Posted by “[Judy] proved again that she is as winning an actress as she is a singer, that she still has a flair for high comedy and that she is skilled in squeezing the most from her lines.” – Herbert Cohn on “The Harvey Girls,” 1946
January 25, 1931: This article in the “Los Angeles Times” provided information about Maurice L. Kussell’s “Stars of Tomorrow” all kids show and the rehearsals beginning in the next two weeks. An interesting tidbit is that the net profits from the shows were to be divided among the children who participated. Judy and her sisters, as “The Gumm Sisters,” were a part of the show which premiered on July 10, 1931.
January 25, 1936: Judy was considered a “Baby Nora Hayes” for her adult-sized talents., which is how MGM was marketing her during these early months at the studio. She hadn’t yet made a film. True to form for this time, the blurb shaved a year and a half off of Judy’s real age (13 pushing 14).
January 25, 1938: The premiere of Everybody Sing in Miami, Florida, the night before was a success. Eddie Cohen reviewed the film for the “Miami News” and noted Judy’s ability as an actress. He also rightly predicted that Judy would have greater success because “she sings our language.”
When M-G-M let Deanna Durbin slip through their fingers somebody on the lot must have been sore. We can just hear him bellowing, “Alright, find me another!” Judy Garland is the result. While Durbin is a singer who happens to be an actress, Garland is an actress who happens to be a singer, and in the long run, it is our belief, M-G-M has got something that will even spell greater “boxoffice” than Durbin, because little Judy’s appeal is to the masses. She sings our language when she “swings” out and she is thoroughly human at the same time.
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Pages on Everybody Sing here.
January 25, 1938: Judy posed for these teen fashion photos while in Miami, Florida, for the world premiere of Everybody Sing (which took place the night before). These photos might have been taken on the 26th or 27th. The third photo was taken after Judy returned to MGM. She’s seen wearing the same outfit she modeled in Miami, this time with her beloved German Shephard.
January 25, 1941: This little blurb appeared in various newspapers around the country, including the Pittsburg Sun, promoting MGM’s Ziegfeld Girl which was still in production.
Check out The Judy Room’s Spotlight on Ziegfeld Girl here.
January 25, 1942: This uncredited “review” published in the local paper in Munster, Indiana, didn’t care much for Judy’s Decca recording of “(Can This Be) The End of the Rainbow?” but did like her version of “Blues in the Night.”
Listen to “(Can This Be) The End of the Rainbow?” here:
Listen to “Blues in the Night” here:
Listen to the alternate take of “Blues in the Night” here:
Check out The Judy Garland Online Discography’s Decca Records Section for more about all of Judy’s Decca recordings.
January 25, 1943: Judy was in the middle of filming on Girl Crazy when she began rehearsals on this date for the newly revised finale of Presenting Lily Mars.
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Pages on Girl Crazy here.
Check out The Judy Room’s Spotlight on Presenting Lily Mars here.
January 25, 1944: Judy and Tom Drake filmed the scene in Meet Me In St. Louis in which Tom’s character (boy next door John Truitt) tells Judy (Esther Smith) he can’t make it to the Christmas Ball because his tuxedo’s locked up in the tailor’s shop (“I Hate Basketball!”).
Included here are the Daily Music Reports of the May 26, 1944, recording session which includes the underscoring for this scene. It was a long session, taking up three pages!
Check out The Judy Room’s Spotlight on Meet Me In St. Louis here.
January 25, 1945: The Harvey Girls continued with scenes on the “Interior Harvey House” set. Time called: 10 a.m.; Judy arrived at 11:15 a.m.; dismissed at 5:10 p.m.
Later that evening, The Clock had its first preview at the Academy Theater in the Inglewood district of Los Angeles.
Also on this date, Virginia O’Brien pre-recorded “The Wild, Wild West” with Roger Edens at the piano. The orchestra was added later.
Listen to Take 8 of “The Wild, Wild West” here:
Listen to the same take with the orchestra added here:
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Pages on The Harvey Girls here.
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Pages on The Clock here.
January 25, 1946: This review of The Harvey Girls by Herbert Cohn was published in the “Brooklyn Daily Eagle.” Cohn didn’t care for the film much but did give praise to Judy and her talents, noting her ability to rise above what he saw as second-rate material.
