later, on our right, stood the big old place and its big sign. I remember it as set back from Wilshire Boulevard about the length of half a football field; and there was the sign in those white lights that we fans would all come to call Judy lights, yards high and yards across: MISS SHOW BUSINESS. Mom and I proceeded up the walk with a lot more hurry than the jauntiness with which the famous quartet approaches the Emerald City over the yellow brick road.
The Garland overture is on the LP “Garland at the Grove,” but the recording of the overture on vinyl’s first band skips The Man That Got Away and cuts to the Rainbow conclusion. This is an interesting technically accomplished omission because Freddie Martin’s Orchestra did play the song as part of her introduction though she failed to sing the song on her program. More of that later.
Her first number, which I had not heard her sing before, was When You’re Smiling,” sung as she passed among the tables to the stage, having entered from the lobby through a crimson drapery. She began the song on the shallow platform, not quite an apron stage, just our side of that curtain. Then she came down the short flight of steps and made her way through the tables.
She finished her opener on stage, and her next song was Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart. She introduced it with patter about her mother bringing her, when she was still a child, to the Grove “for what were called tea dances.” At one of the tables a lone person broke into applause and Judy shouted warmly, “Good for you!” Then: “I think Gus Arnheim was conducting here at the time.” She went on to relate that her mother had wanted her to get up and sing a song and that she had and that the song was Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart, and I’d like to sing it again, just . . .”
Applause.
For me her tone as she told her anecdote caused me to hear that her mother forced her to get up and perform. But when afterward I mentioned this to my own mother, I could tell that my interpretation surprised her.
Next Judy Garland knocked us out, along with the entire celebrity-adorned audience, by delivering herself of The Purple People Eater, a popular novelty of the time. She executed it with verve and her infectious humor.
What did she sing next? I have a firm memory of Judy Garland doing a slow ballad which is not on the Capitol recording. I see her walking along the stage at our side of the room, the only time during the evening when she directly faced our table. I hear I Can’t Give You Anything But Love or My Melancholy Baby. But she had not yet sung or at least had not yet recorded the first. She had sung Melancholy Baby in A Star Is Born, and the song was on the sound track album, part of the Born in a Trunk sequence.
But if this slow ballad is such a firm memory, why do I not recall what the song was? How could I not know what Judy Garland sang? This moment in the concert was our clearest view of her, and I recall wondering if she was under any influence and worrying if my mother might notice. Emily Coleman in her book, acknowledged at the end of this WATCH, has her singing I Can’t Give You Anything But Love. She also lists Liza and Me and My Shadow, neither of which appears on the recording and neither of which I recall. The first songs on Coleman’s list are in the order I remember. But the later songs are not, though Coleman never says that the songs are listed in the order sung. Yet I feel I cannot use her as a sure guide. The book, while invaluable, is sometimes inaccurate. She describes this two-week engagement as a four-week one. But I must not blame her for what I can’t remember.
What Judy seems to have sung after whatever it was that I don’t remember — I am combining my memory and Coleman’s notes and the live recording — is what on early programs in her concert career she called her oleo, or medley; and at this time she was still using the special introductory material, beginning
For almost twenty years
I’ve been a minstrel girl
Singing for my supper
in the throng
and ending
Would you like to hear . . . ?
She eventually altered that first line to “For oh so many years . . . ” and I think that by the time of the Grove performance, she had dropped The Boy Next Door from the medley line-up. It does not appear on the record. On this evening when she sang the final line from the prelude, “Would you like to hear . . .?” the audience broke out in applause; and she broke out in what I can only describe as a vain and self-satisfied laugh. Then she sang You Made Me Love You and For Me and My Gal, inviting the audience to sing that last with her (hearty response). The Trolley Song concluded the medley.
She sang Rock-A-Bye. She also gave us a song made for the torchy range of her voice, the splendid When the Sun Comes Out by Harold Arlen. This night was the first occasion when I heard her sing it. It never entered her concert repertoire, but she would sing it more than once on her weekly television show.
At this point in her live performance career, she still sang at all her concerts A Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow (from her film Little Nelly Kelly). Her version made it funny and jaunty, and she did well by it this evening.
