by Sid Luft
I didn’t say, “Get out, come live with me.” Instead, we returned to our safe, dark booth at the Villa Nova to eat, drink, and talk. A naturally exuberant personality, Judy enjoyed telling stories, comic observations. She’d tell me “safe” tales of her childhood. One of them concerned her first experience performing onstage. The anecdote has been referred to in other books, but the way she told it when she recorded the incident years later was very close to what I remembered her telling me at the Villa Nova:
I suffered awful ear infections, one after the other from the day I was born. They didn’t have any kind of medicine, miracle drugs, so they would simply take me to the hospital or the doctor’s office. I’d be strapped to a table and have my ears lanced. And then I’d be smacked onto the couch at my house after being brought home the same day, and with a pair of my father’s socks full of hot salt draped over both ears. I looked very much like a cocker spaniel. I couldn’t hear much of anything and also I didn’t have an awful lot to say, because nobody said anything to me. I was actually silent until my [maternal] grandmother put me onstage . . .
[My grandmother’s] black Irish side got awfully angry at my mother for some reason and decided to make a dress for this orphan called Frances who had not uttered one word, not said, “Mama,” “Dada,” or anything else. My grandmother got so damn mad at her daughter she made me a fancy white net dress and bought me a pair of black patent leather shoes, gave me a little bell, and without an orchestration, without anyone to sing with, she threw me onto my father’s stage.
I’d been sitting on my grandmother’s lap in the audience, and my two sisters were on the stage performing; they were old pros by then. They’d been appearing at the New Grand for years. And, my grandmother said, “Go on baby, go up on the stage.” I rushed to my mother in the pit, and she said not tonight, next week. I ignored her and went onstage [interrupting my sisters]. All I did was run around in circles with a dinner bell singing “Jingle Bells.” Everybody started applauding. I liked it and I stayed there singing one chorus after the other. My mother was howling with laughter as she kept playing [piano]. My father was in the wings saying, “Come on, baby, you get off.” I couldn’t hear my father. I’m so pleased that the first words from my guts and my head and my heart [“Jingle Bells”] was as big then as it is today.
I guess I fell in love with the lights, and the music and the whole thing and anyway they couldn’t get me off. My father finally came out and got me over his shoulder as I rang the bell, still singing “Jingle Bells” into the wings. I was a big hit, so we became the Gumm Sisters.
It was the first communication I had ever known with people. My first communication was with an audience that approved of me—that’s why I sang seventeen choruses.
At two in the morning the manager of the Villa Nova would lock the door; in this way Judy and I remained opposite one another in our private, padded world. We laughed a lot and she continued to be interested in my life, what I had to say, my bullshit. In this way she opened up to me too, and we began to share our lives near the jukebox at the Villa Nova. Judy indicated she had tax problems, but the word “broke” never entered the conversation. When she described her hospitalization it was as though she’d been making a movie, visiting crippled children and servicemen.
Judy was extremely knowledgeable about the making of films, producing, and directing, but it wasn’t in her mind to take on those responsibilities. Women just didn’t. There was another factor, too: Judy’s notions of herself as a femme fatale, and as a woman who was dependent on men, were essential to her romantic self-image.
I’d go back to my apartment and think, do I want to get involved? Judy and Vincente’s marriage was rocky. She was looking for romance. I doubted she would break away from Vincente without a replacement. As much as I was attracted to Judy, I reminded myself: here was another self-involved actress. I wanted to make love to Judy, but I was reluctant to act on the impulse. I did not want to fall in love with a married woman; it seemed chancy. Chances were for horses. I figured I could have an affair with Judy if I wasn’t actually in love with her. (I’d find a way.)
Judy was excited by our assignations, and I willingly went along with the game. For people who were by nature social and extroverted, we were not experiencing any pangs of confinement at the Villa Nova, nor in the comfortable seats of my Cadillac, where we explored one another’s passion without “going all the way.” And that was the mood, a kind of regressive teenage hot date. Judy sneaking out of the house—shades of the Stone Canyon days, when her mother worried if she’d come home in time to be properly rested for the studio the next day. A page from one of those old MGM movies I never went to.
One night for a change of pace we drove out to Malibu. This time when I went to pick her up, I’d been surprised to find Judy waiting for me outside the house. I didn’t have to signal. She was wearing a sort of mandarin-style white sharkskin jacket and pedal pushers; her hair, which was rapidly growing in, was tied up in a bandanna. Her eyes flashed more black than brown that evening. The delicate bones and face that seemed so innocent, except for the mysterious eyes, evoked a kind of overly excited response in me.
