Judy Garland : Manager Stevie Philips's memoirs

entitled Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me was published last year. Stevie Phillips managed Judy Garland's career for four years, beginning in 1961 as the manager of her comeback tour, and went on to represent her daughter, Liza Minnelli, until 1975.

An except was published in Vanity Fair last year:

"Judy Garland’s Former Manager Opens Up About the Legend’s Final, Troubled Years

The “before the show” in Boston is still one of my most painful memories these 48 years later. We were staying at the Ritz Carlton hotel, at that time arguably the best hotel in the city. Judy had an elegant gold-and-white suite overlooking the Boston Common gardens and pond. She’d decided to dress in the suite that night, which was unusual because she disliked dressing at the hotel prior to any b68 concert, and she gave me no reason why she was changing her routine. It meant, however, that I would have to return from the setup to the Ritz to collect her. At seven, I left the Boston Public Garden, went back to the hotel, went up to the suite to put together the Act II costume change, and as I stood asking her about taking additional eyelashes to the hall, she slit her left wrist with a razor, cutting deeply into an artery. The moment was made even grislier by the fact that when she made the cut she was looking at me and smiling.

I learned many things that night that I could have gone on through life never needing to know. One was that blood doesn’t leak out; it spurts, it arcs. I can see it still on the gold-and-white bedspread, on the flocked wall covering and matching drapes, and on me. I was wearing my new favorite outfit, my first-ever ensemble, a three-piece outfit manufactured by my husband’s uncle from whom I bought the most wonderful designer rip-offs wholesale. The fabric of my wool challis blouse matched the lining of my coat. I definitely loved it too much. That night when I walked into her room I thought I looked so snazzy. But all I see now is her blood all over my once-beautiful ensemble, on my skirt and coat. My hands. My hair. I stand there horrified at what has just happened to me. TO ME! Why am I feeling sorry for me and not for her? Because this was her normal! This is what she did. This is who she was. What a teacher she was. I was beginning to understand that these events were all about manipulation and control.

Judy’s suicidal episodes gave her power. With every horror, she became the center of “his” attention. “His attention” was owned by the man of the moment, David Begelman. She craved his love much more than the adoration of her fans. They were but strangers. It would soon be over for her—this episode—and she would go on to the next, but not so for me. I would never forget it. It would be seared into my memory, and I would be doomed to replay it forever. I still do. I still feel sorrier for me.

So why slit her wrist on that particular night? Let me repeat it: it’s a love story. On this particular night, she did it for David, for the love of this man, who was, at this moment in time, the single most important consideration in her life. (I often wondered—still do today, and will for as long as I live—if I could have sat her down in a totally sober moment—of which there was none—and asked her: Judy, what’s more important to you? Being in love? Or singing? What would her answer have been? Some may think they know that answer, and they may be right. But I do not know it. I never have, and I don’t think I ever will.) But let me get back to her heart, and her affair with David Begelman! After an absence of a few weeks, Begelman was back in New York. Judy was in thrall with him. Obsessi 5b4 vely. They’d been having an affair for some months and the affair was forever tripping down a rocky road; for the last many weeks, it had been caught on some insurmountable boulders due to David’s disappearance. Judy did not, like other women, tell everything to her hairdresser because her hairdresser sometimes changed as often as her wardrobe. I was her confidant; she told everything to me, and I knew about the affair from the beginning. I often wished I did not because David was my boss. It put me in the very uncomfortable position of being in the middle when Judy sought insider information. She would ask me questions about his wife, Lee, and where he’d been on certain nights, questions I couldn’t answer . . . sometimes because I didn’t know, and sometimes because I didn’t want to. Recently he’d gone on a trip abroad, and had dared to take his wife along with him. And how did Judy know that? Not from me. She’d checked with his housemaid whose confirmation had sent her into a tailspin. She could not be jollied out of it. I faced daily questions like: “Do you think he’s sleeping with Lee?” What was I supposed to answer? My best shot at a response was: “How could he be sleeping with her if he’s in love with you?” Answering her question with a question wasn’t really answering her question at all, and I preferred to do that than to lie. Judy was sure that David was in love with her. And I was happy to leave it b68 right there. I knew the truth, and it was ugly. David was ugly. I had now been in his employ a year and a half, and I was learning what a liar he was. The truth would have hurt. The truth might have cured some other person, but not Judy who lived in a make-believe world.

