Judy Garland: By Myself. The Television Documentary

JUDY GARLAND: BY MYSELF

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon. Today's star is Judy Garland.

There are names from the field of entertainment that were once wildly popular but now are almost if not totally forgotten. Other stars, however, have never faded even decades after their deaths. In the latter category is Frances Ethel Gumm, better known and loved as Judy Garland. Judy Garland: By Myself looks on her life and career. The extraordinary heights and disastrous lows of her professional and personal life are examined by friends, coworkers and even by Garland herself.

"Judy Garland made several attempts to craft her memoirs. Sometimes with a writer, sometimes with just a tape recorder for company. She never completed her book but, always the great raconteur, she also spoke freely to her public and the press. This is Judy's story, told in her own words and in the words of those how knew her best". Thus begins Judy Garland: By Myself, narrated by Harris Yulen. Over the course of two hours, we hear from both the living and dead talk about what it was like working with Garland. We even hear from Garland herself via Isabel Keating, who reads from the various audio recordings and written words from Garland's attempts at her memoir.

The film goes through her life, though not strictly in chronological order. For example, Judy Garland: By Herself at one point goes from the making of Meet Me in St. Louis to her own childhood years. For the most part though, Judy Garland: By Herself does follow the structure of going from birth to death at the shockingly young age of 47. The film does much to connect her biography to her filmography. 

The opening of the documentary, for example, shows the Born in a Trunk number from A Star is Born to underline her early years in vaudeville. It also ties her insecurity about not being in her mind a great beauty by showing a musical scene from Ziegfeld Girl, where she costarred with one of MGM's reigning beauties, Lana Turner.   

As a side note, Ziegfeld Girl was the film that I reviewed for a previous Judy Garland Day for Summer Under the Stars.

The information in Judy Garland: By Myself is good even for people familiar with Garland's story. People may be familiar with MGM's brutal and brutish manner with Garland. There are the forced diets to where she wisecracked that the thing she missed most about her early years was eating. There is the massive overwork that she endured. Judy Garland: By Myself reports that she did six pictures in eighteen months without a break. Garland via Raskin tells us that they would be shooting one film and rehearsing for another. 

What we do learn in Judy Garland: By Myself is sometimes shocking and heartbreaking. After a total collapse, she finally went to a sanitarium where she ate regularly and got proper sleep without pills. She felt rejuvenated, but MGM brought her back with no real recovery period to work on Summer Stock. They just got her back on the vicious cycle of pills, forced diets and overwork. Using the words of MGM drama coach Lilian Burns Sydney, "That mirror was Judy's nemesis". Thanks to her bosses and her own insecurities, Garland's confidence was never solid. 

Other information related to her career is surprising. After her dismissal from MGM at twenty-eight, she had no job, no income and no husband, being divorced from her second husband, Vincente Minnelli. For nine years she toured the world to keep body and soul together, as well as to keep her three children (Liza Minnelli and Lorna & Joey Luft). 

Judy Garland: By Myself features no on-camera interviews. Instead, the documentary does one of two things. We hear the various people who were alive at the time the documentary was made, such as comedian Alan King and fellow MGM star June Allyson. For those who were dead at the time, voice actors read their words. David Margulies, for example, read the words of director Joseph L. Mankiewicz. All of them revealed a talented woman who was done dirty by the studio and by some of those around her. Michael Dann, the CBS executive who was Head of Network Programming at CBS where The Judy Garland Show was made, reports that the taping of her last show was extremely hard to watch being made.

"Mike, why did you cancel me?", he reports her asking. More than likely due to CBS' mismanagement and poor planning from people like Dann (though as he reports, CBS head James Aubrey's intense hatred for Garland did not help). The clips from The Judy Garland Show seen in Judy Garland: By Myself show an exceptional talent with some wonderful numbers. They also show that The Judy Garland Show had no real focus. In the twenty-six episodes of The Judy Garland Show, it went through three production teams and faced stiff competition from the reigning show on Sunday nights at 9 PM: Bonanza. That had killed four previous shows. 

Dorothy Gale was no match for Little Joe Cartwright.

Judy Garland: By Myself has a major plus in Isabel Keating reading Garland's words. Keating does such a good Judy Garland voice that one soon forgets that it is an actress reading someone else's words. You come close to thinking that Garland herself is speaking to us. In a way she is as Keating is reading what Garland wrote and said, sometimes to others, sometimes just to herself. The film begins with Keating reading a defining set of statements as we see Garland sing the song By Myself. "I'm just trying to be heard. This is the story of MY life, and I, Judy Garland, am gonna talk". 

Talk she did, and while we hear many tales of working and living with Garland, director Susan Lacy (writing with Stephen Stept) was not going to fact-check everything. We see Garland tell Tonight Show host Jack Parr a tale of how her Wizard of Oz costars shut her out while dancing down the yellow brick road. According to Garland, it took director Victor Fleming to get the three Broadway veterans in line. "Hold it! You three dirty hams, let that little girl in there!" Fleming allegedly yelled at Jack Haley, Ray Bolger and Burt Lahr. This story makes for some great laughs. However, the veracity of this ever happening has been disputed.

Judy Garland: By Myself is a good primer into the life and career of this extraordinary tale, the little girl with a great big voice. Seeing early footage in short films like Bubbles and The Big Revue of 1929 shows us how immensely talented she was even as a youngster. One ends up appreciating not just the scope of what she did give but mourn what she could have given us.

"I would like audiences to know I've been in love with them all my life, and I've tried to please. I hope I did," Garland via Keating reflects in the end of Judy Garland: By Myself. 

Frances, you certainly did.  

8/10