Judy Garland Admits She Is “A Mistake”

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30592, 7 November 1964, Page 2

Judy Garland Admits She Is “A Mistake”

(By

SUSAN VAUGHAN)

Judy Garland has said: “I’m the perfect example of a living, breathing mistake.” It was a remarkably severe piece of self-criticism. No-one in the world but Judy would have been cruel enough to say it, but even her admirers admit it is true. Last week’s events in a court in Santa Monica, California, seemed to be the final assault on the diminishing Judy Garland legend.

After hearing' evidence about Judy’s conduct, the judge decided that Judy’s husband (from whom she is separated, and with whom she has a divorce-suit pending) should have more, say in the upbringing of the two youngest Garland children, Lorna, aged 11, and Joseph, nine.

This, then, is Judy Garland at 42. Her most famous song “Over the Rainbow,” (of which the Queen Mother says, “When I hear it, I can't help crying”) is, almost unbelievably 28 years old. Success came to Judy when she was young. Perhaps when she was too young. “I’ve worked since I was two,” she says. “My two sis-

ters and my mother and I toured, and we had fun, and backstage I played hide-and-seek with midgets because they were the only people as small as I. And midgets can hide in the strangest places. ; “Oh, it was fun, but at 112 1 was ‘discovered’ and i taken to Hollywood. And, ! suddenly, the fun stopped and childhood was over. ■ “There could be no fun when people constantly said Ito me, ‘You’re on and you’ve | got to be good because 900 I people depend on you for [jobs and there’s a lot of money at stake!’ : “When I was 14 I made ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and they j decided my bust was too big, Iso at first they tried to tape lit down. Then a woman turned up who was called the Cellini of the corset world. She made me a corset of steel, and I was laced up in that until I was ill.” I In conditions like that Judy Garland made a series of musicals which took £lOO I million at the box office, and paid her £750 a week. “When I was fired from the studio in 1950,” she says, “I was ill for 11 weeks in hospital and I had no money to pay the hospital bill. I had to borrow it from Louis B. Mayer, the head of the studio. “What happened to my money? It just went. My mother invested it in nickel mines and things like that — which never produced a nickel.”

Her eldest child, Lisa, aged 18, has been hailed as the new Judy Garland. But Judy has been careful to protect Lisa from the perils of show business. She has had a good general education. She lis self-reliant. “1 can’t travel a mile down the road without 37 suitcases and a whole load of advis|ers,” confessed Judy. “But not Lisa. She travels alone. She knows how to handle planes, her tickets, her appointments,” Judy smiles. “I think I’ve been successful in that,’’ she says. (All Rights Reserved)