She would sometimes tell me the romantic things David told her, and I knew they were all lies. She giggled like a schoolgirl when she confided: “We’re making wonderful plans to travel.” Travel with David? He was a different kind of addict: a gambler and a workaholic who went on vacation only when forced to by his wife, and this is exactly what had happened. Lee Reynolds had her social set, a finite group of wealthy couples, the wives of which performed good works mostly for themselves, and who spent hours on the phone each day discussing how to spend their husbands’ money. One day Lee announced that they were all going yachting in the Greek Isles, and off David went with a small library to forfend the boredom he suffered around Lee’s entitled entourage. He told Judy he was going to London on business. “What plans are you and David making?” I asked Judy. “We’ll rent a marvelous big yacht just for the two of us and we’ll cruise the Greek Islands,” she answered. How cruel David was.

It hurt me to see Judy taken in by David’s outrageousness, but I could not, nor would not attempt to, convince her that David loved no one but himself. She believed what she wanted to believe, and in spite of their fights about his prolonged absences, regardless of his limp ad-libbing about his failure to get a divorce, Judy remained a believer. And now David had come to Boston to attend her concert and was dressing in a room almost next door when she did this terrible thing. It was hard for me to still my mind as I acted to save her life. She would show him. She would die for him. Whom was she really punishing? It wasn’t David.

I made a tourniquet out of a towel and a hairbrush. Then I picked up the phone to call David while Judy sat docilely by. She didn’t cry or scream or have any reaction at all for that matter. She was standing when she did it; now she sat down on the bed and calmly waited for David to arrive, staring straight ahead. David immediately called for a doctor and one arrived in record time; in fact, he got there so fast it made my mind spin a fiction that Judy had stationed him downstairs in the bar in advance for her own nefarious purpose. That, of course, is ridiculous, but I do have a sense that she knew what she was doing, that, in fact, she had planned it. Could she have known that what she had done or the way she had done it was not serious enough to cause a major problem? It sounds awful to even think such a thing because the slice she made looked ghastly, but that may be the truth of this horror. Maybe this was not as much of a suicide attempt as 111c it was a very loud scream. “I am hurting; I am in extreme pain; come take care of me; come love me!”


Sidebar:
Could anyone have institutionalized Judy without her permission? Maybe not, but it didn’t matter because there were no candidates. Everyone was too busy exploiting her.


It was a gash in a life careening out of control, a huge, ugly gash that would hopefully make David see her, and see the pain that was tearing her apart. If she did it for effect, the effect on me was shattering. Of all the emotions that were confusing me that night, anger was one of the biggest. I was angry that she would do such a terrible thing to herself, and, at the same time, do it to me. My anger filled a space in my being like air filling a balloon. And I didn’t know how to express it. I even felt guilty for having it. How could I be angry with someone who was so sick? Well, it is possible. The anger stayed with me for a long time, for years, until the balloon inside me got so old and weak that all the anger seeped out. Only the picture remains.

“Put her in an institution. Get her the help she needs.” That’s the scream that was raging in me. It never came out of my mouth. Could anyone have institutionalized Judy without her permission? Maybe not, but it didn’t matter because there were no candidates. Everyone was too busy exploiting her. To this day I remonstrate with myself for not trying harder. I should have appealed to David to get her serious attention. I should have at least tried. I didn’t. I knew then as I know now that any plea for saving Judy would have been gratuitous, made for wanting to hear the sound of my own voice . . . for all the attention such a plea would have received. But, maybe, had I at least given lip service to this tragedy I might have felt less guilty. Here’s my cop-out: I was only a foot soldier doing my duty. And my duty was to obey orders. There was only “do the job, and shut up,” or quit. I’ll say it again. Quit wasn’t ever an option.

