The Judy Garland Show

Wait, which cable station!?

NEEEEELY O'HARA!!!!!

The brass at CBS didn't want her to sing it that night - told her it would be "too much of a downer." She said to hell with them and to hell with that.

She never slept with JFK but she was a good friend, staying with the Kennedys with her kids in Hyannisport. Jackie was not a fan, however. When Kennedy was President and feeling stressed or down, he'd sometimes have the White House operators find her - and they would, anywhere she was in the world - and get her on the line to sing him a few bars of "Over the Rainbow." Cheered him right up, too.

She was tiny and she's wearing one of the few dresses/outfits here that didn't minimize her most obvious (from a movie star/singer's point of view) physical flaw and that's that she wasn't Audrey Hepburn: Judy had no neck. Edith Head spent a lot of time designing outfits that disguised that aspect of Garland's anatomy.

She had the herky jerky movements like a lot of alcoholics. Sort of distracting. I dont think she had a great voice....

I remember watching this show when it was first broadcast. My folks were Garland fans- but I hated it! I thought her voice was horrible, with that vibrato. I didn't know what a vibrato was back then- I was nine. Even now, I think that last time she sounds ok was the Carnegie Hall concert. But it's lovely in the 40's.

Is that what it is? Vibrato? Sounds awful. Frankly, I think anyone can do that.

Judy had no neck, and by that time no ass or tits. She had dieted them away.

They had to have a fake butt made for her to wear under the gowns.

I begged my parents to let me stay up to see Judy Garland on the Jack Parr show.... I remember being horrified to see she was nothing like the "Dorothy Gale" I expected. She was down right scary.

BTW: I did not know this, but Garland's show was originally scheduled for Wednesday nights...up against light-weight competition from ABC and NBC.

But Danny Kaye insisted on that time slot for his show.

Since he had more weight at CBS, Garland's show went up against Bonanza.

Kaye's show lasted 4 years.

[quote]My cable station just started airing this, and I thought it was fabulous!

It's on getTV, not a cable station. ;

After she did the show but before she went to London and died on the toilet, she lived in Boston in the mid-1960's. I was just barely a gayling, but I have two stories from that period in her life.

My uncle Tom was then the night commander at the Boston Police Department's downtown HQ and as such, he knew everything that went on. A recurring problem then was Miss Garland's late night entertaining at her place in a new apartment building that had just opened at the Prudential Center in the Back Bay. Judy would apparently get shitfaced and pick up someone to either party or sleep with too often and too noisily for her neighbor's comfort, so on more than one occasion the cops were called. Usually it went OK - a friendly "cool it" was enough to break up the party - and after a while it almost became a routine for whoever got the call. One night the cops went up and the party was in full swing but instead of being shushed, Judy invited them in, someone played the piano, and they stayed. Needless to say, Judy ending up with "Why can't I" to two burly Irish cops had them in tears. But they got the place cleared and Judy quieted down when they left. Some of the neighbors were outside in the hall in their pajamas still complaining, but the cops, moved by her performance, were all, "Oh, give her a break, you killjoys. She's had a tough time of it and she's such a wonderful person. And she can still sing "Over the Rainbow."

The other comes from a friend who does stand-up and has told this story on stage. When Marie was a kid, maybe seven or eight, she was with her family at Paragon Park in Nantasket, about 20 miles south of Boston. She'd been waiting and waiting in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl and I guess because of how they have to load it (balance?), she had to wait out a couple of rides until they had another kid her size and even then, she barely made it - she was the last person on board. Who was the other kid her size? Joey Luft. Judy and Lorna and Joey were at the park and Judy was strapped in next to her. If you see this coming, great, but back then my friend didn't: Judy hurled all over her from the motion of the ride. Or the drinking or the dieting or whatever. The most amazing thing, she said, was that Garland was in an all white outfit - slacks, sweater and shoes - and didn't get anything on herself but it went all over Marie. Judy just said, "Sorry, kid" and walked off with her kids when the ride was over. Her mother tried as best she could to clean her clothes off from a water fountain, but could only do so much, I guess. It ruined her night at the amusement park, but if that wasn't bad enough, she was mortified when they headed home. Outdoors and by the ocean, it might not have seemed to smell so bad but when they started to get in the car, her father said to her mom, "Get a beach towel to cover her up, get her clothes off, and toss 'em - get rid of them. We can't have 'em in the car because they smell like puke and you can never get rid of the smell of puke."

Her mother hesitated, though: "But, but, but, I can't do that. I mean, it's Judy Garland's puke."

I love that first story, R10! She sounds like a blast.

I can't believe she could still party hard after working all day.

[quote] It's on getTV, not a cable station

It's called ThisTV in my area, and it is on cable.

[quote]Her mother hesitated, though: "But, but, but, I can't do that. I mean, it's Judy Garland's puke."

Can't wait for this to show up on Antiques Roadshow.

r12 This and GetTV are two different networks. "The Judy Garland Show" is on GetTV, not This. And neither of them is a cable network. They are carried on local tv stations (mostly the digital subchannels like 2.2). Just because your local cable company carries that station doesn't make the network a cable network any more than NBC or CBS is a cable network.

I enjoy Kaye and saw him in Two by Two-you have never seen anything like it in your life-but he sounds like he was a shit as a human being.

He was bisexual. And a great dancer, too.

OP - they must be cutting out the variety show crap. Check out this show at the nine minute mark. It has exactly what you claim the show didn't have.