She returned then through the diners’ tables back to the platform just inside the red curtain which closed off the lobby and standing there, sang Over the Rainbow. For the final phrases the spotlight found her face alone.
After this song so filled with memories — hers, perhaps, ours definitely — she sang two encores. First was After You’ve Gone, not the truncated version from her show at the Greek Theatre but the original version as she sang it in For Me and My Gal and later recorded. At one point during the evening she had told the audience, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more wonderful orchestra in my LIFE than Freddy Martin and his gentlemen.” But she now said, before singing After You’ve Gone, that she and the orchestra had not rehearsed it. Light sarcasm: “So, it’s going to be kind of good, I think.” It was good and she said so and added, “They’d never done that before.” The album notes on the sleeve of “Garland at the Grove” claim that it was recorded on opening night. But all her patter from our night, her closing night, is on the record; her comment about Gus Arnheim and the tea dances and her “Good for you!” to the applauder, her appreciative remarks about the Freddy Martin Orchestra, he remark on how hot the evening was.
I saw Judy Garland a sufficient number of times to know that this superb actress with a wide range of histrionic ability could repeat lines, happenings, accidents from other performances and make them sound spontaneous — that was all a part of her “ritualized paces” in the phrase of my one-time friend Ted. But I believe that the recording was made not on opening night but on the night my mother and I were there. And coming up is my claim to be on the record.
She concluded her show with Swanee. When she asked for encore requests, called out from among the tables more than any other of her standards was The Man That Got Away. She finally said, “I’m sorry, we don’t have that arrangement. (Those may not be her exact words.) My feeling then was that the enthusiastic insistence on the song surprised her. To my knowledge she never again omitted it from a live performance — perhaps the final two in Denmark?
I was one of those shouting out the name of that song; and I have always told family and friends that the most distinct voice calling for it, easily heard on the recording, is own voice. I was surely the loudest voice on the floor clamoring for it. But where were the recording instruments? When my old friend and I listened to the record together, I could see that he doubted when I claimed it was my voice. And it doesn’t sound all that much like me. But I was there, and I was the loudest, wasn’t !?
So, she finished with Swanee, and as she charged into the final lines my mother pointed out to me the row of all the waiters. They were lined up to the right of the projecting stage, each with a prepared check in his hand. They were all looking at her back, watching her wrap up her show. They resembled a row of tennis spectators but with necks and heads frozen in one direction..
Mom and I went home from our glamorous, like-being-in-a-movie, star-bright night on the LA city bus. My mother’s conversation, like that of the mother of writer William Gibson who helped me see this aspect of her, my mother’s conversation rarely dealt in ideas or with anything beyond her diurnal round.. Before we had reached the halfway mark to Westwood, she was already onto the yellow curtains she had in mind for the kitchen window in the house where I had grown up.
But for the first thirty minutes of the ride she had joined me in recalling the celebrities among whom we had enjoyed the show that had been one of her vacation goals. Liberace the Strange had been there and taken a bow as it was announced that he was about to open at the Coconut Grove. Robert Taylor had been there — his lack of height surprising both of us — had been there with, of all witches, Nancy Davis on his arm. They were double dating with Ronald Reagan who was squiring someone I no longer recall. My mother was sure she saw Kim Novak, also Jane Powell who she later always described to friends as an old hag when you see her close up. But the woman was not Jane Powell, neither was the other one Kim Novak. By that point my mother had stars in her eyes and was seeing them at every table. But I really had hung out with Dan Dailey. In the men’s room we had peed side by side.
* * * * * * * * * * *
JUDY NOTE # 1: Acknowledgment: Coleman, Emily R. The Complete Judy Garland. Harper Row, 1900.
NEXT Friday POST May 30
Until then,
Enjoy a movie,
Rick
TODAY Rick’s Flicks begins its serialization of Harry Richards’ book, THE JUDY WATCH.
Harry Richards is a free lance writer out of Missoula, Montana. He has spent much of his life observing, studying and analyzing the work of Judy Garland. While now over fifty books have been written about Judy Garland, Richards believes his is the first to look exclusively at her live concert career. Richard enjoys being a father and grandfather. He likes flowers, reading and watching vintage films.