‘Harvey Girls’ Arrives at Capitol
By Herbert Cohn
Judy Garland came back to the Capitol Theater’s screen yesterday with “The Harvey Girls.” She brought with her, in addition to a flock of voluptuous Harvey Restaurant waitresses, costumed in the best M-G-M tradition, a score by Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren including the hit tune, “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.” Since most of the Mercer-Warren music is not up to the bar of that catchy little jingle, Miss Garland soon found herself largely alone in a great big Technicolor movie. The going was rugged during most of the 104 minutes.
Judy tried hard to put over her show. She packed all of her charm – and there was a lot left over from her gayer romp, “Meet Me in St Louis” – into each of her scenes. She proved again that she is as winning an actress as she is a singer, that she still has a flair for high comedy and that she is skilled in squeezing the most from her lines. That “The Harvey Girls” turned out yesterday to be less than a first-class musical was not her fault.
The fault lay with eight other people, each of whom had a hand in fashioning the script. They gave her little aid. They were amazingly short of gags and of comedy situations, ingredients that usually keep musicals alive between routines. All they offered as the story of Fred Harvey’s restaurant at Sandrock, New Mexico, along the right-of-way of the Santa Fe Line in the Lawless era of the West. Despite lavish color, the earnestness of the star and the lilt of a sure-fire song to bolster them, the eight authors didn’t give enough.
Ray Bolger gave Miss Garland a helpful assist with some of his weak-kneed comedy dancing. Virgin O’Brien helped out with customary dead-pan singing to make “The Wild, While West” and “Great Big World” seem to be better musical-comedy music than it is. And Director George Sidney contributed a hair-pulling session between the Harvey Girls and John Hodiak’s neighboring Alhambra Cafe Girls in additional to a crackling fire scene for a climax. “The Harvey Girls,” nevertheless, remained something less than beguiling.
Check out The Judy Room’s Filmography Pages on The Harvey Girls here.
Herald photo provided by Kim Lundgreen. Thanks, Kim!
January 25, 1947: This four-page ad, including the full-color two-page foldout, was printed in the “Motion Picture Herald” trade magazine.
Check out The Judy Room’s Spotlight on Till The Clouds Roll By here.
January 25, 1948: Words and Music
January 25, 1954: A Star Is Born filming continued on the “Interior Tunnel Under Stage” set. Time started: 11 a.m.; finished: 6:05 p.m.
Check out The Judy Room’s Spotlight on A Star Is Born here.
January 25, 1960, & 1962: Garland fans were treated to the broadcasts of two of her films. The local station in Minneapolis, Minnesota, aired Girl Crazy, and a local station in Chicago aired In The Good Old Summertime.
This was long before home media. In order to see the films starring their favorite old Hollywood stars, movie fans had to wait for local stations to broadcast them. Fans would write to stations and make requests in the hope that the stations would be able to rent the films. These were usually shown on “The Late Show” late at night or in the early hours of the morning. That resulted in some very tired fans at work the next day! Sometimes, local stations would broadcast them as filler in the middle of the day. That resulted in some fans calling into work sick. The only other way to see these was if one lived in the right areas, local film festivals. The “revolution” of the home video market in the early 1980s cannot be underestimated. No one could have dreamed about today’s world of high-definition discs and streaming. We’re lucky now!
January 25, 1964: Here are two blurbs side by side that show a “before and after” of Judy. First the notice about The Wizard of Oz and the annual showing the next night and the sad news about the cancelation of Judy’s current series, “The Judy Garland Show.”
Check out The Judy Room’s Spotlight on The Wizard of Oz here.
I’m loving the photo of Judy with Tom Drake. They had chemistry, but his real appeal escaped me until later in life. Now I think he’s a heart-throb. And I even think the kid who played Reuben in “Child is Waiting” is like a miniature Tom Drake!
That’s an interesting observation. I hadn’t noticed that about the kid in ACIW.
Did anyone notice Judy appears to be wearing a makeup smock over her dress in the ASIB shot?
You have a good eye. Must be taken during rehearsals. Judy wears a blue coat with a different collar in the film.