The Good Judy

The connection between the Gay Rights Movement, more specifically the Stonewall riots, and Judy Garland's untimely death at 47 is something that resides in the space between fact and fiction. Garland's name was a popular pseudonym for patrons signing into the bar, and seemingly from the time she first emerged as Dorothy Gale, the gay community has embraced her as a patron saint. In the 50 years between Garland's death and the Stonewall riots, the link between the two have merged into a blurred mythology. I mean, Judy's own kids have co-signed on with Lorna Luft mentioning that Garland would have approved of the riot and was an early, vocal ally to the community.

These are not hollow words or retroactive hagiography. Garland and the gay community were co-mingled from the beginning of her life. Rumors persist that her father made advances towards male ushers at their church and this was why they relocated from Grand Rapids to Lancaster, California. When her time at MGM began, it was composer Roger Edens, a gay man prone to taking Garland to gay bars, that worked extensively with her as arranger and musical supervisor. She would go on to befriend the likes to George Cukor and Charles Walters, marry Vincente Minnelli and Mark Herron, and publicly defend the community in the 60s when pressed about the notable presence of gay men among her audiences.

It's no wonder that a meme version of gay-themed scout badges features Garland's memorable visage from A Star Is Born as the symbol for "Diva Worship." Judy and the gay community were born to be together, whether it's through her status as a tragic figure, as camp icon, or the touchstone for the phrases "my good Judy" and "friend of Dorothy." Garland dreamed of somewhere over the rainbow, and we knew exactly what she meant.

So, I'm looking at the films of Judy Garland to celebrate Pride Month. There were only three films I couldn't find: Everybody Sing, Life Begins for Andy Hardy, and I discarded Pepe as it's merely a vocal cameo in a film stuffed with walk-ons and nothing more. It somehow seemed appropriate to celebrate by watching all the Saint Judy I could handle. It was glorious.

The Girl-Next-Door
"I was born at the age of twelve on an MGM lot."

Her first film was made on loan to 20th Century Fox in 1936's Pigskin Parade. Garland plays the country bumpkin younger sister of Stuart Erwin's football playing idiot savant. Her earliest scenes find her asking if anyone wants to hear her sing and getting rebuked, which is a bit hilarious in hindsight. Pigskin Parade is so overloaded with musical interludes, hillbilly comedy, and anything else you can think of from a film that manages to combine sports underdog, college comedy, and a musical together that Garland's mutant lungs are merely a smaller piece of a weirder work.

Broadway Melody of 1938 once again finds Garland playing supporting in another overloaded film. She's paired with Sophie Tucker as a mother/daughter duo, and Broadway Melody of 1938 really shapes up into something engaging when they're allowed center stage. This is the first film of Garland's career that binds her to vaudeville, either explicitly as a performer or the progeny of one from the era.

Thoroughbreds Don't Cry is charming little movie that would pair her with one of her greatest co-stars, Mickey Rooney. Unfortunately, they play second fiddle to a waifish Freddie Bartholomew clone. Rooney does one of his earliest jockey roles, Garland plays precocious and sings a little ditty throughout, and the two of them spar and play off of each other wonderfully. Their first film together already finds Judy deflating Mickey's cockiness and bringing out an unexpected tenderness. Your personal mileage may vary on Rooney, but there's no denying that she often brought out the best in him.

You'll notice that Garland's roles so far have fallen squarely in a "kid sister," "girl-next-door" arena. Her sweet face, especially those big, highly expressive eyes, and vulnerability were a stark contrast to the likes of Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor. One of the best of these roles was Betsy Booth, the poor little rich girl of the Andy Hardy films.

We first meet Betsy in Love Finds Andy Hardy, arguably the best and most famous entry in the series. She's visiting her grandparents for Christmas, and they just so happen to live next door to the Hardys. She meets Andy and is instantly smitten with the precocious rascal. He views her as a simple child to his sophisticated grown-up. Did I mention that her character was roughly 13 to his 16?

Garland nearly steals the movie out from under him with her knack for comedy, musical interludes, and ability to bring honest-to-god real emotions out of the sugary, hokey gloss of the film. It was this film that primed her for the big leagues, mainly The Wizard of Oz. But first, Listen, Darling, a 75 minute "comedy" that is damn near interminable. The whole thing feels like it was made merely to keep Garland, Mary Astor, Walter Pidgeon, and Freddie Bartholomew, nearing the end of his acting career, in the public mind with a quick B-movie. Garland would soon go on to bigger, better things.