When I describe what followed, you may find it despicable. I do. I was repulsed by my own behavior, but I knew I was doing what Judy wanted me to do. “Here’s a hundred,” David said, peeling a bill off a large roll and putting it into my hand. “Buy enough bracelets to cover the bandages.” Judy sat by admiring David’s take-charge capability. There wasn’t an iota of protest from her. Under the circumstances one might think she would want to go to the hospital, or at least pull the covers up over her head. Wasn’t anyone going to cancel the concert and give her tender, loving care? Heavens no! Judy was now ready to go out onstage, and if Judy intended to perform that night knowing full well that she had slit her wrist on the way to the theater, so be it. If buying bracelets to cover her wrist was the only thing I had to do to hold my job this night, I would do it. “Hurry,” Judy told me. I ran out into the streets of Boston to find a store where I could buy enough cheap bangles to cover the bandages the doctor put on her wrist. It wasn’t so easy at seven o’clock on a Saturday night, but I was on a mission and I would do whatever I had to—beg, borrow, or steal—to get her onstage. And get there she did. She did such a wonderful show no one could have suspected she wasn’t at the top of her form. And just maybe she was.

That Judy needed help desperately was clear even to a naïve dummy like me. I was brought up to believe that when someone was ill, you took him to the doctor. But the point here is that “doctor” (as opposed to pill pusher) was not the help she wanted. It wasn’t the kind of help she felt she needed, and it wasn’t the kind of help she would have accepted. It was a hard lesson for me.


Thousands of miles traveled had brought me to that moment. Many of them traversed over well-paved roads. Boring rides in limousines! Overheated and freezing limos! On the way to airports, from airports to hotels, from hotels to gigs, from gigs to restaurants—or wherever else we went at two in the morning—from “wherevers” back to hotels, and finally back to airports. Those rides became too tedious to endure . . . except for the day in which her hand began a trip from my knee, where she had placed it when the car lurched, to m 5b4 y crotch. As it slowly crept, no more than an inch every two or three minutes, I started to panic. Her move wasn’t inadvertent. Judy did nothing inadvertently. Like Alice I grew smaller and smaller as I shrank into the padded corner on my side of the car. Her arm, however, grew longer and longer as it stretched across the length of the backseat. “Oh my God! What am I going to do?” It was, for me, a close encounter of the unwanted kind. In an instant my body turned rigid, and I stopped breathing while every possible weak-kneed, simpering response like “I don’t think so. Please! Not my thing. I wish you wouldn’t” collided in my head. I rejected them all. “Breathe, Stevie.” Dare I look at her? I mustered all the courage I had and turned in her direction. I hesitate to recall the pained expression I must have worn. Take another breath and say something I commanded myself. Nothing would come out. Her hand was now fully in my crotch and she was staring straight ahead. Then she turned and smiled. What did it mean? Why was I even thinking about that? What should I do?


Sidebar:
Having car sex with Judy Garland was in no way the right answer to alleviating boredom, but after a while one simply had to do something about the myriad tedious car rides.


The idea of being intimate with Judy revolted me. I wanted to reject her. And it wasn’t just because she was a woman, although a relationship with a 16d0 nother woman did not interest me. It was because I didn’t like her. That was the biggest “oh no!” In that minute I knew, as surely as I knew my name, I no longer liked her and I could admit it to myself. I loved her talent, but I didn’t like her. The pass might not have been as distasteful if it had come from someone else. Beyond that, there was that other big “oh no!” She was the great Judy Garland, and I was her assistant cum roadie cum wet nurse cum all other things menial. I was scared. “Will I lose my job if I take her hand away? Will I offend her?” These insipid questions were exploding in my head. “Breathe, Stevie.” And then suddenly it didn’t matter. If I lost my job, so be it. It all happened in that moment. I took another deep breath and then I took her hand and put it back in her lap. I looked at her and smiled. And when I did, I understood that I had the courage of my conviction. After that I would never doubt it again. She smiled back, and we both moved on. It was another step forward in my real education, but I’m grateful that I was not tested again. She kept her hands to herself after that.

