Posted on by mikebobsworld

JUDY

Had Judy Garland lived she would have been 100 years old on Friday, June 10, 2022.  Tragically, she passed away in 1969 at the age of forty-seven.  Judy is a show business legend and while delving into that legend I found some disturbing things.  About Judy?  Yes. But more about how we in the 21st Century treat our legends.  When I Googled Judy here is what came up as to what people wanted to know.

What Illness Did Judy Garland Have?

Why did Judy Garland have no money?

What was Judy Garland’s net worth at death?

What was Judy Garland’s cause of death?

This is what Google thought most people wanted to know about.  I have read more than one biography of Judy Garland.  She has fascinated me since I was a teenager.  I know about most of the struggles in her life and yet when I read some of the articles online they reported other tragedies which her biographers did not report and I am sure Judy herself would have preferred they remain private.

What is it about us as a society now that we have to take our legends and our heroes and tear them down?  Why do we need to lay bare every sin of every person?  To quote Lord Grantham on Downton Abbey, “We all have chapters in our lives that we would rather not have published.”  And yet as soon as anyone in our current media culture gets an ugly fact they can’t wait to publish it.  This is what I will not do today.  Yes, Judy Garland had problems.  Big Problems.  The ones we all know about are enough.  A battle with drugs, several broken marriages, people who embezzled her money, and much more.  It is out of those problems that there emerged a performer who has been hailed as the greatest talent of the 20th century.  This talent, this woman, this gift is what I will write about today.

Judy was born Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922.  She was the daughter of a vaudevillian couple Frank and Ethel Gumm who had given up life on the road to manage a movie house in Grand Rapids Minnesota.  In addition to showing movies the Gumms featured Vaudeville acts between shows frequently using their daughters, Francis had two older sisters, Mary Jane and Dorothy Virginia, as part of the entertainment.  Francis joined her sisters at the ripe old age of two singing “Jingle Bells’ with her sisters.  The Gumm Sisters were born.

In 1926 the family moved from Grand Rapids to Lancaster California.  Reportedly this move was precipitated because Francis’ or Judy’s father had homosexual inclinations and he had been found out.  In Lancaster, The Gumm sisters began to work the vaudeville circuit. Because their name, Gumm, seemed to attract laughter from audiences, and at one time they were billed as The Glum Sisters they were encouraged to change their last name.  The name Garland was chosen and Francis chose to change her first name to Judy.  This was late in 1934.  Francis now Judy was 12 years old.

In August of 1935, The Gumm Sisters disbanded when one of the sisters left to get married in Nevada.

Also in August of 1935, Louis B Mayer the head of MGM sent Burton Lane to the Orpheum Theater in LA to hear the remaining two sisters ‘ act.  Judy was brought to the MGM studio along with her father for an audition.  Judy sang “Zing Went The Strings of My Heart and an old Yiddish song called Eli Eli.  The studio immediately signed her to a contract with MGM and the magic began.

Unfortunately for Judy success wouldn’t come overnight.  She was 13 when she was signed to MGM and basically too old to play a child and too young to play an adult.  And though she wasn’t by any means unattractive she did not and never would have the glamour girl look of the 1930s.  MGM signed her but wasn’t sure what to do with her.

Judy’s big opportunity came when she sang You Made Me Love You to Clark Gable at his birthday party.  The studio was so impressed by her performance that they recreated it in the movie Broadway Melody of 1938.  In the film Garland sang to a photograph of Gable.  Here is the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/5OrCar5qFsQ

After the success of You Made Me Love You MGM made the historic decision to team Judy with Mickey Rooney.  The pair would make many films together including Love Find Andy Hardy, Babes on Broadway, Strike Uo The Band, Girl Crazy, and Babes in Arms.  Many of these films were dubbed Backyard musicals as in the story a bunch of kids always getting  together to put on a show.  Judy would star and also be featured in two other films Everybody Sing where she shared the bill with Fanny Brice (Funny Girl) and Billie Burke who would join Judy later in the film that would make her a star.  She starred in the very Irish film Little Nelle Kelly with songs written by George M Cohan.

