Judy Garland: A Biography

by Anne Edwards

  Mr. Telle Saaek, the reception manager, stood behind the dark mahogany desk. He had been assigned by Eriksen the job of personally seeing to Judy’s needs while she was to be a guest of the hotel. The lobby, though quite elegant with its mahogany-paneled walls, its portraits of rather grand Danish monarchs, and its antique furnishings, is narrow and small, with only a series of glass windows dividing it from its exclusive lobby restaurant. This area was filled with press and photographers, about forty-five strong. Telle Saaek could not help noticing how “like a small broken bird” Judy looked as Eriksen and Deans guided her to the elevator, promising the press that she would greet them a short time later in her suite.

  A little less than a half an hour had passed when a call came down to send the press up, along with a supply of liquor and food. The reporters were pleasantly surprised, having feared she might not meet them at all, but once they were upstairs, the suspicions gathered momentum. They had all heard rumors that her Swedish concert had been cancelled because she had been too drunk to appear. Actually she had been very ill and had appeared extremely confused, distracted because of the filming or perhaps because of the pills.

  For three hours Judy remained secluded in the bedroom while the reporters packed into the living room of the suite. Deans made sure their glasses were kept full and came out from time to time to assure them that Mrs. Deans would join them as soon as possible.

  When she finally appeared, she looked fresh, but incredibly fragile—thinner, weaker than anyone had expected. She hung on to Deans’s arm and sat down on the one couch in the room—Deans on one side of her, Johnnie Ray on the other. She wore a glittering black jump suit and held a vodka and pineapple juice in her hand, sipping it slowly, absently, as she smiled radiantly and answered questions. Her sense of humor and wit kept the spirits in the room high. She constantly deferred to Deans or brought him into the conversation. She referred to herself throughout as Mrs. Deans.

  The newspapers were kind to her, but there was no denying her delicate appearance and the cancelled performance in Sweden just before her coming to Copenhagen, so they were also expectantly pessimistic, and feared she might not be able to carry through on her commitment to appear at the Falkoner Centret Theatre on the twenty-fifth of March. Mr. Blicher-Hansen, general manager of the theater, was equally concerned, as eleven hundred seats had been sold for a record 125 kroner (about $18) a seat—a price only one other artist, Maria Callas, commanded, although many international stars had appeared at the theater in its short ten-year history. But he was a good deal more concerned about the star herself.

  Mr. Blicher-Hansen arrived at the Kong Frederik to greet Judy just before the press left. The press conference had been too great an ordeal for her and she had faded quickly, looking to Mr. Blicher-Hansen, as she had to Telle Saaek, “like a sick bird, broken and unable to fly.”

  By now, Stivell had set up a film crew, which was in action photographing Judy in the suite. Deans was involved in the crew’s activities, much to Mr. Blicher-Hansen’s consternation, as he was immediately awed by the lack of protection and care being given Judy and the attention being extended to the film people.

  By the next day, Judy had grown irritable and nervous. She was also more and more upset about Stivell and the filming. She was paranoid about it, certain the suite was bugged and that Stivell had installed secret cameras in the walls. Hans Eriksen had made arrangements for Telle Saaek to look after Judy and make sure she was not left alone too long, as Deans often went out with Stivell on various errands pertaining first to the concert, then to some interviews and recordings. One glance at Judy, and Eriksen knew she was in frail health. A conversation confirmed his fears that she was on a quantity of pills and at times not in control of her senses. It became a sixteen-hour-a-day job for Telle Saaek—and could have been around the clock if he could have taken the strain. Neither of the men minded ministering to Judy’s needs. Both of them agreed that “she was warm, intensely feminine, terrified of being alone and a very, very sick lady.” Neither of them felt she had long to live—in fact, could not see how she would even survive the rigors of the concert.

  Telle Saaek called her room when he knew she was alone every hour or so and if she did not reply, sent a chambermaid to check the suite. Eriksen had food sent to her suite (she never ordered anything herself), but the trays were always left untouched. Twice alerted by Eriksen’s concern, the hotel doctor was called to her suite, but Judy claimed all she needed was more Ritalin. The doctor refused to give it to her.