THE JUDY WATCH
by Harry Richards
DEDICATION
For the lady who sang them
For Harold Arlen who wrote them
For Roger Edens
and Kay Thompson
and Leonard Gershe
and Mort Lindsey
and Gordon Jenkins
and Conrad Salinger and Norman Jewison
all of whom no doubt contributed more than we know
For Christopher Finch
and Richard Shickel
and John Fricke
and Ron O’Brien
and Rex Reed
and Clifton Fadiman
and Brooks Atkinson
and Joel Dorn
who have written so splendidly about her
For Joe and Lorna and Liza
who have always said it right
With cheers to her cheering section
Mickey Rooney
and Ann Rutherford
and Ray Bolger
and Margaret Whiting
and Jackie Cooper
and Jerry Herman
and Shana Alexander
* * * * * * * *
” . . . she somehow promises people a return to Oz.”
That description of Judy Garland is wrapped in quotation marks because someone else said it. Unfortunately I have lost a file that contained the source of the comment. It is such a glowing assessment of Judy Garland’s relationship with her audience and theirs with her that I must use it — with a fervent wish that I could acknowledge the author.
* * * * * * * *
New York Times photo
J U D Y O N E
Living it again in order to set it down here, I found myself astonished when I could not remember the month when I first saw Judy Garland on stage. I thought of my family and friends who, if they knew, would share my surprise and expect me to remember date, day and hour.
I knew it was a balmy summer evening. In southern California. It had to be 1957. I was sure it was Saturday. And in those days it would have been unusual for the show not to begin at 8:30. For a time I refused to look it up. I was finding it fun to speculate. I wanted to be — want to be — as honest as memory allows, but there are facts that are not that important. This is neither a biography nor an autobiography. It is a memoir. An appreciation of Judy Garland, live.
She was appearing in an amphitheater under California’s dependable skies. The park was green, but I was greener. This was my first time. I was barely believing it all. My friend John had driven us to Griffith Park in Los Angeles, and as we walked towards the Greek Theatre I was more than excited. We called them movie stars then. I was on my way to see the shining star I fell in love with when I was six years old.
I did not know on that Saturday evening that the excitement I felt was a tame version of what would happen inside me in future whenever I would live through the on-stage explosion that was a Judy Garland concert. Those who know her only from the television screen, only from movies; those who know her only in her timeless performance in The Wizard of Oz; and those knowing Judy Garland only from recordings cannot imagine the dynamism of the dynamo she became before an audience, an audience I suspect she may have hated as much as she loved us and needed us.
A friend once told me that if she were asked to describe my personality with one word, she would choose fan. As I followed Judy Garand’s work and career and life, the singer became the center of my entertainment, and as my primary short-term goal was always being alert for notice of her next performance near enough for me to attend, she became a focal point in my daily living. I began corroborating my friend’s expressed opinion and living my life as a fan. That Saturday night at the Greek, as we called it out there then, was the genesis of live fandom, my dedication to seeing and hearing in live performance someone I had admired most of my life.
This initial performance was the first time I heard the Garland overture: two opening phrases of The Man That Got Away, followed by most of The Trolley Song, then half of Over the Rainbow, finally a strong-on-the-downbeat Man That Gor Away, concluding with the final phrase of Over the Rainbow. (See JUDY NOTE # 1 at the end of this WATCH.) When the orchestra in the Greek Theatre pit began The Trolley Song in the overture I heard a young woman behind me ask, “What’s that they’re playing?” The voice of a sudden authority replied, “It’s The Trolley Song. That’s one of her biggest numbers.”
I could not resist turning to look at him. Older than his date. Suit and tie. People dressed for concerts then. But the tie was, is, an unforgettable orange. He wore glasses almost opaque from my side of them. I quickly looked away when he smiled at me as if to suggest that he was willing to share his knowledge with me, too.
The myopic man with the tie was my first inkling of a special kind of concertgoer at Judy Garland’s performances. Concertgoer, not fan. I admit that she had fans besides me. Everyone knows she had fanatical fans, still has. But she also attracted a lot of fans so-called that deserved to be called by any other name.