Judy’s first triumph came in 1939 when MGM starred her in The Wizard Of Oz.  Judy would play Dorothy Gale a Kansas farm girl who gets knocked on the head during a tornado and dreams of an adventure in the Land of Oz.  In her dream, she must face her very real nemesis Elvira Gultch who, in the dream becomes the Wicked Witch of the West.  Judy was not MGM’s first choice for the role of Dorothy.  MGM wanted Shirley Temple for the part but 20th Century Fox would not release her to MGM.  The studio reluctantly went with Graland but they struck gold.

The funny thing about The Wizard of Oz, the film was based on the book by L Frank Baum.  In the book, the adventure is not a dream and there were a total of 15 Oz books written by Baum.  MGM could have gone on and made a small fortune if they had not made the film a dream by producing sequel after sequel much as they did with The Thin Man.  In the books, Dorothy, her Aunt Em, and Uncle Henry all go to Oz to live and there is a happily ever after for everyone.  Toto too.

The Wizard of Oz would give us the most famous of all performances by Miss Garland, the song Somewhere Over The Rainbow.  The song was written by Harold Arlan and Yip Harburg.  It comes in the story at a point where Dorothy is in trouble but her family and friends are too busy to help.  She’s told to go find a place where she won’t get into any trouble and walking with her dog she sings one of the most haunting songs of the movie musical.

Somewhere over the rainbow,

Way up high,

There’s a land that I heard of,

Once in a lullaby.

This song and the film is almost every child in the United States’ first memory of movies.  Though the film was a critical success in 1939 it wouldn’t be totally appreciated by the public until the 1960s when it would air yearly on television.  I was born in the early 60s and my earliest memories revolve around watching this wonderful story.  When I was very young I remember hiding behind my father when The Wicked Witch of the West appeared.  The Wizard of Oz was almost part of the rite of passage for being children.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow would be recorded by other artists over the years. It was in 1986 that Barbra Streisand even came close to capturing the same magic.  In 1986 Barbra Streisand lovingly and with amazing grace recorded the song in a concert filmed and recorded at her home called One Voice.  The concert was for 500 guests but it was a fundraiser for Streisand’s causes.  After that, many artists including Mandy Potimkim and Matthew Morrison recorded the beloved song.  None equaled Judy Garland.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow is haunting and hopeful.  It’s a song of yearning for a better place.  It speaks to the deep yearning in all of us for a world that’s different from the world we live in.  A world where dreams really do come true.CS Lewis wrote, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”  This is a desire that seems universal to all people.  Somewhere Over The Rainbow gives words to that desire and if we are willing we each can find our way to that other world.

Garland’s movie career would explode after The Wizard of Oz.  No longer the teenaged misfit she would give a wonderful performance as Esther Smith in Meet Me in St. Louis and she would give The Trolley Song, The Boy Next Door, and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas as gifts to the world.  Her other stand-out performances came in films that include, For Me and My Gal, The Harvey Girls, In The Good Old Summertime, Summer Stock, Easter Parade, and her acclaimed performance as Esther Blodgett in A Star is Born. 

In Summer Stock she co-starred with Gene Kelly and in a way, it was a return to the old days of the backyard musicals.  Judy plays Jane Falbury the owner of a farm that is struggling to make ends meet.  She reluctantly permits a group of Broadway performers to use her barn as a stage and Jane is drawn into the life of show business.  Judy’s break out performance is in the song Get Happy.  This is a revival-type song that reminds us to ‘get happy and ready for the judgment day.”  For me, it frames in music the joyous return of Jesus Christ where he will lead us across the river.

Garland would only be in two non-musical roles.  She starred in The Clock in 1945 with Robert Walker and as a featured character in Judgement at Nuremberg in 1961.

Judy was not idle when she was not making movies.  She did radio shows, went on publicity tours with her movies, and spent many hours in the recording studio.  There is a long list of musical soundtracks and albums that are to her credit.  When her film career ended due to her ill health, the star began concert tours that spanned Europe and the United States.  She played both The London Palladium and The Place Theater in NYC.  In the mid-sixties she desperately wanted to take over the role of Mame on Broadway when Angela Lansbury left but the producers, due to her ill health and her known erratic behavior on movie sets during her last years, could not trust her with the role.

