Posted by “Judy Garland’s legs are the prettiest in town. But that is not the only reason Judy thefts ‘The Ziegfeld Girl.’ She also acts ring around the other leading ladies in the sumptuous cast . . .” – Sheilah Graham, 1941
April 19, 1931: Here is a notice about the upcoming “Stars of Tomorrow” produced by the Maurice Kusell Studios, set to open on July 10th. “The Gumm Sisters” (Judy and her two sisters) were a part of the show.
April 19, 1934: The first night of a week-long engagement at the State Theater in Long Beach, California, for Frances (Judy). This was another engagement with the Gilmore Circus, and the local paper said: “Frances Gumm, a charming youngster who is the ‘baby’ of the troupe, sings ‘That’s What a Darkie Is,’ and ‘Dinah’ in a singularly grownup little voice.”
April 19, 1935: “The Gumm Sisters” (Judy and her two sisters) began a three-night engagement at the Strand Theater in Long Beach, California.
April 19, 1939: MGM’s latest story about Judy’s life and career.
When Judy Garland walked into a Hollywood studio and asked for a job on the strength of her eight years of stage experience no one seems to question such a lengthy apprenticeship. Young Judy had the bearing of a seasoned trouper. What was more, it was real.
Judy was literally borne into the theater, both her parents having been professionals. Her birthplace is Grand Rapids, Minn. When she was three she started singing professionally with her elder sisters, Virginia and Suzanne. Before she was five she was singing in vaudeville. It was while the trio was appearing on the same program with George Jessel that he decided Garland was a better name than Gumm, under which the girls had been born.
Judy made her screen bow in company with Deanna Durbin in a short titled “Every Sunday.” “Pigskin Parade” shot her stock upward, and it has been on the soar ever since. Judy is an expert tap dancer, plays the piano; likes to draw. Riding and swimming are her pastimes, along with a lot of reading. She has brown hair and eyes, and pints to fifteen – or is it sixteen by this time – birthdays.
April 19, 1939: Judy is used as an example of how adolescent girls are healthier with a little bit of weight on them.
April 19, 1940: Strike Up The Band began filming on this day with scenes shot on the “Interior Public Library” set. Time called: 9:30 a.m.; dismissed: 5:00 p.m.
April 19, 1941: MGM’s famous designer, Adrian, created these outfits for Judy for Ziegfeld Girl. MGM was still marketing Judy as an example of the latest in teen fashion. “Judy Garland Dresses” and “Judy Garland Hats” were promoted in stores across the nation and had been for several years even though half of the clothing had nothing to do with Judy or her films, they were simply kids and teens fashions of the day.
The second clipping is from Sheilah Graham’s column in which she called Judy’s legs “the prettiest in town.” Graham obviously didn’t care for Hedy Lamarr’s performance in Ziegfeld Girl.
Check out The Judy Room’s Spotlight Section on Ziegfeld Girl here.
Here are a few more photos of Judy in the three outfits featured in the clipping above:
April 19, 1942: Judy demonstrates how to wear the latest in fashion, the snood turban. Below, some fun artwork promoting Babes On Broadway which was currently in theaters enjoying great success.
April 19, 1943: After a day out sick from filming the “Embraceable You” number for Girl Crazy and her other obligations, Judy was back at the studio to film more of the number and other scenes on the ‘Interior Assembly Hall” set. Time called: 10 a.m.; dismissed: 5:30 p.m. Per the assistant director’s notes: “10:00 a.m.: Makeup Phoned – they were having a little delay covering JG’s [Judy Garland’s] eye cut; 10:10-10:40: Consultation with Mr. Freed [the film’s producer Arthur Freed] and Dr. Jones [studio doctor] as to whether to call shooting off due to possible head ache from moving around with swollen eye; Dr. Jones suggested Ice Packs of 10 minutes each between shooting shots, Mr. Freed decided to shoot only long shots today.”
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Pages on Girl Crazy here.
Below: More of that great newspaper artwork this time of Mickey and Judy in Girl Crazy.
April 19, 1945: “Dick Tracy in B-Flat – or – For Goodness Sake Isn’t He Ever Going To Marry Tess Truehart?” (recorded for the Armed Forces Radio Service Command Performance series) was allegedly broadcast. Other sources list the broadcast date as April 29, 1945.
Check out The Judy Garland Online Discography’s “Dick Tracy” pages for details about the various releases of the show on LP and CD.
Download the entire show here (zip file).
The incredible cast was as follows:
Bing Crosby………………………….Dick Tracy
Dinah Shore……………………Tess Trueheart
Harry Von Zel………………Old Judge Hooper
Jerry Colona………………………..Police Chief
Bob Hope………………………………….Flattop
Frank Morgan……………….Vitamin Flintheart
Jimmy Durante………………………..The Mole
Judy Garland…………………………Snowflake
The Andrews Sisters………..Summer Sisters
Frank Sinatra……………………………..Shaky
Cass Daley……………………….Gravel Gertie
The recording was originally released on LP by Hollywood Soundstage (as well as other companies such as Sandy Hook Records) in the 1970s. In the 1990s, Hollywood Soundstage released several of their albums on CD, with photos of the covers and backs of the albums used for the CD cover art. The transfer to CD by Hollywood Soundstage is “iffy” at best. An EMI 2002 CD release has a better sound.
