In the lap of the gods
G. Cabrere Infante
JUDY GARLAND by David Shipman Fourth Estate, £17.99, pp. 320 When a group of movie buffs came to visit with Louis B. Mayer at Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer in 1938, the lost tycoon, then in his heyday, sat the young Judy Gar- land in his lap to claim, `Do you see this lit- tle girl? Look what I've made her into. She used to be a hunchback.' Then, turning to Garland, 'Isn't that true, Judy?' According to David Shipman, who has now written her definitive biography (which could have a subtitle, 'The Case of the Lame Canary'), there was 'an astonished pause' and Judy replied, 'Why yes, Mr Mayer, I suppose so.' But even Shipman, who is more generous with Garland than he ever was with Marlon Brando, his only other biographee, says that MGM's `greatest achievement was to disguise that she had no waist'. He quotes later one Frances Marion who said, 'She had all the characteristics of a chipmunk.' Charitably Shipman wrote: 'Her anatomy may have been perfect
for a singer but it did not look well on camera.'
This lengthy book tells how and at what cost Judy Garland, the original child performer Frances Ethel Gumm, grew to belie Mayer and become a mental hunch- back.
According to their respective biogra- phers, Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland were lookalikes reflected in a Hollywood mirror. Both were the product of the studio system: Garland, as we have seen, was no beauty but had enormous talent as a singer and actress, Marilyn had no talent other than her considerable beauty. Both were insecure, even sick persons who used sex as a way to feel wanted. Both suffered from an inferiority complex that had its counter- poise in delusions of grandeur. Both were addicted to sleeping pills and as an anti- dote became addicted to amphetamines. Both had a problem with physical time and, if Marilyn was labelled `the late Marilyn Monroe', you could call Garland 'the latest Judy Garland'. Both became absolutely unreliable and had problems with their stu- dio bosses — Monroe was fired at the end of her career, Garland in mid-career. Both died by their own hands, both enjoyed a morbid fame after rigor mortis set in. Marilyn became a legend, Judy was already one when she went to that heaven full of MGM stars, to sit in the lap of the Great Producer, as Cecil B. de Mille called God.
Back on earth she married the great Vin- cente Minnelli, who directed her in her best movies: her masterpiece, Meet Me in St Louis, and Under the Clock and The Pirate. Was she grateful? Not at all. She came to loathe Minnelli not because he was not the ideal man (three of her four husbands were gay) but because he was kind and patient and catered to her many whims and, as when she was a child, she performed many tantrums for him, in private and in public. Besides, she didn't know the meaning of the word loyalty and without telling her husband she warned the studio that she did not want Minnelli to direct her in Easter Parade, scheduled to be their next picture together.
Minnelli didn't divorce her on this occa- sion, but she never made another movie as good as those three directed by her hus- band. Even her considerable achievement in A Star is Born, later in her life, pales in comparison. What she did next was to fol- low her best pictures with a mediocre remake of The Shop Around the Comer titled In the Good Old Summertime — and, not ironically, 'Schmaltz' was the name of the waltz.
Her constant companion was the fear of failing that was a fear of falling. In A Star is Born she was married to a fading film star, drunk and suicidal, who finally manages to do the decent thing and kill himself by drowning. The poetic irony here is that Garland played the faithful, loyal wife (remember Mrs Minnelli?) while in real life she was the drunk, deceiving star and a suicide who never did the decent thing. She died sitting naked on her toilet seat. Her sex life was demented and sordid but apparently there was no life for her out of sex. It was her stage, her audience and her critics all rolled into one. Compared to her, Marilyn Monroe walked in wimples, like a nun. To top it all off, she was also crazy enough to say that she loved the London weather. 'It's stimulating', she claimed. Of London considered as a wet amphetamine? Hardly. David Shipman reveals the truth behind yet another lie. One of the attractions London had for her was that 'it was an ocean away from her creditors'. When she died, in London, she was only 47 — but '$4 million in debt' in her own country.
I never liked Judy Garland. I still don't, after reading this tell-tale biography that is sometimes attractive, sometimes repulsive. As a child actress there was something wrong with her body: perhaps Mayer didn't do his job well. As a woman there was something sticky seeping through her make-up. True, she had a potent voice — but so had Al Jolson, and I don't think there was anything lovable in him either. But Jolson at least sang in black face, the shoe polish doing the dirty work for him. Garland, on the other hand, in her famous scene with her studio boss (Mayer trying once more to straighten her up) in A Star is Born, where she is seen painting freckles on her heavily made-up face and fighting her tears for a dead husband, I thought was appalling. Others think she was great. On that shaky ground her posthumous fame rests. For on the stage she became a grotesque carrying the torch of a song. Now a female impersonator does the job for her. But one must say that on film, as in life, Judy Garland was always on the brink of extinction; her career was an impossible mission. Louis B. Mayer, star-maker extra- ordinary, failed from the start. She was born in a trunk and in a trunk she remained.
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