"I've always taken The Wizard of Oz very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I've spent my entire life trying to get over it."

It is nearly impossible to watch The Wizard of Oz and imagine the original choice for Dorothy, Shirley Temple, in the role. It was Roger Edens who championed Garland for the part, and thank god he did. She is absolute perfection in the part.

Her performance is so rich and believable that it's nearly impossible to wrap your brain around the simple fact that she was just 16 when she made it. She was a performer that could bring her own personal troubles and experiences into any role, and it's this quacking uncertainty that makes her terror in the witch's castle or yearning in "Over the Rainbow" so spectacularly real. Garland dug deep into herself to make Dorothy Gale a cinematic heroine for the ages.

Not only is she perfect in The Wizard of Oz, but the entire movie is just a prime example of sterling film-making on display. There's no false note, no wrong move, no awkward moments. The songs are memorable, the pace if springy, and the performances are uniformly excellent, especially Bert Lahr as a campy Brooklynese lion, Margaret Hamilton going full wicked as the witch, and Frank Morgan playing seemingly everyone else. There are movies and then are movies, works so classic, beloved and eternal that they occupy a rarefied space in the collective imagination and cultural lexicon. The Wizard of Oz is one because of the wonderful things she does.

1939 would continue to be a breakout year for Garland with Babes in Arms, the first of her backyard musicals with Mickey Rooney. While Oz was a notorious under-performer during its initial run, Babes in Arms set the box office on fire with its preternaturally gifted young stars displaying the full range of their talents. While it's not the artistic equal of Oz, but what is, Babes in Arms is a classic in its own right.

The story concerns the children of former vaudeville performers, mainly Mickey and Judy, trying to demonstrate that they're just as talented as their parents and maybe escape being sent to the state welfare home in the process. Babes in Arms is one of the best of their "let's put on a show" movies for setting up the template and delivering it with such economy and competency on the first try.

Part of the reason for the success of the duo was they were the right "can do" optimistic all-American youths to act as balm for the national psyche either during the waning days of the Depression, such as in this film, or during our entry into World War II, like in Babes on Broadway. In fact, "God's Country" has them singing, dancing, and demonstrating their incredible talents for mimicry by taking loving satirical jabs at FDR and Eleanor.

If there's any flaw in Babes in Arms, and there is a major one, it's that doozy of a blackface number. It is mercifully brief, but it is an ugly reminder of how jarring older works of art can be to revisit or examine through a modern prism. Vaudeville was notorious for blackface, so not including it would be a lie, but seeing these happy-go-lucky kids doing it made me flinch.

She was awarded a juvenile Academy Award for 1939, the lone Oscar she would win during her lifetime. In hindsight, 1939 was her coronation as Hollywood's newest "it" girl/cinematic debutante. Some of her greatest roles were ahead of her, as was the slow-moving breakdown.

Betsy Booth returned in Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, and so did another reoccurring theme in Garland's films: her characters expressing a discomfort in their looks, specifically a perceived lack of glamour. This something that the studio practically encouraged by regulating her weight and Louis B. Mayer's nickname for her, "my little hunchback." It's painful to watch Garland's real-life insecurities play out of her teenage character knowing not only her tragic end, but the clearly visible truth that was a pretty girl.

Andy Hardy Meets Debutante is largely preachy, heavily sentimental, and regressive, but there's still a disarming moment when Andy realizes he's developed feelings for Betsy in a car ride home. He kisses her cheek while she cries, and it's a moment of real feeling and depth in what is otherwise a Norman Rockwell painting in motion. You'll remember this scene far better than you will any of Lewis Stone's creaky monologues about the avarice in every town/city.

Backyard musical number from Mickey and Judy, Strike Up the Band is bigger than their previous film but not necessarily better. Make no mistake, this is a hugely entertaining affair with some delightful set pieces and a fun group of supporting players, but a certain sense of proportion starts to weigh the film down. The expediency of Babes in Arms is sorely missed as Strike Up the Band loses energy the longer it goes on.