April 19, 1945: Decca Records released Judy’s duets with Bing Crosby, “Yah-Ta-Ta, Yah-Ta-Ta (Talk, Talk, Talk)” and “You’ve Got Me Where You Want Me,” on Decca Single #23410. “Yah-Ta-Ta” was recorded on March 9, 1945, and “You’ve Got Me Where You Want Me” was recorded on July 31, 1944.
Listen to “Yah-Ta-Ta, Yah-Ta-Ta (Talk, Talk, Talk)” here:
Listen to the alternate take of “Yah-Ta-Ta, Yah-Ta-Ta (Talk, Talk, Talk)” here:
Listen to the “B” take of “Yah-Ta-Ta, Yah-Ta-Ta (Talk, Talk, Talk)” here:
Listen to “You’ve Got Me Where You Want Me”
Labels from the Rick Smith Collection. The red & pink label disc is the Norweigian edition. Thanks, Rick!
Check out The Judy Garland Online Discography’s extensive “Decca Records” section here.
April 19, 1945: Here’s a fun ad from the “Film Daily” trade magazine plus a short review of Meet Me In St. Louis (released in 1944).
April 19, 1945: Filming continued on The Harvey Girls. The assistant director’s notes state: “Miss Garland had a 10:15 call to do loops (redubbing of dialogue) today . . . At 8:45 a.m. she telephoned that she was all bruised up due to fight scenes of yesterday and didn’t feel well enough to work today.” Thus, Judy did not work.
Photo: Late 1980s laserdisc cover art.
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Pages on The Harvey Girls here.
April 19, 1948: Here’s an early notice about Judy being cast in Annie Get Your Gun.
April 19, 1949: This article in the trade magazine “Motion Picture Daily” noted the “amazing box-office” that the re-release of The Wizard of Oz was enjoying at the Mayfair Theatre in NY.
April 19, 1953: Judy was all set to appear at the Kentucky Bluegrass Festival on April 29th.
Check out The Judy Room’s “Judy Garland – The Concert Years” here.
April 19, 1955: A “Seven City Tour” of “The Judy Garland Show” was announced by Sid Luft to begin on July 5, and was planned to be followed by a nationwide tour in the fall – an additional thirteen cities, to include stops at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and Orchestra Hall in Chicago. This tour was to be followed by a two-month engagement at the Winter Garden Theater in New York. Jules Stein of MCA was now handling Judy’s live performances; Charles Feldman was still representing her for films.
Check out The Judy Room’s “Judy Garland – The Concert Years” here.
April 19, 1956: The 10″ version of the Decca Records LP “Judy at the Palace” was on sale for only $2.00! The album wasn’t an album of recordings made during her legendary run at the Palace Theater in New York but rather a 10″ “long-playing” version of a compilation of songs that Judy recorded for the label in the 1930s and 1940s. Decca released the album in 1951 with the title “Judy at the Palace,” added to take advantage of her great Palace comeback.
Track Listing:
(Dear Mr. Gable) You Made Me Love You
Recorded September 24, 1937
Over The Rainbow
Recorded July 28, 1939
The Trolley Song
Recorded April 21, 1944
Meet Me In St. Louis, Louis
Recorded April 21, 1944
In-Between
Recorded July 28, 1939
Sweet Sixteen
Recorded July 28, 1939
For Me And My Gal (with Gene Kelly)
Recorded July 26, 1942
When You Wore A Tulip (And I Wore A Big Red Rose) (with Gene Kelly)
Recorded July 26, 1942
Check out The Judy Garland Online Discography’s “Judy at the Palace” (Decca) pages for information about the various releases of this album.
Check out The Judy Room’s “Judy Garland – The Concert Years” here.
April 19, 1956: Judy and son Joe.
April 19, 1958: Judy was so loved by audiences, peers, and critics that it’s rare to see a contemporary review or column that’s decidedly negative towards her. Here is one. In his “my new york” column, Mel Heimer doesn’t hide his disdain for Judy even though, in the end, he does give her a sort of backhanded compliment by calling her “a pro” and “human.”
NEW YORK – Miss Judy Garland has been in town these days, tearing up the pea patch, and the betting men along Broadway are getting ready at long last to write her off. “This girl,” they have been saying in their delicate patois, “has had it. Cross her out. The show is over.”The suggestion here, from a man who has been a solid anti-Garland man almost from the first, is to wait a while.
It isn’t only that Judy has made more comebacks than Ray Robinson and it isn’t only that she has a large, hard core of admirers who would follow her to Sammy’s Bowery or similar ends of the earth just to hear that professional catch in her voice.
It’s a larger reason. Miss G. is a human being. I will try to skirt the edges of the maudin [sic] – but humans can take lots of beating before they throw in the towel. As long as a human is breathing in and out, you can’t truly write him off. How did that line by Louis Untermeyer go? “But name me not with the defeated; tomorrow, again, I begin…” [Judy Room Note: Untermeyer wrote the liner notes to the 1951 album “Judy at the Palace” noted above.]