The man behind me was a relatively innocuous beginning, the first in line of a years-long stream of countless authorities that I would encounter in the rows of seats, on the aisles, in lobbies, at intermission bars. Know-it-alls who knew everything about some facet of the life and career of the giant star they never called by any other name than her first.
There was the ticketholder who specialized in the songs cut from films before their release. The expert in pirate recordings and lost recordings, these usually live recordings of European concert engagements. There was a smaller number of specialists on thought-lost-but-now-found recordings. But too many overheard comments came from scholars of all her illnesses and each of her suicide attempts. This last subject, which has been of endless interest to some followers and much of the general public, is intriguing for me since I am a fan convinced that Judy Garland never made a serious attempt to take her life.
But that Saturday night at the Greek — my retrospect of which finds me harder on my fellow traveler in the row behind me than I was at the time — that night I was a loing way from my career down the road as a three-hundred-sixty-five-day-a-year devotee of Miss G.
At this point in the life of her stage show Judy Garland still had with her the chorus of young men billed as Judy’s Boy Friends. They danced and sang a song about her, each holding up a placard proclaiming a letter of her name, appropriately shifting places to create descriptive words from the letters. “She’s gay,” the chorus sang, when the word was still by and large a shibboleth and not yet meaning anything in common parlance except happy and lively. “She’s gay. She’s gaudy. She’s angular.”
Her first solo was By Myself, the splendid Howard Dietz-Arthur Schwartz song that was the first band on her just released album — vinyl then — titled “Alone.” The album sleeve featured a trench-coated Judy (yellow, a personal favorite color of hers), hugging collar to throat, standing on a lonely beach. It was an unusually arranged version of the song but nothing like the developed, acted-out one she would sing in her English film The Lonely Stage (in America, I Could Go On Singing).
She next sang Mean to Me, the old standard by Roy Turk and Fred Ahlert that had held a permanent niche in Ruth Etting’s repertoire. This small song is one of Judy Garland’s underestimated masterpieces. Arranged by Gordon Jenkins it is perfectly toned, timed and modulated.
Mean to Me was also from the new “Alone” album, and she made a gentle pitch for the LP, momentarily not being able to remember the name of the label. “I’ve been fired so many times I don’t know who the hell I’m working for.” Then she mentioned the growing multiplicity of labels. “I remember when there were only four major labels. Now we have Dot, Verve. But ‘Alone’ is Capitol.”
Now, as Alan King took the stage, Judy Garland disappeared, leaving me nonplussed by her considerable makeup, highly arched brows and her sleek black dress which did not quite conceal her once more broadening waist. (“Do you suppose this figure will ever come back?” she once asked an audience.)
Acquaintances don’t believe me when I tell them that I lived almost ten years in Los Angeles and Hollywood without a car. I could never have lived that life without staggeringly generous friends. In those naive salad days before I owned a car, I took for granted all the chauffeuring and shepherding here and there across Los Angeles County. I took for granted even a dear friend like John L. who drove me to shop, took me apartment hunting and invited my lonely self to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners at his folks’, picking me up and driving me back, twenty miles each way.
And it was John who had gotten me to the Greek on this Saturday night. His driving me there had saved me a three-hour bus trip on the city’s public transportation, I had sent off for my ticket five minutes after reading the newspaper ad ; but John had trusted his luck, which held true, and bouight a last-minute ticket at the box office. He sat fifteen rows behind me.
At intermission, when I mentioned our star’s surprising appearance, John L. replied, “She’s showing us her New York sophistication. I’m sure that when she comes back — John said “returns” — “she will be our down-home Judy.” She came back minus much makeup but in flowing red chiffon, and danced with her many Boy Freinds, I’m not sure how appropriately since she was singing about The Man That Got Away.
Later in her program there came for me a thrilling, and I now a realize, a premonitory moment while she was singing Rock-A-Bye Your Baby. She reached “and swing it from Virginia,” then as she sang with lilt and vibrato “to Tennessee with all the love that’s in ya’,” at least half the audience burst into applause. Realization rushed through me that the moment I had always liked best in the song, countless others liked as well. Later in her concert life the Garland nuts like me would applaud perhaps too much at her performances. But I would become furious when we were taken to task by reviewers. I suspect that more often than not they were right. I recall William Goldman writing in Esquire that the star herself seemed to have become superfluous to her performing audience. Hard words. But written perhaps with some justification.