I'm just going to focus on the good. “Do the La Conga” is enthralling and energetic as Mickey and Judy perform an exaggerated version of the dance. There’s also the stop-motion fruit orchestra of “Our Love Affair” that’s as strange as it is enchanting. “Drummer Boy” finds Rooney displaying his talents for drumming and playing the xylophone. Then there’s the outrageous finale of “Strike Up the Band” that drops any pretense of reality, no matter how feeble, and goes full-scale musical fantasy world.

The Ingénue
"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."

Fed up with playing little girls and adolescents as she nearing 20, Garland started to demand more grown-up parts. The public had a curious reaction to Garland as an adult actress. They were so used to Garland as the sweet little kid with the out-sized vocal prowess that the change was a bit difficult. She never quite settled into a believable romantic type, but some of her most daring, memorable, and greatest achievements were to come.

Little Nellie Kelly is an oddball little movie that finds Garland not a girl, but not yet a woman. She plays Nellie Noonan, the doomed mother of the title character, and Nellie Kelly, the teenager seeking romantic fulfillment and trying to keep the peace between her father and grandfather. Here’s a bit of historical trivia for you: this is the lone death scene in Garland’s entire career. It comes early in the film when she dies post-childbirth, and she reappears as the teenaged daughter. Garland was eighteen at the time and plays both a little older and a little younger than her real age. The role(s) don’t give her much in the way of variation aside from an attempt at an Irish accent in one and a love interest in the second, her Babes in Arms co-star Douglas McPhail. A must-watch for the Garland aficionado (hey!), but skippable for the rest unless you’re looking for a creaky blarney about the auld sod.

Ziegfeld Girl, a loose sequel to The Great Ziegfeld, which it borrows plenty of footage from during the climatic show, is all about showing what it takes to make it in the big time, or how to burn out glamorously. Garland’s a vaudeville singer/actor that does a lot of work with her father but is getting eyed for a solo spot in the Follies. Hedy Lamarr is a devoted wife who takes the job after getting scouted during her husband’s violin audition out of pure desperation for money. While Lana Turner is discovered working an elevator and quickly goes from starry-eyed dreamer to alcoholic tramp precariously at the top of the social ladder.

Here is the rare misfire from Garland. She’s uneven as though she’s unsteadied about performing around her glamour girl co-stars. She’s a bit too self-conscious in spots, or too manic in others, but reliable in her comedic bits and that voice can sell you ice in the tundra. It's Lana Turner's movie through and through.

Babes on Broadway contains some of the strongest material out of the four backyard musicals, yet it's overall the weakest of the bunch. "Hoe Down," "Chin Up! Cheerio! Carry On!," "How About You?" and Vincente Minnelli's "ghosts of the theater" are all wonderful moments, either with Rooney or on her own, but they can't overpower the prolonged blackface finale. It just keeps going on. It is functionally a weight around the neck of a film that is already too long, convoluted, and downbeat. Garland gets more of a spine, Rooney does some fun improve, but all of the joy of watching them is slowly leeched out as it goes on.

For Me and My Gal introduced Gene Kelly to the silver screen, at Garland's insistence no less, a favor he would repay years later. It's a bit of a goopy wartime morale booster, but it's a highly enjoyable one capturing Kelly at the start of his career and Garland flowering in transition. When the love triangle aspects wobbles, and it often does, there's plenty of complicated character beats or rip-roaring musical numbers to distract and entertain.

Garland coached Kelly in how to act for the camera, and their repartee is kinetic. While Rooney's collaborations are more well-known, her three films with Kelly are uniformly stronger, stranger, and they make more sense as romantic paramours. Watch the way the two of them spar or find a way to cover for the other's weaknesses (his singing, her dancing), it's watching two performers work better thanks to each other.

It struck me while watching this film that Garland was something of a thoroughbred during this time. After watching a string of her films and seeing her transition from awkward little girl to glamorous musical-comedy superstar, all I found myself thinking was, "She was built for this. This is her element." And we haven't even reached Girl Crazy, Meet Me in St. Louis, A Star Is Born.

Presenting Lily Mars is a great showcase of Garland's talents even when the rest of the film is flabby. It's a paint-by-numbers story about a small town girl going to Broadway for her big break, and a romance with Van Heflin feels tacked on. But, Garland playing a mannered and artificial actress adopting that strange mid-Atlantic accent? Hilarious. And the film ends with her belting "Broadway Rhythm" and dancing with Charles Walters, so it ends up being a minor work but enjoyable overall.

