JUDY Garland’s troubled life has been chronicled extensively. In 1950, for example, she was fired by her film studio, MGM, after she failed to report for work, and she made an attempt on her life. “I went to pieces”, she said later, in lines recounted in her obituary in the Los Angeles Times in 1969. “All I wanted to do was eat and hide. I lost all my self-confidence for 10 years. I suffered agonies of stage-fright. People had to literally push me onto the stage”.
But the following year, 1951, was a personal triumph, with a string of successful personal appearances. She performed for 19 weeks at The Palace, in New York; here, she had a month-long residency at the London Palladium, and played in Edinburgh and the Glasgow Empire.
“Before she had sung a note”, said the Evening Times of the Empire show, “a wild reception greeted Hollywood film star Judy Garland ... The ovation was perhaps untimely, but was in no way undeserved, for Miss Garland sang a medley of old favourites with wholehearted sincerity, while more recent numbers had the real Garland stamp of vitality behind them. And, of course, one would expect to hear ‘Over the Rainbow’ - in fact, it was inevitable after such a barrage of requests from the audience. The star obliged, and sang the popular melody as her finale”.
This paper’s review began: “Judy Garland, still clinging to the recollections of a successful childhood into which a multitude of fans are only too willing to join her, began her performance at the Empire last night a little nervously. But after two songs she said, ‘My feet hurt’, and kicking off her shoes became strenuously engaging, when, as the rather mature shadow of the star of the ‘Wizard of Oz’, she sang at least some of the songs the audience demanded of her.
“It was a retrospective performance, skilfully casual, discreetly hoydenish. She thumped around the stage in her stocking-soles and kept time to her singing with her big toe, and appeared herself to grow quite emotional about ‘Over the Rainbow’.
“She mopped her brow, and she wiped the tip of her nose with the back of her hand - in the hollow of which she by that time had her audience. And she sang with a strength that sometimes came near to stridency, particularly in her high and final notes”.
On YouTube there’s a recording of a 1951 radio interview with Judy, in which she spoke of her time in London: “London was wonderful, it was very exciting. It was hard work but it was gratifying.”
Judy, who is also pictured while filming I Could Go on Singing, in 1963, once wrote to the composer, Harold Arlen, about “Over the Rainbow”. The song, she said, had “become part of my life. It is so symbolic of all my dreams and wishes that I’m sure that’s why people sometimes get tears in their eyes when they hear it.”
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