Posted by “She is fantastic – picks up a whole routine in half a day, just watching.” – Gloria de Werd, Judy Garland’s dance-in on “A Star Is Born”
September 11, 1937: Judy pre-recorded “Sun Showers” for Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry. The song was cut from the film as was the corresponding footage. Only the recording has survived.
Listen to “Sun Showers” here:
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Page on Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry here.
September 11, 1938: Love Finds Andy Hardy.
September 11, 1939: More kudos for The Wizard of Oz.
More details and images of all of Judy’s activities during that golden year of 1939 can be found on The Judy Room’s Garland Centennial 1939 Page.
Check out The Judy Room’s Spotlight on The Wizard of Oz here.
September 11, 1940: Filming on Little Nellie Kelly continued with scenes shot on the “Interior Astor Ballroom” set. Time called: 9 a.m.; dismissed: 6:11 p.m.
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Pages on Little Nellie Kelly here.
September 11, 1941: Judy had a 1:30 p.m. call for Babes on Broadway. It was planned for her to work on Stage 21, the “Interior Auditorium” set, but per the assistant director’s notes: Call Cancelled on Stage 21 Int. Auditorium – Judy Garland ill with sore throat – However came in for poster still in p.m. (and publicity photos) – company rehearsed Block Party. Time dismissed: 4 p.m.
Also on this day, Judy’s sister, Sue, was married.
Poster images provided by Kim Lundgreen. Thanks, Kim!
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Page on Babes on Broadway here.
September 11, 1942: Filming continued on Presenting Lily Mars including scenes shot on the “Exterior of Thornway’s Theater” set.
Check out The Judy Room’s Extensive Spotlight on Presenting Lily Mars here.
September 11, 1943: The “Hollywood Cavalcade” hit New York City with their Bond Drive and show at Madison Square Garden. Red Skelton joined the troupe for this performance. They arrived at Penn Station at 10:30 am, the drive and show began at 8:30 pm.
These clippings, (all published on September 11, 1943) show some of the press as well as notices in other cities’ papers about the upcoming visits by the group and the various Bond Drive activities the cities had planned.
In the last photo:
Back row: James Cagney, Lucille Ball, Fred Astaire, Greer Garson, Paul Henreid, Judy Garland, Betty Hutton, Harpo Marx, Marjorie Stewart
Front row: Sergeant Barney Ross, Kay Kyser, Mickey Rooney, Rosemary LaPlanche
September 11, 1943: The “La Grande Observer” (La Grande, Oregon) published this short review of Presenting Lily Mars, which was opening that night. Greenwood, South Carolina, called the film a “gay romantic musical” and “joyful entertainment.”
Check out The Judy Room’s Extensive Spotlight Section on Presenting Lily Mars here.
September 11, 1944: Filming on The Clock continued with scenes on the “Interior Alice’s Apartment,” “Park Path,” “15th Ave. at 79th,” and “Interior Penn Station” sets. Time called: 10 a.m.: time dismissed: 4:10 p.m.
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Pages on The Clock here.
September 11, 1945: This article points out the similar tracks in the careers of Judy and Deanna Durbin. That is, up to this point. By the time the 1950s came along, Judy’s career had eclipsed Durbin’s.
September 11, 1946: Judy was at the Decca Records recording studios in Hollywood. From 7:15 to 10:15 p.m. she recorded the following songs in the following order: “Aren’t You Kind Of Glad We Did?”; “For You, For Me, Forevermore” (both with Dick Haymes); and “Changing My Tune.” All three were released on October 21, 1946. The duets with Haymes were released on Decca single #23687 (“For You” on the “A” side and “Aren’t You” on the “B” side); and “Changing My Tune” on the “A” side of #23688 with a non-Garland track on the “B” side.
Listen to “Aren’t You Kind Of Glad We Did?” here:
Listen to “For You, For Me, Forevermore” here:
Listen to “Changing My Tune” here:
Label images provided by Rick Smith. Thanks, Rick! The newspaper clipping is an ad published on September 11, 1947, a full year after these recordings were made.
September 11, 1948: Here is a two-page ad placed by MGM in the trade magazine “Motion Picture Herald” that amusingly makes use of the term “Sugar Daddy.” Included in the films listed are Easter Parade and Words and Music. In this same issue, details about the upcoming release of Words and Music was included in the “Release Chart” feature.
September 11, 1950: Here’s another MGM ad for Summer Stock, placed in the trade magazine “Film Bulletin.”
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Page on Summer Stock here.
September 11, 1953: Judy pre-recorded “Lose That Long Face” for A Star Is Born. She also rehearsed and “laid out” some dances. Start time: 11 a.m.; finished: 5 p.m.
Above is the reconstructed complete version of the number, including the outtake middle section discovered in 2016.
Check out The Judy Room’s Spotlight on A Star Is Born here.
September 11, 1953: Also on this day, newspapers reported on the recent court appearance (September 10th) by Judy and husband Sid Luft and the corresponding case of Sid’s ex-wife, Lynn Bari, had petitioned the court to hold Sid in contempt. Bari alleged that Sid had not disclosed his increased income for the previous year. In other words, she wanted more money in child support. The judge threw the case out.
