Was Judy Garland a horrible racist?

[quote] Carnagie

That misspelling molested me.

Oh, nonsense. *I* should have been Mammy in'39, but I was busy that same year with another little movie called ... well, you know.

Sid Luft’s mother is the devil.

She was not a racist and honestly back then people were rather thoughtless in terms of being offended by blackface. In her personal life she wasn't a racist, she was a very liberal Democrat.

I was eye raped by OP!

[quote] blackface

Frances Gumm was born 98 years ago. That word barely existed back in her day.

Swanee and Rock-By Your Baby with a Dixie were her homage to Al Jolson and the vaudeville tradition.i don’t think she did them in blackface (like she did in one of the Busby Berkely movies in the 40d, when she was in her late teens. (And when she may have had no choice and probably no consciousness of the racism involved.

Leave Judy alone!

[quote] Was Judy Garland a horrible racist?

No, she was an unsuccessful racist.

[quote] How else to explain her choice of songs on the Carnagie set? Swanee? Dixie Melody?

She had a big powerful voice that since her childhood had been compared to the biggest and most powerful popular voice of the day, Al Jolson. He was the one who made "Swanee" and "Dixie Melody" famous. Even though he was born in Lithuania, he was associated with the South because he had become most famous in minstrel shows on the vaudeville circuit--he made other Southern songs famous too like "Carolina in the Morning" (which was actually first introduced by William Frawley, later of "I Love Lucy") and "Alabammy Bound."

The first of Jolson's hit songs Garland sang was 'You Made Me Love You," (which he had introduced on Broadway in 1913) which she famously sang to a portrait of Clark Gable in Broadway Melody of 1938. It caused such a sensation and suited her voice so beautifully that she started bringing in others of his songs into her repertoire: "Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody," "Swanee," "April Showers," "Liza," etc. The songs suited her big voice perfectly and audiences loved them.

That's why she sang those songs.

You're not very good at trolling, OP. #BeBest!

Swanee is not a racist song

Is Liza named after the song Liza?

[quote] Is Liza named after the song Liza?

Yes, actually:

"Minnelli was born on March 12, 1946, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, She is the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli. Her parents named her after Ira Gershwin's song "Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away)"."

[quote] Racist. Is that a noun or an adjective? Anyway the word didn't exist in Judy's day.

Judy singing "Liza" in honor of her Liza:

Don't anybody tell OP about 'Minnie From Trinidad"!