THE LATEST GARLAND DIDO took place in, of all places, Brooklyn. In a way, it makes sense. It doesn’t seem possible that anyone can have as turbulent a life as Judy and have as many events happen to her, without at least one of them occurring in Brooklyn. It is, after all, the same borough where Babe Herman once was hit on the head by a fly ball and fleet-footed Dodger stole third while a teammate still was standing on it.
Making head or tail of what happened isn’t easy. It never is, where Miss G. is concerned. So much of her life, professional and personal, seems to have been lived in an eerie half-world, where fact is hard to separate from fiction.
Evidently she was singing, but not often, at the barn-like Town and Country club in Flatbush, a 1,700-capacity night club operated by Ben Maksik, and evidently the last blow-up came when she sang two songs at 10 p.m., announced she had laryngitis and couldn’t continue, further announced she had been fired, anyway – and walked off as the uproar began.
Sid Luft was on hand, too. Nobody explained this. He is her manager, but early in March she sued him for divorce. Luft has come a long and confusing way since we played baseball for rival high schools in Yonkers, N.Y.
New York took the news almost calmly with its morning cigaret [sic] and coffee. Here, it’s figured that it’s a lean year when Miss G. isn’t involved with a story like this. When Marie McDonald was kidnapped, unquote, Manhattanites were flabbergasted. They couldn’t figure out how it had happened to her and not Judy.
THIS HAS BEEN, OF COURSE, the scene of her greatest triumph, to coin a phrase. It wasn’t too many long years ago that Miss Garland, dead as a doornail in show business after some whimsical scenes in Hollywood, opened at the Palace, which had been a movie house for too long, and fractured the natives.
It was at the Palace that Judy began to practice (now so devastatingly mimicked by the talented Carol Channing) of sitting on the stage apron with tears on her cheeks and telling the audiences how wonderful they were. I note with interest that even in Brooklyn the other night as she wandered off, Miss Judy stretched her hands out wistfully and cried, “You’ve been a wonderful audience; I love you all!”
Those Palace days – that was when Judy could do no wrong; standing ovations when she entered Sardi’s were the order of the day. Everyone but me went around talking of this child’s marvelous talent?
Me? Just a misanthrope. I suppose. It’s a question of personal taste. I stiffen up and demand sincerity when I hear a girl singer – the sincerity, say, of a Peggy Lee or Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald. To me. Miss Judy is all tricks, all gimmicks, all carefully studied catches in her voice.
However, despite my aversion, I’d always considered her a pro. Now, after Brooklyn . . . well, I just don’t know. I will just say, cautiously, don’t write her off yet. Miss Garland is a human. The resilience of the human remains ever astonishing and encouraging.
Check out The Judy Room’s “Judy Garland – The Concert Years” here.
April 19, 1956: Here is another negative review, proving that even the great Garland wasn’t immune to some negative criticism.
April 19, 1965: Judy, Mark Herron, and Judy’s aide Snowy arrived in Los Angeles from Hawaii at 1:55 p.m. to then fly to New York. Lorna and Joey had flown home to California the previous day, Sunday, in order to be back for school.
Check out The Judy Room’s “Judy Garland – The Concert Years” here.
April 19, 1967: This rather unflattering photo of Judy was published in several papers, along with this photo of her fourth husband, Mark Herron, announcing their divorce. At this time, Judy was in the middle of work on Valley of the Dolls, which she would leave at the end of the month, having recorded her one song, “I’ll Plant My Own Tree,” as well as the filming of some scenes. The footage is not known to exist.
Check out The Judy Room’s “Judy Garland – The Concert Years” here.
April 19, 2014: The Wizard of Oz returned to vinyl after more than 25 years when it was released on green vinyl for one day only as part of the annual “Record Store Day.”
The big selling point for this release, which was also the label’s and the producer’s lame attempt to get people to purchase the record, was the touting a “newly discovered” audio track of “If I Only Had A Brain” recorded by Ray Bolger and Judy Garland on September 30, 1938. The recording was available for download from the Watertower Music website by using a code provided inside the sleeve of the LP. The recording was NOT “newly discovered” but had already been available since the fall of 2009.
Listen to this early version of “If I Only Had A Brain” here:
The real pleasure of this LP is the green vinyl and the fact that it’s the first time the remastered edition of the soundtrack that premiered in the mid-1990s (on Rhino Records CDs) has ever been available in vinyl format.
This record, minus the green vinyl, was re-released on vinyl on October 16, 2015. Everything else about the 2015 release was exactly the same, including the option to download a digital version of Ray Bolger’s early recording of “If I Only Had A Brain.”
That review of Judy’s performance at The Town and Country in Brooklyn was amazing to read. He really didn’t like her, and it was fascinating to hear what he wrote. He had unusual taste I suppose.
Right? It’s a good example that not everyone loved Judy. Most everyone did, but you can’t make everyone happy!