Having car sex with Judy Garland was in no way the right answer to alleviating boredom, but after a while one simply had to do something about the myriad tedious car rides. I was drowning in my own miserable small talk. “Tell me what it was like working with Gene Kelly in The Pirate,” and then there would be little snatches of fun when she talked about working with Mickey, Fred, and Gene. But I was not knowledgeable enough, or insider enough, to discuss the great professionals like Arthur Freed and the creative geniuses that she had worked with like Roger Edens and Busby Berkeley. In these countless car rides, I went with her through every movie she’d ever done, patting myself on the back each time I remembered some silly casting detail, while unintentionally boring her to death. And when she was bored, she was nasty. I was predictable in my style, formulaic in my conversation, and, with Judy, limited mostly to praise of her voice, her clothes, her wit, and her last performance. Thank God she never tired of praise.




http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/05/judy-garland-stevie-phillips-memoir


!-.-! Meow.

Phillips is careless with her facts. She claims that Judy missed performances at the Sahara in Las Vegas, but that isn't true. Judy did six weeks, seven nights a week with 42 performances in all and NEVER MISSED ONE.

Not to mention that Judy would have cut her RIGHT hand as she was left handed. Phillips was told to buy bracelets for Judy, but photographs from Judy's show in Boston reveal that she was not wearing any bracelets.

I'm not so sure about your last point.

!-.-! Meow.

NONE of us have EVER been sure about ANY of his "points." Check out the
rest of this sad board, if your eyes can handle it.

---

NONE of us have EVER been sure about ANY of his "points."

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.....Except for the point on his head.... 

Oh I see.

!-.-! Meow.

The bit about Judy's bracelets, or lack thereof, comes from photographs, but I originally read it from an on-line poster who wrote;

"I am very concerned with Phillips allegations. I own 182 negatives from the evening of the Boston Commons concert. They are of Judy, along with her son, arriving to the concert in the back of the Limo, backstage at the concert and during t b68 he concert. In NONE of the photos is Judy wearing any said bracelets. She looks fit, happy and healthy. It makes me wonder what else Phillips is being false about."

That is hearsay.

Do you have the photographs, or a link where they can be viewed online?

!-.-! Meow.

Actually you can look at them yourself. There are photographs of Judy on line singing at Boston Garden in 1961 with NO BRACELETS.

There is another one of her singing at the Boston common in 1967. Guess what? NO BRACELETS.

You can search yourself.

Ah, what the hell. Here you go.

Judy at Boston Garden [1961].

http://nebula.wsimg.com/obj/Nzg5Mzk1MkE5ODkyNTVDMEEwMjc6NTFjZjg4OTYwYzViMTE4MDk4NThhZDBhZTA1MTVlMGU6Ojo6OjA=

Boston Common [1968].

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=JUDY+GARLAND,+BOSTON+1961&biw=1280&bih=923&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjjvqDg7LnLAhVnMKYKHavdBXYQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=JUDY+GARLAND%2C+BOSTON+common+1968&imgrc=hp63SZyAyyVncM%3A

There should be at least one book on Judy called 'The Myth Of Garland.' It should examine all the *beep* that has been said or written about her since her lifetime.

Not wearing bracelets does not prove they were not bought.



!-.-! Meow.

OK, if that's what you want to go with. We can just assume the cuts are there even though we can't see them. I'm willing to assume it even without evidence. I guess it's all in the wrist.

Judy expressed her right to bare arms.

Witty.

!-.-! Meow.

Hey thanks.

There should be at least one book on Judy 1c84 called 'The Myth Of Garland.' It should examine all the *beep* that has been said or written about her since her lifetime.

Let's just pretend that EVERYTHING written about Judy was true. I would be satisfied with the fact that she died young and broke.

Not a biography but another one to look out for is the book by Scotty Bowers called 'Full Service.' He belongs on the heap with Darwin Porter and David Bret when it comes to lacking evidence. Judy comes under some inaccurate writing [yet again];

"George Cukor was an early riser and usually went to bed at nine o'clock
in the evening. He wasn't a night owl at all. Whenever he threw a
party it was either a luncheon or a small informal dinner for a select
group. His films included A Star is Born, the classic drama starring
Judy Garland and James Mason. That 1954 production caused
him untold headaches. Because of her erratic behavior on set it also
fostered his intense dislike of Garland.