September 11, 1954: “Picturegoer” magazine completed its two-part A Star Is Born feature.
Photo provided by Kim Lundgreen. Thanks, Kim!
Check out The Judy Room’s Spotlight on A Star Is Born here.
September 11, 1964: The end of Judy’s TV series is mentioned in this article, calling it “the flashiest failure of the [previous] season.” Failure or not, it’s Judy’s image that’s used to draw people to the article even though her show only received a one-sentence mention. In other words, even if the show wasn’t considered a success Judy Garland was still a mega-star.
The photo on the right is a snapshot of Judy with daughter Liza Minnelli in London, England, taken on this day.
September 11, 2013: This article from the Studio Daily website and written by Bryant Frazier explained the process of converting The Wizard of Oz into 3D.
Converting The Wizard of Oz to 3D
How Prime Focus Put New Depth in the Picture While Honoring the Original Work
By Bryant Frazier
We’re off to see the Wizard — and this time, he’s in 3D. Stereo conversions have become pretty common for new studio tentpole releases, but they’re relatively rare when it comes to older films, especially studio catalog jewels like The Wizard of Oz, originally released by MGM in 1939 and now part of the classic Warner Bros. library. What’s it like to tackle a stereo conversion job involving some of the most famous images ever committed to film?
Well, Prime Focus would know. The company’s proprietary View-D 3D-conversion process was used on Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, Transformers; Dark of the Moon, Shrek 3D, and more. Now, it’s been put to the test on a new 3D release of The Wizard of Oz, which premieres September 15 and begins screening September 20 exclusively in IMAX theaters. We asked Chris Del Conte, Prime Focus’s VP of business development in Los Angeles, and Justin Jones, a View-D supervisor in Vancouver, how the company met the classic conversion challenge.
“Everybody was a little apprehensive about the idea of putting our hands on such a classic film,” Del Conte told StudioDaily. He remembered that Ned Price, the VP of mastering for Warner Technical Operations, was available to provide guidance on what existed on the actual physical stages where The Wizard of Oz was shot.
For example, Price might note that, while the set for Dorothy’s room in Kansas was only 12 feet across, the depth-converted version looked bigger than that. In general, the 3D team would defer to that reality rather than transforming the environment. “If you had shot the film with a digital camera, standing on the set,” Del Conte said, “you would see what we were trying to interpret with our conversion process.”
But once the team felt they had locked down the correct natural depth for all of the scenes in the film, it gave them the confidence to start using 3D a bit more aggressively. “Once you had control, you could make better creative decisions,” said Justin Jones, View-D Supervisor in Vancouver. “For example, you could make the witch more uncomfortable to viewers when she’s on screen. Once we had her in depth, we pulled her chin and nose out more than we would have normally. It’s subtle. It’s not about the conscious perception of the viewer. We didn’t want to pull it more and make it a gimmick. We’re not trying to make a ride film. It’s about respecting the material.”
Work began the way it always does on a 3D conversion job, with stereo conversion artists isolating every object in every shot in every sequence in the film. In the meantime, the View-D team worked closely with Price at Warner Brothers, who provided a 2K version of the studio’s recent restoration of the film, as well as with VFX supervisor Mike Fink, who was brought on to oversee the stereo conversion, to develop depth scripts laying out how the depth would flow, sequence by sequence.
“A lot of the design work happens at the very beginning of the process,” Jones said. “Once the elements are isolated, we have a stage where we place everything in depth, working out the overall environment – the set, basically – and then giving everything the proper volume and sculpting. We follow a lot of basic rules in the beginning, asking ourselves, ‘If the film were shot in stereo, how would the 3D look?’ And once that is established we can get creative and alter things a little bit to help tell the story. After the depth is placed and everyone is happy with the results, the final polish is put on. The only changes at that point are convergence changes and other minor adjustments.”
A disparity map is created that shows the frame in grayscale. Each shade represents depth, so nearer objects appear lighter, and farther objects appear darker. These shades then coordinate to values between 1 and 0 that help stereographers determine how much disparity will be between left and right eyes to create the depth effect. Images courtesy Prime Focus.
A 3D conversion is obviously a huge job, so being smart about scheduling is key. After a complete, shot by shot analysis of the film, the View-D team estimated how long each stage of the process would take based on the complexity of different scenes so that a schedule could be set. In all, the project ended up taking place on a 14-month schedule, for everything from development to final delivery, which Jones describes as “a good amount of time” for a conversion job.
It was especially helpful since work was complicated somewhat by the age of the film. Originally released in 1939, The Wizard of Oz doesn’t look much like a contemporary blockbuster. The film grain has a different quality, and the restored digital elements still exhibited some color shift and flicker that the team had to pay close attention to. But Jones said restoration is a very different task from 3D conversion. “[Warner Bros.] worked on the image before they gave it to us, and they did more work after we finished,” he said. “[Those imperfections] will be less of an issue in the final product. But while we were working on the files, the idea was to stay as close to the original [files] as possible.”