It has about 90 seconds of Jerry Van Dyke trying to make a joke. He fails. Otherwise you've got an hour of Judy, Streisand, the Smothers Brothers, Streisand doing a concert, Judy and Streisand as a duo, Judy and Streisand and Ethel Merman, more Garland/Streisand duets followed by a couple more of Judy's classics. Between them they cover about 30 years Broadway and Hollywood history.

What are you talking about?

This thread could go on for years. Hasn't it. Her vibrato was a problem but her voice was still very powerful and sometimes nuanced during her TV show. I wasn't born when this aired so I agree with the other poster who said that Carnegie Hall and more supremely A Star is Born was the last time her voice was in both it's full mature glory and the thrill of that one of a kind sound under her control.

That statement is so often repeated that CBS didn't want her to sing Battle Hymn to honor Kennedy. I believe it. But her show was taped and they aired it, so why? Bad press not too. It is not a good performance from her - she looks a swollen wreck and her vocal chords are very harsh, she misses a modulation badly though it's dramatic as hell. Future problems with her might have started here, because that performance was an indulgent mess.

This late in her life Garland sounded every bit the great singer she was when she didn't go for so much belting and dynamic finishes that she couldn't pull of without that W I D E vibrato, slurry transitions and run at them and cut them short high notes. She had an excellent ear and beautiful musicality when she didn't push past her limits. Her voice was often a thrill for the gorgeous crescendos and full warm tone alone. She was a belter but unlike Streisand or Merman, she was also a great interpreter of song. Her I Can't Give You Anything But Love on the Carnegie Hall album is one of the great live jazz recordings you are likely to hear. Truly a wonderful singer with great musicianship. Neither she or her voice was reliable by the time of her TV series but she had some fine moments. She knew her vibrato was a problem. You can't sing every song like Rockabye Your Baby.

This is one of her most perfect performances from the show. Garland isn't really about perfection but her voice was in raspy shape many times when she sang on the show. Her round golden tones were everything and the warm emotive power of her voice was her hallmark. Not her range, though it wasn't shabby at all. Her Rain or Shine must have been something to hear in concert halls of the 1950s because that arrangement was a popular singer's aria. Whitney faced similar problems in her last decade. Her voice was clear and beautiful, full and round on some notes in some parts of her range sometimes. The head voice still as clean as coloratura but unreachable from the chest. Garland and Houston both destroyed their own vocal cords and lungs but were given such phenomenal vocal gifts that for brief moments in time they still sounded wonderful even near the end.

This performance is way better than that. It's nothing obscure, but as close to vocal perfection as she achieved on her TV show. Garland had a plan for this song and she executed it.

It's amazing how Judy kept it together, despite all of the twitching and scratching she was experiencing from the pills and booze.

I know it's strange to say, but she was a true professional.

Why didn't Judy cover more contemporary material in that last decade?

Aside from a Stevie Wonder song, she stayed away from anything current in her concerts. She did a cover of "What the World Needs now" on a TV show and it came off great. One could only imagine how she could have tackled ballads by Bacharach, Dylan, Lennon/McCartney, Jimmy Webb.

For r22

The Smothers Broters were the kings of variety shows. I love the performing. But all the conversations were poorly scripted.

Why make the show more than it was?

Meet me in St. Louis is on in three hours, on TCM.

2:15 a.m. Eastern.

[quote] Her voice was clear and beautiful, full and round on some notes in some parts of her range sometimes. The head voice still as clean as coloratura but unreachable from the chest. Garland and Houston both destroyed their own vocal cords and lungs but were given such phenomenal vocal gifts that for brief moments in time they still sounded wonderful even near the end.

Garland and Whitney Houston in the same sentence?

I don't think you understand greatness of Judy Garland. It was not about her "head voice" or "full and rounded notes"" or what ever ....there are lots of singers with great voices.

With Garland it was all about her interpretive skills. Her acting ability. She was a story teller.

Something that Whiney Houston knew nothing about.

I don't know for sure, R22, but given how much trouble she sometimes had remembering lyrics to songs she'd sung for decades, I'm assuming that learning new material would have been difficult for her.

[Quote]Her vibrato was a problem but her voice was still very powerful and sometimes nuanced during her TV show.

Can r19 or anyone else please help me understand the good and the bad about vibrato? I basically know it as that "shake" a voice has, and that older people who sing are more likely to have it. To me, Judy sounded fine during the airing of her show. Perhaps she sounded like her typical Judy self. But what's the problem with her vibrato at this point?

I'd like to know how she had the discipline for a TV show when during the making of so many films starting with St Louis she became very much unreliable and a mess.

Yet she was able to pull it together for a weekly variety show? Very strange.

Barbra Streisand and Tommy Smothers dated toward the beginning of their careers when they were both touring.

There is a scene in “me and my shadows” where the young Judy Garland complaints about her “uncontrollable” vibrato to Artie Shaw. He tells her not to worry about it but she cries that it kept her from being a proper band singer. He tells her that band singers are a dime a dozen but she is special. True that.

R29 Judy had lots of bills to pay towards the end of her stormy marriage to Sid Luft and got a very generous offer from CBS's William Paley for a show, one almost immediately undermined by the president of CBS Television, James Aubrey, aka "The Smiling Cobra," who did not like her. She managed to keep it together for a while but between problems of her own making (booze, pills, bad marriages, etc.) and the roadblocks Aubrey put in the way of the show's success it's a miracle she stayed on the air as long as she did.

Garland should have been given a contract for two yearly specials, they way they did with Bob Hope.

She was just too unusual for a weekly series.

I WAS MOLESTED BY BABE PALEY.