With my next reaction on this baptismal evening I moved from premonition to shock. Judy sang Swanee and called her daughter Liza on stage to sing it with her. I had the fan’s long-held belief in Judy as victim of an untalented stage mother. I felt more than queasy with Judy’s second generational repetition of what had been done to her. My shock became surprise as an eerily poised Liza, so small down there beyong the footlights, sang Gershwin’s rouser very well with a big, shattering voice.
Judy then sang a telescoped version of her rendition of After You’ve Gone in For Me and My Gal. And in those days she always concluded with Over the Rainbow.
When eventually our applause demanded an encore, she came back on stage and appeared to listen to shouted requests. But finally she said, “The Trolley Song is what we rehearsed and The Trolley Song is what you’ll get whether you like it or not.” Big laugh. Much applause.
But earlier, before that single encore, as she began the coda of Over the Rainbow,” sitting on the rim of the stage — where she really did not fit; she was obviously repeating a successful ritual performed elsewhere but had to jam her body between tall footlights that were in the way; and the lip of the stage curved upward enough that even with the help of her waif costume, she did not easily dangle her legs into the orchestra pit — As she began the coda to Over the Rainbow, she stopped singing mid-phrase and signalled the orchestra to stop as well. She said she had gotten, “a little dizzy back there,” and could they start again? She finished on pitch, in soaring voice.
When after the concert, sitting with John L. in the small bar of the Ambassador Hotel (ah! home of the Coconut Grove), I remarked on her pause in the song, John said, “I felt she was in total control throughout her show, including those closing moments of Over the Rainbow.”
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JUDY NOTE # 1 : I have described the Garland overture, as it came to be called, as including The Man That Got Away when I first heard the overture at this Greek Theatre performance. I am not one hundred percent certain that the song was part of the overture at that time. I am sure about Over the Rainbow and The Trolley Song. I may be retrojecting The Man That Got Away from other live performances. I have a friend who says that sometimes it is enjoyable to wonder. In this instance I have found it more rewarding to wonder than to try to locate the historical fact. I am sure that the song was part of the overture by the following year when I saw Judy Garland at the Coconut Grove, though it was cut from the live performance album.
Judy Garland’s best recording of this gut-wrenching, nut-twisting song by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin is her original sound track rendition for the George Cukor film A Star Is Born. Simultaneously with the release of the motion picture, a 45 rpm record of the song was released as was a 33rpm album, which included two fine numbers deleted from the movie, Here’s What I’m Here For and Lose That Long Face.
I mentioned above the strong-beat version of the song typically played in the overture to Judy Garland’s live performances. I carried a memory of this strong beat from the film and from that 45 which I owned and almost wore out before having the long-playing album. I believed for years that later as she sang The Man That Got Away in live performances she lost that torch-like beat, if that’s the kind of beat it is. I missed it in her delivery and in whatever band or orchestra backed her, though at times I felt that the band was preserving the original, pulsing rhythm more faithfully than she was. In those concert years she more and more tended to present the song as operettic ballad rather than torch song, even trilling the r in thrill.
The orchestral beat — da-da-DAH-da — on Frank Sinatra’s recording called The Gal That Got Away, is very pronounced. Ever the thief, he tried to steal this song from Judy Garland as he would later try to steal New York, New York from Liza Minnelli. He may have succeeded with the latter. Today many people would ignorantly identify it as a Sinatra song.
I have written what I have believed for years, but I should include here fresh evidence and some slightly revisionist memory. After the American Film Institute’s presentation on television of yet another of their infamous lists, the time the 100 great songs, including The Man That Got Away, I watched A Star Is Born again several times. To my astonishment I found that my memory had played me false. Gently false. Not even in the movie — that is, on the movie sound track — does she give the song quite the torching quality I had been carrying in my head, nor did Danny’s band behind her, rather, around her (if you recall the CinemaScope shot).