Thousands Cheer is part routine wartime musical romance and part all-star revue. Garland appears in the second part performing "Joint is Really Jumpin' Down at Carnegie Hall." Rooney is the emcee, Lena Horne, Virginia O'Brien, Eleanor Powell, and Red Skelton, among numerous others, do bits, and the revue section is uniformly stronger than the narrative first-half. It's a fun little number, but her appearance in another film revue would prove more memorable.

The last of the Mickey and Judy backyard musicals was also their most robust, 1943's Girl Crazy. This one finds the duo performing in an adaptation of an established property instead of building a feature around their personas, and Girl Crazy is all the better for it. Of course, the Gershwin songbook didn't hurt.

Rooney is an idle rich boy on the decent side of naughty sent away to a school out west after a series of embarrassing headlines for his wealthy father. Garland is the granddaughter of the school's headmaster, and just the girl to teach Rooney that there's more to life besides instant gratification. Opposites attraction and repel, there's some misunderstandings and lessons along the way, Rooney gets to riff, Judy gets to sing, and the whole thing ends in their best number, "I Got Rhythm."

Garland feels relaxed and natural here, Rooney doesn't hog the running time like he had in prior pairings, and their relationship feels more mature. "Could You Use Me?" has them primed for romantic and sexual coupling, which is a change of pace from the more chaste flirtations of their earlier films. She never lovelier than dancing with Charles Walters, again, in "Embraceable You," sassier than in "Treat Me Rough," or heartbreaking than in "But Not For Me" up to this point.

While Norman Taurog’s direction manages to find the human element in many of the musical sequences, it’s the finale, “I Got Rhythm,” that one remembers. Berkeley’s final production number, “I Got Rhythm” finds cowboys and cowgirls line dancing, marching, firing pistols, and doing rope tricks. The entire thing is a surreal, overripe jewel that functions as the perfect cherry on top of Girl Crazy’s already tasty dessert. His presence isn’t necessarily missed during the rest of the film, Garland strongly disliked him, but he manages to go out with a bang.

As “I Got Rhythm” ends Girl Crazy with a loud pop (mostly from pistols), so too does this film mark the end of Mickey and Judy as a big screen duo. They would share the screen one last time during a scene in Words and Music, but this would prove their final merry-go-round as co-stars. For me, this is probably their strongest film as a pair with Garland’s dramatic talents ripening, Rooney knowing when to scale back or go big, and the uniformly strongest score of them all. Girl Crazy is a carefree musical fueled by the towering achievements of its consummate stars.

1944 found Garland working with her best director, Vincente Minnelli. He had designed a sequence for Strike Up the Band, but this was their first proper meeting and artistic collaboration. Minnelli would finesse several of Garland's best individual moments in films like Ziegfeld Follies or performances, like the one in Meet Me in St. Louis. Actually, Meet Me in St. Louis is just one of the greatest movies, ever.

A towering achievement, and one of a trio of classic films that prop up Garland's continued film legacy, it's odd to think that she didn't want to do it at first. She was in her early 20s, had a few adult roles behind, and didn't want to go back to playing young girls. She was eventually talked into it, and grew to think of this film as one of her personal favorites and professional best. She was right, after all.

Meet Me in St. Louis is a "year in the life" musical, and that's the entirety of the story. We follow the ups and downs of the family as the seasons change, a potential move looms large, and Garland pines away for Tom Drake's boy-next-door. Here is Garland operating at her zenith whether it's yearning in "The Boy Next Door," providing jubilance in "The Trolley Song," or breaking your heart in "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." She plays beautifully off of Margaret O'Brien and Lucille Brimer as her sisters, and generates an authentic romance with Drake.

Unfortunately, this was also one of the first films in which Garland's bad behavior started popping up. She was late or absent for 15 days pushing the film over-budget and past it's schedule. The origins of her bad behavior go back to her childhood: her stage mother gave her pills to pep her up, the studio started giving her pills to sleep, and her various insecurities were preyed upon by nearly everyone. Her eventual series of breakdowns and comebacks feel both avoidable and inevitable. A perfect storm of personal demons and a system that didn't know how to help people with her particular issues colliding with her in the center.