"That dreadful woman!" he once confided in me. "What a bitch
she is. I'll never work with her again. Ever!"

One day, during the making of A Star is Born, George and his
crew were shooting a very difficult scene on one of the biggest soundstages
on the Warner Bros. lot. There was a huge interior set and the
lighting and camera work were unusually complicated. It was ten
o'clock in the morning and they had just done one run-through of the
scene. There were at least a hundred technicians involved and Sam
Leavitt, the director of photography; Gene Allen, the production designer;
Malcolm Bert, the art director; and various members of the
lighting, camera, grips, sound, and construction crews had a lot of
minor tweaking and last-minute alterations to take care of before
George could call for a take. Despite the amount of work that needed
to be done, the delay was expected to take no more than fifteen or
twenty minutes. As everyone knows, when it comes to motion picture
production, time is money. Lots of money. Long delays could
cost the studio a small fortune. The assistant director announced to
everyone over the megaphone that there would be a short wait. Judy
Garland plopped down on her chair, sighed, fanned herself with her
script, then got up and told the assistant director that she needed
to go to the bathroom. She promised that she wouldn't be away for
more than ten minutes. Her dressing room and private bathroom
were just off to the side of the soundproofed studio. So, off she went.
Fifteen minutes later when the assistant director called out, "Places,
please, everyone!" there was no sign of Judy.

Major stars always have what are known as stand-ins on the
set. It's their job to take the place of the star while camera crews and
lighting technicians make adjustments to ensure that the lighting
and lens focus on the. actors are exactly as the director and the director
of photography want them. Judy's stand-in was immediately
dispatched to Judy's dressing room to make sure that she was all
right and to ask her to kindly return to the set. But a couple of minutes
later she returned 5b4 with the disturbing news that Miss Garland
was neither in her dressing room nor her bathroom. Panic rippled
through the entire cast and crew. Where could she be? Three assistant
directors ran off in various directions to look for her. But Judy was
nowhere to be found. Pandemonium broke out. Frantic phone calls
were made to other soundstages, to the administration building, to
the makeup, hairdressing, and wardrobe departments. But no one
had seen Judy. George Cukor was the only one who suspected what
might have happened. From past experience he knew that Garland
occasionally exhibited moody and erratic behavior. And there was a
story behind that. As a seventeen-year-old, during the filming of The
Wizard of Oz at MGM in 1939, she had been kept on what amounted
to a starvation diet to maintain her trim figure. She had also been
pumped up with caffeine and amphetamines to sustain her energy
level. This had kept her wide awake at night so she was given barbiturates
to help her sleep. As a result Garland had become addicted
to tranquilizers and other drugs. She became unstable, moody, and
prone to depression.

"Call all the gates," Cukor ordered. 'Ask anyone if they saw her go out."

Sure enough, the guard at one of the main studio security gates
reported that he had seen Garland come out of the soundstage, walk
over to her car, which was parked in a 16d0 private bay nearby, and get
into it. She had driven up to the gate smiling broadly and waved as
the guard opened it to let her out. She had turned onto West Olive
Avenue and drove away from the studio, disappearing into traffic.
No one could reach her anywhere for the next two days. She wasn't at
home and she wasn't with friends; nobody knew where she had gone.
On the third day after her sudden departure she returned to
the set. No explanations were given and no apologies were made.
She pretended as though nothing had happened. Meanwhile, her absence
had caused havoc on the production. Hundreds of people were
kept on tenterhooks and the studio absorbed costs that ran into multiple
thousands of dollars. As no other sets were ready, the unit could
not shoot anything else and the production was now behind schedule.
Even when executive producer Jack Warner hauled Garland over the carpet
in his office she refused to acknowledge that she had done
anything wrong. George told me that this was only one of her many
misdeeds during the shooting of the film. He said that she was never
on time for her call.

"That cow was never, ever on time. She always kept us waiting.
She never explained herself and she never said sorry. Not once. She
was an unpredictable, unreliable, untrustworthy, and unrepentant
bitch!"
--

This exchange between Bowers and Cukor would never have taken place for some very good reasons.