Judy had a long history of drug abuse and mental health issues.  It was both of these that led to her death on June 22, 1969, just 12 days after her 47th birthday.  On that day, I believe, one of the stars in heaven went out.

Judy Garland worked for 45 years in the entertainment business.  She gave her heart and soul to her performances and she had a voice that was unlike any other.  She could belt like Ethel Merman but she could also sing very tenderly like Doris Day.  It’s been said that Judy only had to hear a song once to have it down.  In that way, she was a musical genius.

Many of us love Judy Garland and her many films.  We feel we know her and when we are old enough to understand how young she was when she died we feel a great sadness in ourselves over her passing.  I don’t know what would have happened if Judy lived.  I would have liked her to play Mame in the film version of that wonderful musical.  I think she would have recorded more and become very proud of her children Liza Minnelli and Lorna and Joseph Luft.  In her elder days, she would have been a Great Dame of the Golden Age of Hollywood.  With many of us listening to her stories.  That wasn’t meant to be.

I could have said a lot more about the life of Judy Garland.  She never had it easy.  I believe that out of her pain came something beautiful and something that will be remembered for generations to come.  Though we lost her too soon, we will have her forever.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

Magic

Magic!  What an amazing word and there is so much meaning in those five simple letters.  There is the “magic” in a child’s eyes when they spy the gifts under the tree at Christmas.  There is the “magic” that a stage magician conjures up by diverting us and seemingly makes impossible things happen.  There is the scary “magic” that real witches perform or at least claim to perform by casting spells and make potions and charms.  Then there is the fictional “magic”, the magic of The Lord of the Rings, Bewitched, The Wizard of Oz, The Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter series, this is the magic I’m going to focus on today.  This is my own history of magic.

I guess my first exposure to fictional magic would have been the television show Bewitched starring Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York as well as the amazing Agnes Morehead.  The premise of the series was that a mortal Darin Stevens marries a witch a fact that he is unaware of until after the marriage takes place.  When he finds out he forbids her to use her powers in the house and of course this is impossible especially with his wife’s family of witches and warlocks always at hand.  This show was cute and funny and stayed on the air for several years even after having the original Darin replaced by another actor.

The next bit of magic would have been when I was introduced to the classic film The Wizard of Oz.  The Wizard of Oz is based on the children’s book written by L Frank Baum and published on March 17, 1900.  It quick became a childhood classic and Baum would go on to write fourteen more Oz books.  These could have made a great movie series but for some reason MGM, the studio that produced the original film, made the adventures of Dorothy trying to find her way home. A dream, so no future films could be done.

There seems to be certain films everyone is afraid to touch because they are perfect the way they are.  The Sound of Music, Funny Girl, Gone with the Wind, and The Wizard of Oz are four of those.  People have tried to do sequels to Oz, but they all pale in comparison the original movie which was almost flowless in its making.

The Wizard of Oz in the 60s became a yearly treat that families would gather around their television sets to watch around the Easter holiday.  My family was no exception and I remember being little and hiding behind my father whenever The Wicked Witch of The West would make her appearance.  There wasn’t a lot of magic actually done in The Wizard of Oz.  Dorothy gest to Oz by tornado.  She walks to The Emerald City and meets non-human creatures and talking animals but the only magic that is actually performed is Glinda magically having the Ruby Slippers appear on Dorothy’s feet, The Wicked Witch conjuring the poppy field and Glinda creating the snow that destroys the poppies effects.  Of course, Glinda makes her appearances in a magic bubble and The Wicked Witch rides a broom stick but that’s about it.  To compare the two there was more magic in a half hour of Bewitched than there was in the full-length movie of The Wizard of Oz.

But Oz was magical in an of itself.  A talking Scarecrow, Tinman and Lion as well as talking apple trees and colors that were brighter and more beautiful than in our own gray world made this movie a delight for our senses.  And at the end of the 1930s when America was just coming out of the depression but was on the brink of another world war, that kind of beauty and unreality was much needed by children and adults.