She reunited with Minnelli again for The Clock after original director Fred Zinnemann was fired. The Clock is one of her all too rare straight-acting parts, no singing or dancing anywhere to be found. She's matched by a fabulously sincere and present performance from Robert Walker as a green corporal on leave for 48 hours in New York City. They meet cute and spend the rest of his leave together falling in love.

There’s a mystery at the heart of the romance, and the petty indifference and cynicism that they encounter that lingers both in the spirit and the imagination. Quickie romances are a common practice in the face of war and potential death, but it feels like these two likeable, sincere people found something special with each other. There’s a level of comfort in their interactions, an uneasy chemistry that seems to shift with the same fast pace as the story’s contours that’s quite refreshing.

Walker was a known quality as a “serious” actor, and he does incredibly well with his green corporal that’s adrift in the big city aside from this girl he found. But it’s Garland’s straight dramatic work that’s the real discovery, as if her numerous scenes of quivering need or rejection weren’t powerful enough. Her crying at the wedding reception she’s just gone through is a marvel, but it’s nowhere near as commanding as the quiet power she brings to their scene in a church or the morning after their wedding night.

The city itself functions as a third character, and one that is ever shifting to its mercurial moods and whims. A frantic search after they’ve been broken up underscores a big city’s ability to be both massive and small, caring and unfeeling at the same time. In scaling back the ambitions of the narrative, Minnelli once again provides a symphony of emotions, faces, and textures that give a little sting with the sweet. The Clock may be the greatest little movie in all of their careers.

1946's Ziegfeld Follies assembled the near totality of MGM's stable of musical and comedy talents for a filmed revue. "Interview with a great star" finds Garland having some fun with both the nature of studio-crafted dramatic stars and a persona like Greer Garson, someone who only did serious and dramatically important parts/movies. Garland gives in to every diva affectation that she can think of, and appears to be having a ball sending up some of her fellow MGM stars. Few performers could command attention and the screen with the minimalist of movements and flourishes, but Garland was one of them. In a film not wanting for memorable scenes, Garland's piss-take on cinema's grand dames is a definite highlight.

The Problem Years
"Hollywood is a strange place if you're in trouble. Everybody thinks it's contagious."

Garland's problematic behavior took a noticeable uptick while making The Harvey Girls, one of MGM's corn pone musicals that I enjoyed probably more than I should. Deep or memorable art it is not, but it knows it's feel good balm for a post-war psyche. MGM's increasing production of escapist musicals is like the yin to noir's paranoid and neurotic yang as America rode a post-war victory high.

The Harvey Girls finds Garland sparring with Angela Lansbury, the real MVP of the film, and romancing John Hodiak, her worst leading man by a mile. "It's a Great, Big World" finds Garland locking arms with Cyd Charisse and Virginia O'Brien, who disappears in halfway through thanks to her pregnancy and Garland's erratic behavior, in sisterly solidarity, while "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" breaks away from the rest of the film with some bravura technique on display.

In the post-war years, MGM rolled out several splashy Technicolor musical biographies about famous composers, much of it largely fictional and a mere pretext to get their stable to stars to perform the songbooks. Till the Clouds Roll By is one of those films. Robert Walker plays Jerome Kern, but Till the Clouds Roll By is really a bunch of proto-music videos featuring the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, and June Allyson.

Arguably the best sequence is when Judy Garland shows up onscreen and the whole affair is taken over by Vincente Minnelli. The best part of her segment is definitely the plaintive "Look for the Silver Lining." "Silver Lining" sees Garland playing one of the grand dames of musical theater at the time, it’s a perfect bit of casting, and focuses in on her washing dishes. It doesn’t sound that enthralling on paper, but the combination of the melancholic lyric and her standing still, focusing in on her repetitive task give the whole song a somber tone that is quite beautiful.

It’s impossible to separate the final version of The Pirate from its fractured, turbulent production. Garland was absent for roughly 75% of its shooting schedule as her marriage to director Vincente Minnelli crumbled, her pill addictions took a stronger hold on her life, and her mental/emotional states unraveled accordingly. Garland’s bad behavior, however understandable in hindsight, causes much of the final film to be handed over to Gene Kelly, in full hammy swagger and never sexier.