However I might describe how she sings her song and whatever my memory might be, her delivery of it in the film is superb. In his American Popular Song from the Revolutionary War to the Present, David Ewen quotes Time magazine’s description of her singing The Man That Got Away in A Star Is Born. “Her big, dark voice sobs, sighs, sulks and socks it out like a cross between Tara’s harp and the late Bessie Smith.” Her nomination as best actress by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may be the group’s first recognition of a kind of acting different from playing a scene.
Another surprise in these most recent viewings of The Man That Got Away as performed in the movie, she smiles a couple of times while singing it. My wife always described Judy Garland as living her lyrics — none of this empty-headed nonbsense of a mouth full of great big smiles while moaning melancholy words. I was discouraged by those smiles, breif though they are. But after additional viewings I see that they are not a disregard for the lyrics but an expression of Esther’s (her character’s) joy in her own singing.
The best orchestral version of The Man That Got Away is that by the obviously small but terrific band on a 33rpm album called “The Long Lost Holland Concert, the rarest Garland ever” (Obliggato Label G1H60).
NEXT Friday POST May 18
Until then,
Enjoy a movie,
Rick
NOTES FROM RICK’S PERSONAL DIARY
I have just come from the ending of A Good Day to Die Hard. The climax of the film is shot entirely in the dark. It is impossible to tell who’s who much less who’s shooting at whom. You hear shots fired. Metal clangs and crashes against metal. But you see nothing.
When did this begin? Can any of our readers pinpoint when it became fashionable to keep the film from the viewer?
In The Piano Jane Campion delighted in photographing objects from angles and perspectives that made them difficult to identify until the camera moved. She settled things differently in The Power of the Dog, shooting in the dark so that objects and people are not even seen. In almost every scene of serious emotional conflict in The Power of the Dog, the actor’s faces are not visible.
The point?
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THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI Orson Welles 1948
More than one critic mentions the spectacular photographic effects. ‘Taint so. There is only the justly famous fun house shoot out at the end. There are clumsy process shots, scads of tight close-ups of faces, and one glaring matte. No spectacular photography nor script that would demand it.
The usually reliable Hayworth cannot really give the camera and us her performance because (SPOILER ALERT) she is always having to give a performance for her Irish seaman Welles. Off the top of my memory I recall Olivia de Havilland managing a similar kind of thing better in My Cousin Rachel. But Hayworth, whatever we know or don’t about her character at any given stage of the story, is believable and /or believably unbelievable. As always, she is delicious to behold (delicious: Richard Schickle’s word for her).
Orson Welles is close to ridiculous walking about bare-chested as a supposedly rough and tough Irishman.
NEXT Friday POST May 3
On May 3 Rick’s Flicks will begin serialization of Harry Richards’ book THE JUDY WATCH. Richards is a free lance writer out of Missoula, Montana. He has spent much of his life observing, studying and analyzing the work of Judy Garland. Though there are now over fifty published books about Judy Garland, Richards believes his is the first devoted exclusively to her live concert career. Richards enjoys being a father and grandfather. He likes flowers, reading and viewing vintage films.
May 3 – THE JUDY WATCH by Harry Richards
Until then,
Enjoy a movie,
Rick
ONE SHORT TAKE AND TWO SHORT-SHORTS
HELLER IN PINK TIGHTS George Cukor 1960
A tale of a troupe of actors traveling the Great West in two caravans — usually on the run from creditors. Even when over-acting Sophia is still grand to watch as the company’s diva. Eileen Heckart is perfect as the actress aging and sensitive about it, and as her daughter Margaret O’Brien does well. Steve Forrest is ideally cast as the likeable villain. And Anthony Quinn at this time was still acting and not yet settled into always playing the great actor. Edmund Lowe is the company’s seasoned performer, and the great Ramon Novarro has a small, thankless part.
screenplay, Dudley Nichols and Walter Bernstein
art direction, Hal Pereira and Gene Allen
set decoration, Sam Comer
costume design, Edith Head
from a novel by Louis L’Amour
Novarro as 1926’s Ben-Hur
THE SAND PEBBLES Robert Wise 1964
About 80 minutes’ worth of narration are given a three-hour Hollywood treatment; but it offers lots of subtleties because of the direction of Robert Wise and the performance of his star. Steve McQueen has almost no dialogue. He creates his seaman character through facial expressions (or lack of them) and especially with body language. It is a remarkable piece of acting.