There was a bistro on the beach overlooking the ocean—nothing but one blue beam indoors and the light of the silvery moon on the sand. Here the favorite tune on the jukebox was Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa.” Judy reminisced about our introduction at the Hillcrest bowling alley in Beverly Hills.
“You were conceited, darling,” she teased.
“I think it was the RCAF training, baby. Maybe I felt different from everyone. I was very sure of myself.”
“You were conceited.”
I thought perhaps I was meant to have made a bigger fuss over her. “Did you like me anyhow?”
“It’s not good to be conceited, darling.” She was not going to let it go.
I was thinking that night I would take her back to my apartment on Wilshire Boulevard. We’d been in each other’s arms for nights without making love. It was time. Driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, the moonlight paving our way, the dark smooth of the ocean reflecting a diamond light here and there, we seemed once again alone on the earth, forgotten lovers.
I was to discover just how different Judy was from other women. She was uninhibited, giving herself over to her passions so completely. She said she had not been with Vincente sexually for some months, and I believed her. I was a little scared by the intensity of my reactions. If I’d been hesitant in New York, here I had my privacy, I was on home turf. Judy was not going to be stared at by the concierge at a hotel.
Still, I had my own reasons for remaining somewhat discreet. Lynn was agitating for more child care support, and she had tough lawyers. My association with Judy, especially if we lived together, would be like waving a red flag at a bull. The world, including the press, assumed Judy Garland to be very rich. Didn’t she build her own home on Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air when she was only fifteen? She must be a millionaire ten times over!
So there was no romancing at the Mocambo high in the hills, no delicious dinners at La Rue’s, and definitely not Romanoff’s. We took a certain devilish delight in speculating on what Freddie Finklehoffe’s reaction might be to our affair. Judy had a kind of repartee going with the writer throughout her years at MGM, and it was a coincidence that he and I were good friends. I said Fred was a clown. She interpreted that negatively. I reassured her he was a nice clown.
“I’m a clown,” she insisted.
“No. You’re a little minstrel girl.”
Suddenly, Judy said, “I know who you are.”
“Who?”
“The knight in shining armor, who likes to go to the racetrack.”
“Wrong. I’m the mystery man.”
Her eyes caught mine. “That’s good.”
“. . . who likes to go to the track,” I tagged on.
Judy spoke of David Rose, her first husband, as someone who basically wasn’t focused on her needs; he preferred his h
obbies. She discussed her current husband as a problem drinker who was dangerous when he drank. She would imitate Vincente, his style of smoking. He was a chain smoker. Here was this seductive, delicious woman, and her husbands were unappreciative—unaware of her emotional needs. I was sympathetic.
She talked about how Vincente was powerless to help her at MGM; he was under contract to the same studio, his career ascending as Judy’s had reached its peak. According to Judy, Vincente was not capable of being a protector or a husband in the deepest sense. It was a conflict of interest. In fact, his career had already suffered when she decided she didn’t want him to direct her in Easter Parade. He was temporarily suspended from the studio and Chuck Walters replaced him. I doubt whether Vincente ever forgave her for that. He lived to work. But he wasn’t willing to let her go easily; he was in love with her.
In a sense Judy took a risk by moving out of Evanview, which she did the day after we made love so completely. Dottie Ponedel wrote in her unpublished manuscript that early in her marriage, Judy had desired a place of residence away from Vincente. She claimed pressures added up to the need for a hideaway in town. And she got a psychiatrist to back her up. Dottie said, “Kate Hepburn saw a house for rent at $1,100 a month. We went up to see it, and Judy fell in love. ‘This is for me!’ 10000 Sunset was a charming house, rather rustic with a large fireplace. Judy imagined candlelight, the smell of wildflowers, and ‘as many highballs as I want.’”
It was a cozy, secure retreat with an unhampered view of the hills. According to Dottie, Judy had talked Vincente into allowing her to do this because in the back of her mind she had a secret yen for Frank Sinatra. She loved his voice and his jokes. And Frank admired Judy; he was a faithful friend. Dottie said, “We were there one week, no Frank, and no telephone calls.” As much as Judy was relaxed in the new environment away from responsibilities, her fantasy life was yet to be satisfied. She had also looked to others to take care of her professional interests, such as Carlton Alsop, who as her manager had stood up to Louis B. Mayer. Judy came to understand a personal manager could do that better than an agency, or a company man like Vincente.