This lopsided effect leaves The Pirate as one of the strangest musicals to come out of the Arthur Freed unit at MGM. After all, Garland doesn’t sing until roughly thirty minutes into the film, Kelly’s extended dance sequences get the lion’s share of time, and the plot is a practically a bitch in heat. Somehow the confluence of Kelly’s peacocking, Garland’s overwhelming neurosis, and Minnelli’s overwrought imagery craft something unique.

Whether that "unique" is a positive or negative depends largely on the viewer. For me, I’ve long been fascinated and enthralled by The Pirate’s dream space Caribbean and overcharged erotic allure. I’m part of the cult that thinks this is a musical underdog just waiting for everyone else to take notice of its brilliance and vault it out of its limbo state. Others are not quite as forgiving of the patchwork plot and hyperbolic artistry.

There’s Garland’s quivering good girl just aching to go bad at the guiding hand of Macoco, the scourge of the Caribbean seas. Her first meeting with Kelly, a meet-cute flirtation, finds her practically vibrating with repressed sexual desire and Kelly turning up the sleazy charm. Garland’s legs are practically locked together at the vaguest change in vaginal humidity, and one can’t blame her as Kelly’s tanned seducer slides up to her.

While her other 1948 film was a bomb, Easter Parade was one of the biggest money-makers. Easter Parade is a bit of a non-event considering it’s the meeting of Fred Astaire and Garland, two of the movie musicals towering artistes. What Garland could do with phrasing, delivering, and vocal power, both its withholding and unleashing, Astaire could do with his elegant, languid bodily movements and control. They get plenty of chances to shine, but the surrounding film never adds up to much in the end. Astaire’s a vaudeville performer whose former partner goes solo (Ann Miller, largely wasted apart from her kinetic “Shakin’ the Blues Away”), so he finds Garland’s chorus and trains her to be his new partner. Naturally, they eventually fall in love, and Peter Lawford’s around the edges as a best friend and would-be suitor. That’s not enough material to justify its running time, so Easter Parade functions like the Macy’s Day Parade – all artifice and happy to be seen with nothing much going on. Sequences that don’t involve singing, dancing, or Jules Munshin hamming it up in an extended bit about… tossing a salad (?!) are basically color commentary from toothy hosts before they cut back to something more visually interesting. It’s a soundtrack with some visuals to go along with it.

Words and Music is another of MGM's revue disguised as highly-fictional biographies. This time it's Lorenz Hart (Mickey Rooney) and Richard Rodgers (Tom Drake), and once more a cavalcade of the studio's talent tackles the songbook. Garland and Rooney reunite on-screen for the final time for "I Wish I Were in Love Again." It's a playful symphony between two old friends, as if they're trying to please themselves by pulling faces and making each other laugh. It translates to joy for the audience as well. It's a fitting farewell for the pair.

In the Good Old Summertime could have been so much more. Based on The Shop Around the Corner, Summertime is a bit lopsided as Van Johnson was a fine foil for Esther Williams, but he's outpaced by Garland, Buster Keaton, and S. Z. Sakall throughout. Garland's charismatic as ever throughout, whether it's in playing one of Keaton's slapstick bits or performing any of her numbers, especially a frenzied "I Don't Care" and aching "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland." It's perfect for wasting away a lazy Saturday afternoon, but not for much else.

Her final film for MGM, Summer Stock, is a return to the backyard musical genre, this time with Gene Kelly in their final pairing, but a uniformly solid film nonetheless. Made during tremendous duress, she had just returned after spending several months being treated for drug dependency and exhaustion, Summer Stock found Kelly rallying around the troubled star as a payback for helping at the start of his career. By now, Garland's missed days, tardiness, and anxiety about performing were legendary.

Yet various players at the studio rallied around her to give her another chance. Mayer stated "(she) made this studio a fortune in the good days, and the least we can do is give her one more chance." Kelly and Walters were old friends who encouraged a supportive set and tried to alleviate any/all pressure for Garland. While she still behaved erratically, Summer Stock emerged as the best film she'd made for years.

Garland was always capable of holding your attention when paired against Kelly in a dance scene, a feat few of his co-stars could claim, and their dare/flirtation in "Portland Fancy" is a knockout. They challenge each other before moving in perfect harmony then daring each other again. The whole dance is cyclical like that until it erupts in exhaustive and triumphant tap dancing with Garland and Kelly smiling back-to-back.