IN DUBIOUS BATTLE James Franco
Despite its Steinbeck credentials, the potential drama in the good guys’ warring among themselves and the star-studded cast, Franco’s film never comes to life. As director Franco’s ambitious reach still seems to exceed his grasp.
NEXT Friday POST April 19
Until then,
Enjoy a movie,
Rick
NOTES FROM RICK’S PERSONAL DIARY
I am happy to learn that a group of directors which includes Alfonso Cuarón and Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan has organized to save the Village Theatre in West Los Angeles. I once lived five blocks from the theater and attended more than one premiere there — attended as a sidewalk spectator. At the premiere of A MAJORITY OF ONE I can’t remember why the marquee on the Bruin Theatre, directly opposite the Village, was dark that night. What I remember is that when Rosalind Russell arrived, she exited her vehicle on the passenger side, facing the Bruin. I still remember how her face fell. No lights, no sidewalk spectators. Then ol’ Roz wheeled about and found the Village’s lighted marquee and the assembled crowd. The lights and the applause brought the smile back to her face.*
Readers will recall that it was the Village Theatre where the Margot Robbie character went to watch herself in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
LIFE AS A HOUSE Irwin Winkler 2001
This touching story about learning to live life while facing death is given its life by an excellent cast. Kevin Kline is outstanding. Kristin Scott-Thomas, in a smaller role as his ex-wife, is always believable and very affecting. A shockingly mean-spirited Mary Steenburgen is also very good as the neighbor, and Hayden Christensen as the son is perfectly cast.
THE HORSE WHISPERER Robert Redford 1998
This is an indulgent film indulgently paced, but it remains engrossing. A teenage girl is recovering from an accident which took one of her legs and the life of her beloved horse. She is helped by her parents and a knowledgeable horseman played by Robert Redford. But the film belongs to Kristin Scott-Thomas as the mother. She makes us care about a not very likeable character. As the girl, a very young Scarlett Johansson is already a very fine actress.
Through the camera lens Montana looks high, wide and handsome.
Photography, Robert Richardson
MONTANA STORY David Siegel and Scott McGehee 2021
This is not a Montana story. This dysfunctional family is universal. It is an American tale. But there ARE Indians. And a horse is central to the tale. The film is superbly acted by Owen Teague and Haley Lu Nuttgens as estranged brother and sister.
The Montana-set film was shot NOT in Alberta, NOT in Wyoming but IN Montana, in and near the city of Bozeman in what is now called Paradise Valley.
Photography, Giles Nuttgens
Editing, Isaac Hagy
*Rick’s Flicks thanks Nicole Sperling for information on the Village Theatre: “A Landmark Movie Palace Is Bought by Star Directors,” New York Times, 2/24/24.
NEXT Friday POST April 5
Until then,
If you live near a restored theater,
See you AT the movies,
Rick
MAMMY IN GONE WITH THE WIND
In an October article in the New York Times* about the replacement of Hattie McDaniel’s long-disappeared supporting actress award for Gone with the Wind, a gift the actress made to Howard University, Jonathan Abrams wrote: “McDaniel had earned the award for her portrayal of Mammy, an agreeable slave at the whim of Scarlett O’Hara.”
Mammy was not at anybody’s whim. She is the only character in the film that Scarlett is afraid of, the only person she bows to. She is the one character whose respect Rhett Butler craves. Mammy is the moral compass of Gone with the Wind.
*Jonathan Abrams, “Academy Replaces Missing Historic Oscar Plaque.” New York Times, 10/4/23.
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BROTHERS Jim Sheridan 2009
The acting is outstanding in this ugly story set in Afghanistan and on the American home front during our longest war. The screenplay goes far in violence — physical and especially emotional violence — in making its case against war.
Tobey Maguire
Cast against type, Tobey Maguire is a revelation as Sam. As his ne’er-do-well brother Tommy, Jake Gyllenhaal is believable in every frame. As Sam’s wife Grace, made an emotional wreck by the two brothers, Natalie Portman is fine. Also remarkable is Bailee Madison as the older daughter of Sam and Grace. It is often hard to know how much a great performance by a child actor is the result of editing, but Bailee Madison seems born to cry.