  The concert was scheduled for the evening of March 25, a Saturday night just two days after Judy’s arrival. One of Copenhagen’s leading radio personalities, Hans Vangkilde, had been trying since Judy’s arrival to obtain an interview with her for one of his programs, but had been unsuccessful. However, Hans had spent two years in New York City teaching in an American college and during that time had become friendly with Margaret Hamilton. Hans had an autographed picture of Miss Hamilton with a personal inscription that had been presented to his children; he sent this to Judy’s room. That seemed to do the trick. With Judy desperate for an ally, a friend, no matter how remote, of the “dear witch” seemed a likely candidate.

  From that point in her Copenhagen stay, Judy was to turn to Hans Vangkilde whenever she was in need of friendship—or simply in need. It is not difficult to understand why, for the man has a much-lived, comfortable quality about him. He is a solidly built man, somewhat shaggy, who wears rough tweeds that have the newness off them. A broad face is lighted up by bright blue eyes. His English is fluent, but relaxed. There is a strong dash of Mr. Chips about him—but Chips when he was a young man. Judy agreed to tape the interview with Deans in their suite. She seemed happy as she asked Deans’s opinion about everything, including him in all discussions. She held his hand, leaned against him, and kept referring to him as “my man” or “my husband” as he hovered close by, making flip side remarks. There was an immediate empathy between Judy and Vangkilde, and the interview became a very personal and honest discussion between the two.

  “I’ve worked very hard, you know,” she confided to him, “and I’ve planted some kind of—I’ve been lucky enough, I guess, to plant a star—and then people wanted to either get in the act or else they wanted to rob me emotionally or financially, whatever. And then walk away and it’s always lonely.”

  Her voice on the existing tape has an unfamiliar sound to it. The throb is there, but it is harder, more brittle, a dried branch that could crack very easily under the slightest pressure. “You’re either freezing at the top or lonely, or you’re only surrounded by people who are not truthful and who are using you,” she continued. “And if you’re unaware as I am, and you’re a woman, it could get pretty rough sometimes....”

  She was silent for a few moments,

  “You don’t always keep on the top,” she began again. “My life, my career has been like a roller coaster. I’ve either been an enormous success or just a down-and-out failure, which is silly because everybody always asks me, ’How does it feel to make a comeback?’ And I don’t know where I’ve been! I haven’t been away.” She paused, and Vangkilde waited. “It’s lonely and cold on the top ... lonely and cold,” she said very quietly.

  Stivell and his crew were much in evidence, and there was a constant flow of people in to and out of the suite. Judy grew increasingly paranoid about it, even though Deans assured her that it was all right and a necessary evil, and that the money they would make from the film distribution would do wonders for their empty pockets. There was a lot of noise in Suite 508509, which was on the other side of Room 510, the room Judy was using for storage. She called Hans Jorgen Eriksen and told him they were filming her from that room and that they had hidden cameras. Eriksen attempted to reason with her, even telling her the names of the hotel guests who had that suite. Finally, when nothing else worked, he agreed to leave that suite empty and in her name when the current occupants left, which they were planning to do that same day—a
promise he kept.

  By that night, owing to an excessively heavy intake of Ritalin, she had prematurely exhausted her supply. Deans agreed to see what he could do about obtaining some. He spoke to some of the bellboys, finally hitting on one who knew where he could get the pills at that hour. The bellboy took him to a discotheque, the kind of place where the clientele are well aware of what is going on—who smokes grass, who takes pills, who takes ups and who takes downs. The bellboy made a connection and someone came up with a hundred pills, for which Deans paid $100. But when he got back to the hotel, Judy and he had a rather violent quarrel. Angered, Deans refused to give her the pills. The night was nearly over. It was to be a cold, gray day. The radio was playing softly by her bed. The light in the hallway was on. Deans sat by her side in the unfamiliar bedroom, and finally the sleeping pills she had taken, without the ups to counteract them, took effect.