My next stop in my magical tour must be Neverland.  I was introduced to Peter Pan fairly young.  My mother was a big fan of musicals and when Peter Pan starring Mary Martin was aired on television in the early 60s it was a family event.

Peter Pan began as a nonmusical stage play by JM Barrie.  Mr. Barrie based his play on his relationship with three young boys and the games they would play.  Peter Pan opened in 1904 and did very well.  Mr. Barrie was already a celebrated playwright, but Peter Pan elevated him to an immortal status and is the only thing still remembered today.  Peter became so famous that Barrie, told everyone to watch Kensington Gardens for a surprise on a certain date and when London woke up that morning there was the magnificent statue of Peter in the gardens.

It was in 1911 that Barrie published the novel that told the story of his play for all the world.  He titled the novel Peter Pan and Wendy, and it is still enjoyed by people today.

Peter Pan is a difficult role, and it was decided early on that a child could not handle the work in a full length play so a woman has been traditionally cast as Peter.  In recent times in cartoons and films as well as some stage production this has changed but more often than not Peter is still played by a woman.

Peter Pan has very little magic.  In fact, the only magic we see is Peter teaching the children to fly.  We know there are fairies as Tinker Bell is a main character in the play and we know that is by thinking good thoughts and the use of fairy dust that we can learn to fly.  Bu that is the extent of the observable magic in the play.

Let’s talk about flying.  When Barrie first opened his play in 1904 Peter had only one requirement to fly.  You had to think good thoughts.  Many children left the theater with that idea in their heads and soon found themselves jumping off roofs and out of windows thinking they would fly.  This of course caused some injuries but as far as I know no life was lost.  On learning this Barrie modified his play to add fairy dust to the flying equation and the attempts ceased.  I believed a similar situation occurred in 1964 when Disney released Mary Poppins and Mary seemed to fly by umbrella to the front door of the Bank’s home.  I know my friends and I spent some time jumping from steps with an umbrella in hand, but we never got air born.

Neverland is a magic place.  It is inhabited by fairies, and mermaids.  We know from the play that it is Spring, summer, Winter and Fall all at the same time on different parts of the island.  Peter describes it as crammed with hardly any room between one adventure and another.  And of course, if you go there as a child, you never grow up.  There is magic in the very soil of Neverland.

I was transported as a child to Neverland in my dreams.  Not long after seeing the Mary Martin TV special I brought to see the Disney version of the classic story.  The problem with Disney and Miss Martin’s work is that they watered the story down quite a lot.  They took out the scary stuff and so missed some of the best parts.  In time I grew to love the book that Barrie wrote mush more than the film versions.  To this day no one has written Peter the way Barrie did.  I would love to see new stage production that left it all intact.

The fantasy that taught me how to think would begin and end with The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.  The Phantom Tollbooth is about a bored little boy whose name is Milo.  Milo has no interest in anything until one day a mysterious box appears in his room.  The box contains a life size toy toll booth which Milo proceeds to put together.  When it’s completed Milo gets into his toy electric car and drives thru into The Land Beyond.  

Milo’s adventures in the Lands Beyond are filled with strange creatures that are magical in some ways but they only way to deal with them is to think.  There is the land of the doldrums where you get very sleepy, and can get yourself killed if you don’t wake up and begin to think your way out by reciting poetry and equations as well as using your imagination.  Milo is saved from The Doldrums by Tok a watchdog.  This is a large dog that has a clock built into his side and he guards time he especially is after those who waste time.

Milo is told the story of the Lands Beyond and knows that there are problems there that could be solved if the Princesses Rhyme and Reason could be rescued from the castle in the clouds which must be gotten to through by way of The Mountains of Ignorance. This stuff is great.  He must first get permission to save them from the warring kings of Dictionopolis and Digitopolis the kingdoms or Words and Numbers.  The kings hate each other even though they are brothers because they each believe that their own kingdom is better than the other.  In other words, words are better than numbers and numbers are better than words.