NEXT FRIDAY POST March 22
Until then,
Enjoy a movie,
Rick
THE BONE COLLECTOR Phillip Noyce 1999
Two cops bring each other out of their shells while solving the crimes of a serial killer with revenge as his motive.
The crimes in this thriller spring from a grisly concept and feature some near-gory details. But Denzel Washington, despite the genre, achieves once more a total, and unique, characterization. And Angelina Jolie is excellent in a firm characterization of her own.
From a novel by Jeffery Deaver.
THE HURRICANE Norman Jewison 1999
This is a heartbreaking account of the false imprisonment of boxer Rubin Carter. Denzel Washington is superb as his acted-out anger becomes lifelong suppressed rage. Unfortunately his three legal advisors (which include the great Liev Schreiber) are not sufficiently characterized, in the writing, to be of that much interest.*
*Rick’s Flicks is indebted to Leonard Maltin for this observation.
A LOSS TO THE FILM WORLD
The many obituaries for Norman Jewison, director of The Hurricane who died January 20, all failed to mention among his credits that he directed some of the weekly programs of The Judy Garland Show.
INSIDE MAN Spike Lee 2006
This is a story of an offbeat bank heist led by Clive Owen with Denzel Washington assigned to talk him out of his hostages. The film is too long and so is each sequence in it, but the robbery is ingeniously planned and has a motive with historical/social implications. Washington once again creates a full characterization and, along the way, spouts some of the dirtiest dialogue Rick’s Flicks can recall hearing in a movie — clever, but dirty.
Jodie Foster develops a powerful character in a small but memorable role.
NEXT Friday POST March 8
Until then,
Enjoy a movie,
Rick
THE CIDER HOUSE RULES
N.B. The discussion is all SPOILER ALERTS.
In this coming of age tale young Homer Wells proves he’s grown up by his willingness to perform an abortion, something he had always refused to do in the illegal abortion clinic where he previously worked — and where as an orphan he had grown up. He is helped to this choice by the fact that the woman involved is someone he knows and that she is impregnated by her own father, someone he, and the audience, have liked.
Also shown as maturing on his part is his willingness to destroy the long-standing rules posted on the wall in the cider house where he and his fellow orchard workers live and sleep. He is told to destroy them by his fellows and he obeys. He is the only white in the otherwise black crew.
When the father attempts to stop his daughter from absconding, she knifes him and leaves. Homer agrees, on the father’s insistence, not to give him any medical help. This also appears to be a part of Homer’s coming of age, along with agreeing not to tell the police what happened.
Homer comes honestly by his resentment of authority. He grew up in a small rural hospital that is a front for an abortion clinic. Its one doctor (Michael Caine) and his two nurses lead a life of lies and are always concealing facts from their board of trustees.
The owner of the orchard where Homer has gone to work after leaving the hospital has a son away in the army. His fianceé is on hand, staying with his mother, and she sees to Homer’s sexual coming of age. She needs sex while her intended is in combat and uses Homer who falls in love with her. To her credit, when the soldier returns paralyzed, she accepts him. The fiancée is played by Charlize Theron, soon to become a formidable actress.
Critics have called this film glowing, “warm,” “loving” ! This perception may have to do with the performance by Tobey Maguire who is perfectly cast and whose charm survives all the corruption and betrayal and death of the script.
From the novel by John Irving
THE CIDER HOUSE RULES Lasse Halström 1999
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MOVIES ARE EVERYWHERE
Yes, they are, including in good novels. In Paul Auster’s latest novel Baumgartner, the wife of the narrator is fed up with what the ceiling fans in the office where she works do to her hair. ” . . . but what a hideous tangle those fans wrought on the uppermost parts of a girl’s head, so I marched into a hairdresser’s place on the first Saturday I had off, showed the stylist a photograph of Jean Seberg in Breathless, then another one of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, and told her to split the difference between the two.”
Paul Auster. Baumgartner. Grove Press, 2023.
NEXT FRIDAY POST February 23
Until then,
Enjoy a movie,
Rick
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