  The next day she increased the intake of her pills alarmingly and was drinking heavily, something she had not done for many years. She kept insisting Deans not leave her alone, but that was impossible in view of the fact that he was acting as her manager and arrangements had to be made for the concert. The night before her concert, Deans left her in the suite for several hours. Telle Saaek was on duty and Hans Jorgen Eriksen alerted. She called down to Telle several times in the first hour to ask him where her husband had gone. Saaek told her the truth: that Deans had left the hotel with an associate with word that he would return in a matter of three or four hours. A half hour later, Judy rang again from room 511 (the sitting room) and asked Saaek to ring 512. Saaek questioned this, explaining that 512 was her own bedroom. “I just want to make sure the telephone will ring in there,” she insisted. Saaek did as she asked, and she picked up the receiver in her bedroom and began a long conversation with him. “You don’t think my husband has left me?” she asked. “You do think he’ll come back?” Saaek kept reassuring her that Deans would only be away a few hours, that he would return shortly. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” she pleaded.

  A half hour later she called again and said she had to speak to Hans Vangkilde. Vangkilde could not be reached, being away in the country. Saaek rang Eriksen, and Eriksen went up immediately to Judy’s suite. He found her curled up in the corner of the settee, “looking like a frail and excessively small child and crying.” She seemed thankful to see Eriksen. He talked to her quietly, assuring her, soothing her, offering to order her some food, sitting down on the settee beside her. A family man himself, he felt as if she were a small child who had had a bad nightmare and was afraid to stay alone, afraid of the dark. “I think I’m going mad,” she cried, and put her head down on his lap, sobbing there. Eriksen was too frightened to move.

  Finally, she appeared calmer, the sobs had stopped, and her body was still. She answered his questions with logic and promised to go into her bedroom and lie down. He called a chambermaid, who helped her into the bed, and then rang the doctor. Again she begged him for pills but he refused. She showed him an empty bottle of sleeping-tablets. That eased his mind, and Eriksen and the chambermaid left her alone, Eriksen remaining on duty in the lobby until Deans returned.

  Before Deans left the hotel for a meeting the next day, he asked Saaek again to stay with Judy. According to Saaek, she was in better spirits and said she would like to go shopping for a piece of Royal Copenhagen china to give to Deans as a gift. Saaek agreed to go with her. He noticed with increasing fear that she was even weaker than the previous day, having to sit down in the lobby before being able to go out on the street (the porcelain shop was just down the road from the hotel). As she sat there, an American woman with a small child recognized Judy. “There’s Dorothy,” she announced. Judy was happy about this incident. She signed an autograph and then joined Saaek, leaning heavily on him as they left the hotel. Saaek reports she was “frighteningly fragile.”

  In the porcelain shop the weakness overcame her again, and she sat down as the salesgirl brought pieces over to her. She finally selected a large plate that cost $200, charged it to her hotel bill, and left.

  Saaek, Eriksen, Blicher-Hansen, Vangkilde—none of these men could see how “this weak, frail lady could appear at the concert,” much less give a professional performance. The concert was set up so that Johnnie Ray had the first half to himself. Then there would be an intermission, after which Judy was to appear, do a duet of “Am I Blue?” with Ray, and then continue alone for the last half, or about sixty minutes.

  By the end of the first half, Judy had not yet appeared at the theater. Blicher-Hansen rang her suite and spoke to Deans. He promised she would be there in the time it took to drive (about ten minutes); but in his own mind, Blicher-Hansen was already planning to cancel the performance. Ten minutes later, Judy appeared in a loose red chiffon dress with ostrich feathers at its hemline. The dress was a poor choice, having a sad, limp look and falling sharply over her scarecrow body, revealing her emaciated chest and arms and shoulders.