Milo has many adventures in The Lands Beyond and meets many strange creatures including a Spelling Bee and a Humbug but he eventually reaches the princesses and rescues them through the power of thinking.  When he returns home, he has a new lease on life and is no longer bored as there is always something new to learn.  This is a lesson many adults could use right now.

As I grew up so did my magic stories.  First there was my comic book heroes.  Doctor Strange from Marvel Comics and Doctor Fate from DC.  Doctor Fate came first and made his first appearance in the early 1940s in the pages of More Fun Comics.  He is Kent Nelson who, as a boy, finds The Helmet of Nabu an ancient Egyptian wizard, when he puts the helmet on, he becomes Doctor fate with all kinds of magic abilities.  Doctor Fate would fade away with the rest of the comic book heroes in the early 1950s as discussed in earlier blogs.  He would return the 1960s in the pages on The Justice League of America when DC Comics rebirths The Justice Society in the pages of that magazine.  He would eventually get his own title for a short while but for the most part remain a supporting character in the comic book universe.  With the popularity of the television series Stargirl and the reemergence of The Justice Society Doctor Fate may soon make a return.

Doctor Strange made his first appearance in Strange Tales and remains a favorite character of mine to this day.  Steven Strange is a surgeon, skilled and vain about those skills.  He cares only for money and little for the actual people he treats. An accident renders his hands useless and in seeking a cure he becomes a penniless derelict.  His search continues, however, and he makes it to Tibet where he hears of a man known as The Ancient One who may be able to help him.  He seeks The Ancient One out and finds him only discover that it is sorcery that the Ancient One believes can cure Strange.  Strange, being a man of science, rejects this and decides to leave only to discover that the Ancient One’s disciple Murdo is going to kill The Ancient One.  Strange attempts to warn the old man only to be stopped by a spell put on him by Murdo.  The Ancient One saves both Himself and Strange and Strange becomes the new disciple.  After years of training Doctor Strange become The Master of the Mystic Arts and a main player in the Marvel Comics and Cinematic Universe.

My journey in fictional magic continued.  The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Magic Kingdom of Landover, The Belgariad and The Harry Potter books all added to my magical fun and adventure.

Why does magic entice all of us so much?  Why does the idea of conjuring strike our imaginations so hard?  I think the answer lies in what CS Lewis once said.  Lewis, the author of the Narnia books said “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”  And we were made for another world.  When God created us in The Garden of Eden, he created us in a perfect world and was grooming us to be like him.  He wasn’t looking for slaves or he wouldn’t have given us the ability to choose.  But the ability to choose comes with consequences.  Adam and Eve were told they could do whatever they wanted except to eat from the fruit of one tree.  They couldn’t accept that one rule and so were banished from a perfect world into this one.  And here we remain as Lewis calls us, the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve.

But God left in us a desire for our true home.  He gave us glimpses of that home in our imaginations and in the many books of fantasy that have been written.  Whether you are a fan of The Shire or Shangri La, or Neverland or Oz all of those places are glimpses of Eden our true home and the place we all long for.

The thing is we have another act of God where in we can begin to get Eden back.  God sent his son Jesus to pay for the sins of Adam and all the rest of us.  Jesus’ death on the cross and his ultimate resurrection pave the way to the real place of magic known as Eden or Heaven.  To return to that place God asks only one thing from us and that is to believe that Jesus died and was resurrected for us.  That’s it.  This is what Tolkien called “the one true myth.” No great acts of heroism or penance are required just belief that in the work God has done.  Will our lives change after that?  Yes, they will but the change will come not as an act of payment but as an act of gratitude that comes from believing in this amazing gift.  It would be the same way you would act toward the person who showed up at your door with the keys to a brand-new house or a car.  Just handed those keys to you and said enjoy it.  We would go out of our way to show our gratitude.  This is why our lives change when we understand what God has done for us.

I will continue to enjoy the fantasy worlds that are so much a part of my life.  These worlds have added color and excitement and mystery to this existence, but they have also been a pointer.  Little by little they pointed me back to Eden and to God.