Even better is her big solo number, "Get Happy," which takes the less is more approach. She's outfitted in a costume original intended for a scene in Easter Parade that got scrapped, and enthralls with simplistic choreography and a vocal performance that alternates between coquettish squeals and guttural whoopers. Whatever her problems were off-stage, "Get Happy" is a reminder that she was magical once she was on.

After fifteen years, Judy Garland was let go from MGM by mutual decision. Mayer would later declare his decision to let Garland out of her contract a mistake, and one that he regretted. She was barely 30 and approaching a show business "has been." It would be four years, and a lot of hard work, before she'd return to the big screen. But what a return it would be!

The Perpetual Comebacks
"If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?"

Between 1950 and 1954, Garland went about the long, hard work of laying the foundation of her eventual comeback vehicle, A Star Is Born. She made numerous appearances on the Kraft Music Hall, hosted by good friend Bing Crosby, and returned to the stage at the Palace Theatre with her redemptive stage show, already a major success in the UK. She won a Special Tony Award for her stage work. The movie industry was primed for her comeback.

That comeback would contain her single greatest cinematic performance, an effort that remains one of the greatest acting achievements in cinematic history. Her work in A Star Is Born contains numerous bits of autobiography bleeding into her fictional starry-eyed dreamer looking for her big break. There's the studio screen test that proclaims her lacking glamour, the makeover sequence that leaves her unrecognizable, and the way the Hollywood machine cannibalizes its own when they've exceeded any perceived usefulness. 

She gives a performance of grit and authenticity. Her stop-start emotional catharsis in her trailer between takes of "Lose That Long Face" is Garland's straight dramatic acting chops in full bloom. She gets several bits of physical comedy to play, such as a bit part as a hand waving out a train window that finds her twisting herself into a pretzel so only her disembodied hand remains. Then there's the musical sequences, oh god, those glorious musical sequences.

James Mason's character tries to describe watching her as watching a bullfighter or a painter paint. His words come fumbling out of him, but you know exactly what he's trying to communication while watching her work. Whether it's the simple torch balladry of "The Man That Got Away" or the extended fantasia of "Born in a Trunk Medley," A Star Is Born is Garland's artistic might in its fullest potential and delivered with the expertise that only a seasoned professional could do.

Now here's where we talk about how Garland's perpetual comeback vehicles ended in tragedy or deflated immediately. A Star Is Born was a critical success, and she was justifiably nominated for an Oscar. In the run-up to the ceremony she was heavily favored to win. She lost to Grace Kelly's stiff work in The Country Girl in an upset that Groucho Marx dubbed "the biggest robbery since Brinks." Her loss was a political one - the industry still remembered her bad behavior, while Grace Kelly was a pretty blonde with a series of box office successes, amiable reputation, and what looked like a long career ahead of her.

It would be seven years before she'd return to the big screen. She'd return in a small supporting role in Judgment at Nuremberg, her second straight dramatic role and her second Oscar nomination. It's a dynamite little part for her, and Garland delivers a performance that's all but an exposed nerve.

Judgment at Nuremberg is the best film of Stanley Kramer's directorial career. It is a harrowing three-hour courtroom drama that provides no easily identifiable heroes or villains, and entirely populated by aging stars in the final days of the studio system. Garland plays one of the star witness, a gentile woman falsely accused of having a sexual relationship with a Jewish man.

It has been said that Kramer was smart to cast Garland and Montgomery Clift in their roles as their turbulent personal lives brought a realistically damaged aura to their work in the film. It's a bit of an oversimplification but not an entirely inaccurate one. Garland's interior neurosis threatened to combust her flimsiest musical parts, think of Ziegfeld Girl, but finds a vessel for all of that energy here. She's magnificent in what is essentially three scenes, two of them long prosecutorial moments with Maximilian Schell.


She'd lose the Oscar but become the first woman to win the Grammy for Album of the Year with Judy at Carnegie Hall in 1962. She'd also become the first woman to win the Cecil B. DeMille award, and remains at 39 its youngest recipient. There was a TV special that eventual lead to a TV show, The Judy Garland Show. Fragments of it are available on YouTube, and it looks like it was a wildly entertaining affair.