1. Cukor always spoke lovingly of Judy. Sure there were problems on the set, but not all of them were Judy's fault. Cukor was after a chance to work with her again in the 1960s and that included films about Edith Piaf and Laurette Taylor.

2. Judy often had herself driven to the studio as makeup man Del Armstrong recalled;

"Regardless of what Judy felt internally, she never showed it on the screen. But when it was finally a wrap for the day, she would many times ask me to take her home because she was so wrung out from the concentration. You can just wring so much out of a dish rag. Director George Cukor was one who would do takes over and over and over. Especially the scene in her dressing room when she was breaking down crying. I don't know how many times I put those freckles back on her- because she's cry and rub them all off. What was seen on the screen in that six-minute scene was actually shot over two or three days. So the big process for an actress and the director is to get the performance up to that level every time. Meanwhile, the crew would have to take an hour or whatever it took to relight the whole set to get a different angle. The Judy would rehearse and rehearse and bring herself up to the same pitch again.

Now there were days when we didn't do any [filming], because they were rehearsing with Judy. And they were re-writing stuff; there were delays for that. And if Jack Warner or any of the powers that be would question the lack of footage and say, "Hey, we got to move", they'd say, "Well, Judy's not feeling..." I mean, she was the escape hatch; I saw them use that quite a few times. They would put the blame on Judy, because they knew it wouldn't go any further than that. No one would go and ask her; everybody assumed, "Oh well, [we've] got a temperamental star, so we'll make the best of it."

3. While there were problems, and Judy could cause some as well, many on the film from Cukor, James Mason, Jack Carson, Del Armstrong and Moss Hart recall her warmth and professionalism.

4. I don't know where Bowers got this idea about Judy being hooked on caffeine. Never heard that one.

5. While Judy could be late on occasion, she was not "always late" as James Mason AND Cukor pointed out in interviews.

6. And finally, this last quote is inaccurate.

"That cow was never, ever on time. She always kept us waiting.
She never explained herself and she never said sorry. Not once. She
was an unpredictable, unreliable, untrustworthy, and unrepentant
bitch!"

This is the real quote from Cukor.


"Nobody ever says how intelligent she was, or how witty. Stories about her are frozen in a pattern, as if she had no life after 'Over the Rainbow.' She was the best raconteur, the funniest woman I've ever seen. The depth and perception she bought to A STAR IS BORN were extraordinary... I marvel at her sensitivity." - George Cukor

And look at these other quotes from those who worked or were present at the time of A STAR IS BORN.

"Judy is the hardest worker I've ever seen. And Ina Claire said the same thing. She saw Judy doing some scenes, and she said that after Judy put in three hours on a set, she should go home in an ambulance. I'm an old athlete myself- football and track and so on. And I tell you that, in a four-minute song, Judy uses up as much energy as if she ran a mile at top speed." - Sid Luft


"Judy is completely enchanting. She is one of the wittiest and most intelligent creatures I have ever known and certainly one of the few actresses who is a person in her own right, apart from her talent. There's something very appealing about her.... One wants to protect her- [to] take her in your arms, and make sure that no harm befell her." - Moss Hart



"Judy's a great, great talent. I loved working with her. After so much TV, where a whole show is done in a day, it was a pleasure to spend a day on a one-minute scene. Director George Cukor wanted perfection; so did Judy. I didn't see any displays of temperament, but when Judy wasn't ready for a scene, she wouldn't do it. That's good sense- not temperament- if you can afford the luxury of being sensible in this racket. It was like the old days of b68 picture-making, with lots of time, lots of money, and lots of talent." - Jack Carson



"Judy was essentially a witty, lively, talented, funny, adorable woman. If the film went over-budget, only a very small fraction was due to her erratic timetable. She was by no means temperamental. [That's] usually an euphemism for selfish and bad-tempered. That sort can be a real time-waster. This was not Judy." - James Mason

John Fricke gives some insight into the myths that plagued Judy during her life and after her death. Here he discusses his book 'Judy: A Legendary Film Career.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yPfS9dObus

Interview with Joan Beck Coulson author of 'Always For Judy.'

http://thejudygarlandexperience.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/joan-beck-coulson-and-gary-horrocks.html

What do you think your book will add to the huge corpus of information about Judy?’

