My Favourite Judy Garland Story

This extract is taken from the wonderful biography of Judy, Get Happy by Gerald Clarke. I reviewed it last month and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to any fan. This extract takes place during one of her hospital stays prior to her final fracture with MGM. Judy has been going regularly to visit children at their hospital next door and has been most drawn to a frightened girl who hasn't spoken for two days because her family has been so cruel to her. Judy spends a lot of time with her, talking about her life to the girl and not minding that she didn't answer back.

By the end of August Judy had recovered her weight and energy, and it was time to say good-bye. On her last day in Boston, she paid her final visit to the children's hospital, where each of the patients, scrubbed and smiling, held a tiny bouquet of flowers in her honour. "Well, my friend, I'm going now," she said to the girl who refused to speak, "and I want to thank you for all you've done for me. I'm going to miss you." As Judy leaned over to kiss her, the girl reached out and clasped her as tightly as she could, and all the words she had not uttered for so many months poured out in a seemingly endless torrent. "Judy!" she screamed. "I love you! I love you! Don't leave! Don't leave!"

Watching that poignant drama, the rest of the ward was all but awash in tears: the nurses cried, the other children cried, Alsop cried and so, of course, did Judy. When Alsop warned her that they would miss their train, Judy waved him away. "Well, we'll just have to miss it," she said. "I'm not going to leave this child right now while she's talking." And there she remained for the next two hours, listening to her little friend's excited babble and bringing the nurses over, one by one, so that the girl would continue to speak even after Judy herself had returned to California. There had been other gratifying moments in her life, Judy later said, but nothing approached that one. "I didn't give a goddamn how many pictures I'd been fired from. I had done a human being some good. She had helped to make me well, and I had helped her."

Book Review: Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland by Gerald Clarke

I don't think it will come as a great surprise to regular readers of this blog that my latest indulgence has been a Judy Garland biography. I adore her but, for whatever reason, I'd never read a book solely about her. Something to do with heroes and pedestals perhaps. However, Clarke's account, while being as close to truthful as one can get when dealing with Judy, is touching and left my adoration fully intact.

What Clarke does to great effect within the four hundred or so pages is raise all those questions that dictated the progression of Judy's life; the 'what ifs' that seem so heartbreaking to a modern reader. Judy's tragic life is one of the reasons she's remembered but - and this is important - the primary reason she's remembered is because she was a gifted entertainer. Nevertheless, the 'what ifs' are compelling to read.

• What if Judy's loving father had lived longer? (He died in 1935)


• What if her mother hadn't started giving her those pills to keep her going?


• What if her first husband hadn't agreed with her mother and encouraged her to have an abortion?


• What if Judy had gone to Broadway in the mid-forties as had been her ambition?

Those are four of many 'what ifs' that popped up during my reading of this biography. Clarke's detailed interviews with his various sources have produced a text that is well informed but not over-saturated with information. Where one example of Judy's behaviour - or behaviour towards Judy - will suffice he doesn't clutter up his book with two. What we're left with is a concise and, I think, representative biography that finds the person behind the star as well as anybody could hope to.

I won't lie - on occasion I wanted more information on some scenarios and people she was acquainted with but, all in all, this book was very good, quite possibly excellent. It shows Judy the trouper, Judy the vulnerable, Judy the mother and doesn't gloss over the bad bits. However, the message I came out with was that Judy loved singing, loved entertaining, loved her audience. I just think it's remarkable that forty two years after her death people still love her with the same intensity they did when she appeared on screen. That's some legacy.