There was also her first, and only, animated film, Gay Purr-ee. It's a damn shame that it was made by UPA and didn't have the budget of a Warner Brothers or Disney film. There's some visual invention in the way that backgrounds look like the work of Van Gogh in the earliest pastoral scenes and a montage finds Garland's Mewsette depicted in the styles of various impressionistic painters, such as Gaugin, Picasso, and Seurat. Her Wizard of Oz songwriters wrote the score, it's so-so but one song in particular, "Little Drops of Rain," is a standout. Gay Purr-ee is cute, slight, and mainly worth watching for some inspired visuals and to hear Garland, Robert Goulet, and Hermione Gingold deliver some fun vocal performances.

1963 would be Garland's final year as a movie star in a pair of films that are fascinating and flawed in equal measure. A Child Is Waiting gives her the third and final straight dramatic role of her career as a sensitive, supportive teacher at a school for the handicapped. She spars with Burt Lancaster, a co-star from Judgment at Nuremberg, over how to teach and discipline the children. He wants a more self-reliant approach while she's a bit of a mother hen. Her performance is a leaky faucet of love and warmth as it just pours out of her in every frame. The tension between producer Stanley Kramer and director John Cassavetes is evident in the uneven, often abrupt tonal shifts throughout A Child Is Waiting.

Her last film, I Could Go On Singing, is a well-worn plot with a thornier performance from Garland than hitherto seen. If her character had been renamed Judy instead of Jenny, it wouldn’t change the overall plot very much. She plays a singer who is a little self-destructive, a bottomless pit of need and yearning for love, yet not incapable of giving and lavishing those same yearnings on others. The characterization is more than a little autobiographical, and the stage segments were allegedly filmed live with Garland allowed to improvise the introductions and movements. In these moments you get tiny glimpses into the real, wounded spirit behind the blinding icon, and she (re)proves her serious dramatic chops as an actress.

It’s a pity then that the plot mechanics couldn’t match her iron will and defiant spirit. Singing lays on just about every cliché damaged superstar story you can think of – estranged child, rekindled romance, the conflicts between personal and professional struggles are just a few of the ones we can find in this film. If it’s never great, then it’s also never really awful. She manages to generate a believable relationship with Gregory Phillips, who plays her estranged son, and Dick Bogarde, who plays his father and her long-lost lover. In fact, many of the scenes between Garland and each of the men have a quiet, delicate poignancy and real emotional tug thanks to their subtle acting. None better than the climax where Bogarde meets Garland in the hospital after a bender, tries to talk her into performing and leaving him and their son alone, and she reacts with a tirade about how no one can tell her when or how to sing, it is her gift and she’ll use it how she wants. It’s a lacerating moment in which everything comes together to create a tension and dramatic perfection missing from much of the rest of the film.

And the final scene, which sees Garland belting out the titular song, is overwhelming poignant for an entirely different reason. Harold Allen and E.Y. Harburg wrote "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which made Garland a star. Now here she is in her final film ending a movie with another one of their songs, it’s a bittersweet circular moment and the lyrics take on a strange new meaning knowing that she would die a few years after this. Six year to be precise.

The rest of Garland's career was a tabloid frenzy of marriages and divorces, skipping out on hotel bills, mental breakdowns, benders, and an eventual accidental overdose. She died June 22, 1969. She died far too young, far too tragically. Perhaps there was no other end for someone who once summarized their childhood as this: "From the time I was thirteen, there was a constant struggle between MGM and me - whether or not to eat, how much to eat, what to eat. I remember this more vividly than anything else about my childhood."

Yet when you watch her films, she's so vividly alive and engaged, so present and vulnerable, so towering a talent that you can't believe the eventual burnout. Maybe she said it best with, "How strange when an illusion dies. It's as though you've lost a child." But still we flock to her.

Whether it be as camp figure, symbol of tragedy, or as a silver screen diva, we flock to her. We pass her down from generation to generation using her a preservation, a lifeline. If Dorothy Gale could get over that rainbow, then maybe we could too. If we failed, well, so did Judy and she's still a beloved institution and one of the greatest entertainers to have ever lived. 50 years on, and we still follow her down the yellow brick road.

Happy Pride everyone!

My Essential Viewing recommendations:

The Wizard of Oz
Girl Crazy

Meet Me in St. Louis
The Clock
The Pirate

A Star Is Born

Honorable Mentions:
Babes in Arms
For Me and My Gal
Summer Stock
Judgment at Nuremberg
I Could Go On Singing