Joan: I hope it will show the real person behind the myths and rubbish that has often been written about her. Many young fans have told me that they were not able to finish reading some of the biographies because they find them too distressing. I could not ignore the last few years of Judy’s life but there are so many beautiful and fun moments, which I have documented. Reading many of the books about Judy, I felt they bore no relationship to the person I had met and I wondered where the authors had found some of the material they wrote about. Most of the books portrayed a woman who was nothing like the sweet, friendly, charming person I met. I realize publishers want sensational content, which will sell well. This is why I prefer to publish myself so I have control over what material is included.’

Joan Beck Coulson talks about working at CBS at the time Judy was doing her television series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vQMOXBSUvQ

Lorna Luft's Letter To The Editor about Gerald Clarke's biography on Judy 'Get Happy.'

To The Editor:

I have kept silent about my feelings on Gerald Clarke's book on my mother, Judy Garland. However, I must respond to the untruths he has written and said about me. My actions, feelings and emotions as a daughter were never shared with Mr. Clarke, because he never spoke to me. None of my representatives received any correspondence, and I open my own mail. In ten years of research, if he wanted to talk to me, I can be found.

I am not a "victim of her myth". This book has merely added a few more fairy tales to the existing stories, legends, and half-truths about my mother. The things he wrote about me are out and out lies. I never called her a bitch, and I never "despised" her. How dare he question how well a daughter knows her mother. Yes, we had help in the house, but I had a mother. There was never a time when she was at home that I "didn't see her for days at a time". Whenever possible, she took us on tour with her, and, in any event, she called us every night. After reading about myself, I checked the back of the book to see if his interviews included The Amazing Kreskin.

My mother was my biggest fan, and attended many of the neighborhood productions I appeared in as a child. However, I was never in a school play of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown".

I have learned that one of the most outrageous, graphic, and unnecessary stories, which is completely unattributed in the book, was told to him by my mother's "friend" Tom Green. This man has admitted that the story was totally made up. Thanks to Mr. Green and Mr. Clarke, this ludicrous fantasy will forever "be taken as gospel and reprinted over and over again".

Mr. Clarke dismisses as fiction all of the previous books, both scholarly and dishy, that have been written about my mother. So he "started from scratch", speaking with every single solitary person who ever met my mother, and my grandparents, except the people who lived in her house -- her children.

Mr. Clarke says he "felt liberated from any obligation to slant the story", and obviously also felt no obligation to the truth.

Lorna Luft

A&E Biography on Judy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXoldXADjv4

JUDY GARLAND: THE JOURNEY TO A LEGACY.

Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggg8Bd3oqXw

Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xadUCgT3xUc

Part 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bONl73CqEZw

Part 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgGYnHGcMks

Part 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C6S00B5Omk

Part 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4hj9ZQT9Gg

Part 7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc2vi15Jt1M

Part 8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSitJT0h23w

Part 9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTdxrn-AXP0

Part 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVkkKeCrnOw

Part 11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8USk9OxcBQ

Part 12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YKoo4MjGUo

Part 13
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhLgg9S5NP0

Even if the stories are true in her book, Phillips does not include any positive anecdotes about Judy and there are plenty of those to be found in her life. Phillips was only making Judy out as a one-sided person.

That is of course if you believe anything she wrote... I don't.

In the unlikely or impossible event that Phillips's book is true, it only paints a one sided portrait of Judy.

It would be like me writing a book on this one woman that I knew and only writing about her irrational and angry behavior without ever mentioning her warmth, charm and support that she gave me.

I hear criticism thrown at Judy and most of it is inaccurate and unfair. This woman I was with had a lot of great traits that she shared with Judy, but she was/is a rotten mother who has been abandoned by her kids. They don't speak well of her to this day.

My point is that Judy had a LOT of great attributes to her character. Her children still speak of her with love and affection as does everyone else who knew her.

And if Judy really was this bad and suffering from some kind of mental illness, I would be the last to defend her. I don't care how bigoted that sounds. I've had my own problems with the mentally ill.