Living the legend - Judy Garland

The story of Judy Garland is a magnificent example of the truth that life imitates art.

Things would surely have been different had she stuck to being Frances Ethel Gumm of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. As it was, the trajectory of her life under the stage name she assumed at the age of 12, as part of a travelling vaudeville act, had a blighted glamour more appropriate to verismo opera than to the cinema screen. Complete with an abusive father and drunken mother, five marriages, abortion and attempted suicide, the entire scenario transcended the wildest aspirations of melodrama. The irony of a drug overdose carrying off The Wizard of Oz's cute little Dorothy, mascot of can-do America, offered a final ghastly flourish to the story.

Death brought Garland a more dependable and continuous acclaim than she had enjoyed as a living celebrity. Her selfdestructive loneliness had already gained her a large following among homosexuals, who elevated her posthumously to gay-icon status. Other fans, such as Susie Boyt, who was just five months old when Judy died, embarked on a lifelong intimacy with the star, relying on her capacity to inspire as muse, patroness or alter ego, and defining existence by their empathy with her splendours and miseries.

My Judy Garland Life chronicles this kind of bizarre but wholly authentic-seeming relationship. Boyt is at pains to establish herself as being emphatically unlike Judy in almost every way. That her father is Lucian Freud seems to have prompted a reactive craving for ordinariness. She is fond of washing up, once worked in a shop, tried to please her teachers, won deportment badges at school and is evidently (without making too much of a fuss about it) an excellent wife and mother. Beyond this antitype, formed from everything which, at first glance, Garland was not, lies a less emotionally restrained persona, extravagantly responsive to the woman who is both her heroine and in some sense her long-desired sweetheart.


The book is essentially an autobiography viewed through the prism of Garland-worship. 'Judy makes me feel extraordinary things, ' declares Boyt; 'she allows me to view the world in a way that I like, but scarcely dare. She's not a problem I wish to solve and nor am I.' She sets up a supposed encounter with her in a drycleaner's, along the lines of Henry James's story 'In the Cage', at the same time imagining a meeting in a sanatorium between the damaged star and the drinksodden poet, John Berryman, an episode which Boyt, an experienced novelist, deftly fashions into a short story. She has fun dressing up in Judy's leopardskin hat and muff, and visits the grave in Westchester, New York, where her friend, Marc, cleans the tombstone with vodka in honour of 'the Mightiest Lady of our time'. Her yearning for Judy becomes a dress 'cut on the bias, which sparkles, glossy and sequinned under lights pink and amber'.

In all its ardour and spontaneity, My Judy Garland Life is one of this year's most original books. Mercifully we do not need to share Boyt's adoration, or indeed to give a rap for Judy, living or dead, to enjoy its insights, hankerings and revelations. As a record of the sort of borrowed world few of its readers are likely to have entered with such wide-eyed intensity it appears uniquely memorable.(source)

Broadway diva lives up to her billing

When was it first that the term diva was translated from the world of opera to that of showbiz? I wouldn't mind betting that it may have had something to do with the arrival on Broadway of young singer called Barbra Streisand. Today, 47 years later, there is no one in the world of showbiz for whom the term diva seems more apt.

Make no mistake, Barbra Streisand, even now at the age of 65, is a star of the first firmament. The record books speak of that. Streisand is the bestselling female artist of all-time. With 71 million records to her credit she outsells The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and is exceeded only by Elvis. She is one of the few performers to have won an Oscar, an Emmy, A Tony and a Grammy.

But it is only in live performance, in her first UK appearance in the first tour she has ever done in Europe, that the power, range and unique tonal quality of her voice becomes fully apparent.

Stardom is a two-way process. I have never seen an audience so excited as the one that entered the MEN Arena last night. It was like being among a classroom of hyperactive children or amid a troop of horses with the wind in their nostrils.

Something far more intense than mere anticipation shivered through the crowd, a fact that was not merely to be explained by the fact that they had paid (pound)550 a ticket in the best seats - making Streisand the highest-paid concert performer in history. As she walked on to the stage she was met not just with a standing ovation but with a round of ululation not normally thought of as native to Manchester.

From the first song, the big ballad "Starting Here, Starting Now", the audience's faith was justified. It was a voice of enormous power but superb control. Perhaps, at 65, it has lost a little definition - though she may just have had a slight cold, for she sounded hoarse once or twice when she talked. But she demonstrated an extraordinary range and command of styles, moving straight into "Down With Love", a jazzy little number with a walking bass.

But what is stunning is the sheer artistry of Streisand's interpretative range. She sings songs like she's telling a story, unfolding "Papa, Can You Hear Me", from Yentl, as if it had the epic narrative of a grand opera. Some were simple, others were ferociously tricky, and yet they were each delivered with a deceptive ease. She made the lyrics of "What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life" sound as though they were words she was spontaneously inventing and speaking to a single person in a private place.

The someone she was talking to was an arena full of fans who sent up cards bearing messages such as: "I have been waiting to see you the whole of my life." She progressed from one song to the next in a way which was not autobiographical so much as the story of the lives of those who listened. She was singing the soundtrack to their joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures.

There were some heavy swaths of sentimentality involved, but Streisand conveyed it with a freshness which was utterly uncloying. She sang "A Cockeyed Optimist" as if it had been written by Kurt Weil. Her encore, "Smile, though your heart is breaking" was dedicated to the drummer of her magnificent 60-strong orchestra. His sister, she hinted, had just undergone some terrible tragedy. She sang it slow, tinged with profound melancholy and enormous emotional power. A diva if ever there was one.(source)

Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munchin - "New York, New York"

Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munchin - "New York, New York..." from the film "On The Town", 1949