  She stood center stage in that huge auditorium, Johnnie beside her for support, and smiled fondly at the audience. “We love you, Judy,” they screamed at her. She and Johnnie sang “Am I Blue?” both embarrassingly off-key. They cheered her on. A stool was placed center stage, Ray leaving her alone as she sat down, the spotlight framing only her face. She called Deans out on the stage, introducing him and kissing him—a rather awkward moment for the reserved Danes, who found this in poor taste. “I may never go home,” she called out to the enthusiastic, loving audience, and sang her encores. People cried when she finally sat down at the edge of the stage, a small heap of bone and red chiffon, her great, warm, deep brown eyes seeing all, seeing nothing, seeming to still belong to Dorothy. If she had been off-key during her performance, her love, her personality, her very giving seemed enough to her audience. They stood up and cheered, cried, and screamed as Blicher-Hansen came onstage and presented her with a bouquet once again in the shape and hue of a rainbow. He left her standing there alone.

  “Good night,” she screamed back at them. “I love you very much”—and then she was gone.

  Except in one paper, the reviews were good, some of the best she had received in a long while. The Politek wrote: “When Judy sang ’Over the Rainbow/ it was as if she sang it for the first time in her life, innocent and sweet. It was so beautiful. We cried. Everybody in the theater stood up and cheered.”

  There was no doubting the concert had been a great victory.

  Ray left the next morning, as did Arne Stivell, but the film unit remained. There were now great problems between Stivell and Deans. Deans made arrangements that day to hear the tapes from the concert. The technicians had goofed and had brought only monaural equipment from Radio Denmark. No one knew, of course, that this would be Judy’s last concert ever, but Deans felt Judy should have been recorded in stereo.

  The copy of the tape and the check from the concert had already been sent to Sweden and Stivell’s company, Music Artists of Europe AB, at his request. Enraged, Deans managed to get Radio Denmark to stop the payment on the check until he could get things straightened out. He then came to the decision that he would have to go to Stockholm himself, as Stivell had already returned.

  The problem was Judy. She could not go to Stockholm, nor could she return to London by herself. In the end, Deans sent most of their baggage back to London by train with the same young man he had been friendly with at the Kong Frederik and gave him the keys to open the house and get it ready for them; he arranged for Judy to remain in Copenhagen. Not alone, of course—that was impossible—so he called upon Hans Vangkilde, who, after speaking with his wife, offered to bring Judy to their home in the country. Accepting this generous offer, Deans then departed for Stockholm.

  Vangkilde had planned to take his wife and Judy out for dinner, but just a glance at Judy and he knew this was inadvisable. Judy was on the brink. He had seen her sick and disturbed, stoned and confused—all in the short time they had known each other. This was different. She looked “like a sl
ender bough, snapped in two and ready to break,” and “she had the look of death camps, but her eyes—such beautiful eyes, warm and brown and childish, the whites clear and dazzling—almost feverish.” Hans had been a correspondent and had had to cover labor camps and concentration camps in his time, and also mental homes. He claims it was the image of these last inmates that haunted him now.

  He drove Judy to his home in the country, where his wife, Grethe, their four children, and their huge collie dog, Eddie (who possessed the curiosity of one blue eye and one brown eye), waited. Grethe felt the same instinct as her husband had about Judy and before she prepared dinner called over a friend of hers to lighten the gathering and, at the same time, rang their doctor, who lived nearby, to make sure he would be home during the night in case they should need him.

  Grethe’s friend arrived and entertained Judy as Grethe prepared dinner. The four children, who speak English, having spent time in the States when Hans had taught there, gathered around Judy at her request, and the dog lay down at her feet. She was filled with instant empathy for Eddie, the collie, stroking and talking to him from time to time. As the children played a game on the floor, she watched them, and after a time, without any request—as though singing to herself—she began singing “Over the Rainbow.” The voice was thin and small—the end, the very end of a distant echo.

  Grethe served dinner, but Judy didn’t touch her food. She was now drinking vodka and juice. They attempted to coax her to eat, but to no avail. She sat, curled up in the large armchair in the Vangkildes’ new den, facing the fireplace, looking about ten years old.

  “Everyone is trying to use me,” she told Grethe. “There’s no one I can trust. They are spying on me at the hotel. They even have a hole in the bathroom wall and have a camera in it taking pictures of me when I take a bath.”