Sunday, May 20, 2001		Article

WHEN Judy Garland died, Time magazine headlined the report, "Over the Rainbow," a reference to the Somewhere Over the Rainbow song she sang in The Wizard of Oz. It was typical of Time’s smart alecy manner of reporting, somewhat flippant, especially for 1969, when that renowned MGM star passed away. But her’s was a tortured existence and like so many before and after her, she was not able to cope with stardom. It is also the story of the power of the Studio system.

The Wizard of Oz was one of the first films I ever saw and I still have retrospective fear about the leaf-green complexioned, pointed nosed wicked witch with black hat. And though Judy Garland must have been 21 when she made that film, she didn’t look more than 14 with her pig-tails. Her companions were the Tin Man and the Lion and she sang her heart out too. When I saw the film again, decades later, I was able to appreciate how well made it was.

But to today’s cinema buffs, Judy Garland is merely a name, known more as the mother of Liza Minnelli, also a singing actress and the surname she got was from Vincente Minnelli, who was at one time married to Judy Garland. Together they made a number of films, starting with Meet Me in St. Louis, but in everything they did they were only cogs in the great big wheel of the MGM studio. In a recent biography, Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, Gerald Clarke throws enough light on the chequered life of that great singing star.

In fact, the character of Neely O’Hara in Jacueline Susann’s best-selling novel, The Valley of the Dolls was modelled on the life of Judy Garland. Patty Duke played the part in the Hollywood film made in the late-1960s. With the pressure of work and Vincente’s unalloyed ambition to succeed, to say nothing of his ostentatiously effeminate liaisons, Judy came close to committing suicide. She was also a nervous wreck.

"I always have to be my best in front of the camera. You expect it too. Well, sometimes I don’t feel my best. It’s a struggle to get through the day. I use these pills. They carry me through," she tells her husband Vincente to justify her taking pills. But that’s jumping the gun.

By the time she acted in The Wizard of Oz Judy had made 16 films for MGM, starting at the age of 13, and she always played "the sweet girl next door, everybody’s pal, nobody’s sweetheart." MGM’s wonder director Joe Manckiewicz, one of her lovers, told her she could be a great actress if she played "grown up women, not love-starved teenagers." But then studios and producers never like to take chances and hence the typecasting of stars.

That Judy did not look pretty is a sort of understatement. So she had to wear costumes that were designed to disguise her short neck and somewhat odd figure. Make-up women had to work overtime on her. "But Vincente Minnelli loved someone he could make beautiful, someone he could create," said actress Lena Horne, who had worked with Minnelli in his first directorial effort, an all-black musical fantasy named Cabin in the Sky.

MGM chief Louis B. Mayer had always complained that Judy’s previous lovers were married, divorced or too old. By then she had already gone through a marriage with David Rose, 10 years older, and she was in love with Manckiewicz (34), married, with two children. Still, when she decided to marry Minnelli, who was almost twice as old as her, Mayer sang a different tune because it suited him and, even more, MGM. In fact, prior to this there were rumours that after her contract with MGM expired in 1947, she would go to Broadway. So, naturally Mayer encouraged her to marry Vincente Minnelli knowing well that if she was happily married to an MGM director the question of going to Broadway would naturally resolve itself.

Judy had earlier hinted (before she married David Rose) that she wanted "Mr Mayer to be at my wedding." This time (for the Garland-Minnelli wedding) Mayer not only showed up, to give the bride away, but also presented the happy couple with a munificent wedding present — a three-month honeymoon in New York.

The wedding took place on June 15, 1945, in Judy’s mother’s house in Wilshire district. Metro’s chief costume designer Irene Gibbons had designed Judy’s dress, a smoky-grey jersey with pink pearl beading to match her pink pearl engagement ring. "These were our happiest times," Vincente used to say of the first months of their marriage. It was an exciting time to be in New York. World War II had ended and the celebrations were on, ticker-tape parades for Eisenhower and what not.

Though the official honeymoon in New York lasted three months, figuratively it did not last even two years. Judy gave birth to Lisa on March 12, 1946, but after that suffered from severe post-partum depression. But the thing that really bugged her was the rivalry between Vincente and her. As one of his friends said, "Shy, Vincente may have been but he was also ambitious, determined and sometimes even ruthless in getting what he wanted." After Meet Me in St Louis, Minnelli directed Judy in The Circle and Ziegfield Follies which had an enormous cast. Slowly, but surely, their careers were moving in different directions. Easter Parade was a big success for Judy but by then the path to fame was strewn with thistles. One day, Judy returned home to find Vincente in a compromising position with one of his male friends. Instead of blasting him for it, she tried to cut her wrists. Her next move was to have an affair with newcomer Yul Brynner.

By the time A Star is born was released, Judy was very much on pills. As for their marriage, there was always a third party to it — MGM, where Minnelli flourished even as Garland was driven to drug addiction, breakdown and attempted suicide. Their marriage, like their movies, was a product of MGM and it was inevitable that when Judy broke with the studio she would also break up with Vincente.

Clarke’s biography says "But if Metro had protected her and often catered to her, it had also imprisoned her. Inside those walls she would forever remain the ugly duckling of her early teens. The damage to her ego had been done years before, and as long as she remained at MGM it was past curing."

By the time she was out of MGM it was already too late. Death was lurking around the corner.