In a way, the real challenge wasn’t the film’s condition, but its style of filmmaking — specifically, the more leisurely editorial sensibility of Hollywood’s Golden Age means there are fewer edits, and viewers have more time to examine each shot. “On a film this old, the cuts are really long compared to newer films,” Jones said. “20 percent of the shots in this film were over 1000 frames long. That definitely created a challenge creatively, because viewers have more time to let their eyes go around the frame. And on a technical level, it creates data management issues as you transfer files within a location and worldwide because the shot files become heavier with so many frames and so much roto work. Think of the dancing Munchkins, with their costumes, and all the leaves on the trees, and the backgrounds of the sets. A lot of files have to be managed as one asset.”
“To give you some ballpark numbers, a 100-minute movie today is between 800 and 2,200 shots,” explained Del Conte. “Wizard was just about 650. It affected how our roto and paint teams would approach the work. We really adjusted our workflow to compensate for so many long shots.”
Once disparity (what we see as depth) between objects is created, stereographers then assign a convergence point in the frame. This point acts as your eye’s reference point for where the screen is, determining which objects look nearer than the screen, or farther. Images courtesy Prime Focus.
Among the biggest challenges on The Wizard of Oz were the shots with dancing Munchkins, which featured anywhere from 50 to 100 extras spinning around (with their limbs moving toward and away from the camera repeatedly) amongst the film’s detailed foliage and other set dressing. Accuracy was a requirement, especially in close-up shots depicting iconic characters like Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion. “We had to be very accurate with the sculpting,” Jones said. “We don’t do any automated processes. The more you automate 3D, the worse it looks. So we really put a lot of focus on character sculpting – making sure it’s accurate and that you’re getting the same detail you would if you shot it. And getting that in shots that are more than 1000 frames long, the accuracy has to go way up.”
Accuracy may be the best policy, but it’s not without its own dilemmas. What about those painted backgrounds, for instance, which only gave the illusion of depth on set? “We had to decide what to do with the painted backgrounds,” Jones said. “Do we keep those flat, or do we extend those in depth? We tried a lot of different looks, and we ended up putting some depth in the background. But we’re not trying to sell that it’s not a painted wall. It’s a really cool look.”
They also thought about the film’s famous transition from monochrome to color, wondering if it would be appropriate to keep the Kansas sequences flat, only opening up the stereo depth for the section of the film set in Oz. It didn’t work, in part because the film’s opening scenes just took up too much time. So the View-D team simply employed the stereo effects more subtly in the black-and-white segments. “As soon as we open the door [into Oz], it’s pretty much the maximum amount of stereo,” Jones said. “She steps into a big world. It’s not going from completely flat to stereo, but it’s the same effect the filmmakers were originally going for.”
As far as takeaways from the project, Jones and Del Conte both called it a lesson in how good the results of stereo conversion can be when the artists involved have the time to plan and execute it properly. “When Warner Bros. released Clash of the Titans, it was the first full-length conversion,” he said. “Designing the depth and trying out new looks for The Wizard of Oz, we spent about 10 weeks on that alone. That’s about the same amount of time we spent on the entire Clash of the Titans project. If you put more time into the design of the film, you’ll get a better product. That’s something we’ve seen clients start to appreciate more. It allows you to make decisions that support the story instead of just taking something in 2D and making it 3D.”
“We at Prime Focus knew that this show, a nostalgic library title, had to be our best quality work and something to be proud of,” Del Conte said. “Going into the theater and seeing this film in 3D, whether it’s your first time or your 50th time with The Wizard of Oz, it’s going to be a new experience. And in IMAX? It’s great. This is a chance for people to enter the world of Oz in a way that’s never happened before.”
Check out The Judy Room’s Spotlight on The Wizard of Oz here.
Thanks to you all your “publicity” posts for the August 1939 “Oz” premiere, I broke down this Saturday and watched my Blu Ray of the film. Then, I watched it AGAIN on Sunday!! Rare for me, due to my huge catalogue of all kinds of films. But your posts kept whetting my appetite for it.
As for your post today, I was at first very against the 3D processing of such a classic (as it is, I abhor colorization of everything – including CBS’ occasional broadcasts of “I Love Lucy” in “color.” Yuk!) But my friends – and my mom, who was FOUR when “Oz” first came out – talked me into going with them. I wound enjoying most of it, although some scenes just looked silly. (including Aunt Em, sitting on my LAP at the very end of Judy’s close-up in her bed). I will probably see it in 3D one more time next year (for the 80th anniversary), but I don’t own – and don’t plan to purchase – a 3D TV. I agree with most critics, that the 3D version is fun for today’s theatres, but the 3D version in no way “improves” the film.
Your thoughts on the 3D “Wizard of Oz?” Do you own it in 3D?
I enjoyed the 3D version much more than I thought I would. I went into it thinking, “This is either going to be really great or really bad!” I’m glad that they did such a great job with it and didn’t get too bimmicky. It was a fun experience but then again, watching the film on the big screen is always a treat. I have the 3D disc but don’t have a 3D player or TV. The disc came as a package with the other formats. If I ever have 3D capability I’ll be able to watch it. But I’m not replacing my player or TV just for the one film. 🙂
Anyway, I enjoyed the 3D version very much.