And now she was moving out of Evanview and into the Beverly Hills Hotel—for me. I was flattered that Judy was so interested, but did she think I could fulfill her personal fantasies like Frank and her career needs like Alsop? I was, in fact, a relief for her. What’s more, I thought I had the qualifications to be a success in her industry, even without long-term experience. The two films I produced after my split with Lynn were unimportant ones, but they had earned a profit. I wasn’t selling insurance; I was putting together another film, a more ambitious project, for more money. Still, at thirty-four I was in the middle of my second divorce. I questioned my ability to maintain a sound marriage.
The more we got into it, the more I was inwardly taken off balance. What the fuck was I doing? Judy provided a kind of edge, an excitement, but she had a reputation for instability. Then I’d reflect on the woman I was spending time with, who was so entirely loving, giving, and wholesome. I’d think about the near two decades of work that she’d been able to put out, the kind of profits she’d earned for MGM, and I’d think, how unstable could she be? Judy seemed a powerhouse.
Hollywood was a village of stars and their satellites, and not much more. The ocean was clean and flowers bloomed year round, but there was always smog. Whenever I took a plane up I could see the dust bowl covering Los Angeles. Back on the ground it felt like living in some kind of paradise. Especially with Judy. With Judy ensconced in the Beverly Hills Hotel, we were no longer playing fugitives, but we stayed close to the Villa Nova, the beach, my apartment, and a new place, an inn at the end of Sunset Boulevard, near the ocean at the Pacific Coast Highway, where we needed a flashlight to eat.
Events were moving in an unpredictable way. I never thought I’d see Judy every night, which is what I was doing, or that I would forget all other women, which I did. Judy was busy; she had begun taking meetings with her agent Abe Lastfogel, president of the William Morris Agency. I was looking after my stable, Walfarms, managing what land I owned, and of course working on Man o’ War. I still didn’t say “We should be together.”
It was an adventure for Judy to go with me to the Tropicana Motel in Hollywood. In the early ’50s the Tropicana was extremely square: the night manager was from Oklahoma and twenty-six dollars bought a very nice space, with anonymity. In the morning, Judy would call Liza and Pearl, the housekeeper. And while she put on her makeup I’d send out for breakfast. Pancakes, maple syrup, bacon, eggs, a huge container of fresh orange juice. Judy’s favorite meal.
“Darling,” she announced one morning over coffee, “I want to tell you why I’m a black Irish witch.” She launched into an account of her heritage: her father, Frank, was French somewhere along the line, and the Irish intensity came from her mother, Ethel. “My inheritance, darling, French and Irish. You see why I’m different.”
“I see someone I’m falling in love with.”
We went back to sleep. By midafternoon I heard Judy’s voice chime, “Wake up, Sid, it’s time for your ‘darling’ lesson. You do not know how to say the word.”
I said “darling” in an unemotional, gruff manner.
“No,” Judy insisted, “say, ‘Ahhh, darling,’” In a tinkling voice she said, “Repeat after me . . .”
“Darling,” I said, in a somewhat lower register.
“Oh, that’s not how. Try again, please.”
“Baby, I’d rather tell you about the Chickenman.” This threw her completely off, but it caught her imagination.
While I was researching Man o’ War I went to a lot of racetracks. I had the incredible luck to meet Horatio Luro, who was for many, many years one of the great racehorse trainers. A tall, blond South American, Horatio was known as “Mr. Medicine Chest,” because wherever he traveled he carried an enormous portable medicine cabinet. Charlie Whittingham, his assistant, also became a leading world-class trainer. I’d won a couple of bets with Horatio and Charlie, so when my partner Ted Law came up from Texas, I introduced them. Ted liked Horatio and sent a big check from Walfarms.
Judy interrupted in counterpoint, her eyes as dark as the coffee she drank: “Darling, please end your sentences with ‘darling.’”
“In those days,” I continued, “every trainer was looking for someone with money to buy horses; it was the only way they could survive running a stable fold. The more horses they had, the more money they made . . . darling.”
Judy echoed “darling” in a softer tone. She was teaching me.
“All horses are not qualified to compete against each other: there are claiming races, allowance races, and stake races. Different calibers of speed and breed. A claiming racehorse is entered to be bought. And it works this way, darling.”
Judy smiled her approval.
I went on to explain that in this division to be eligible to buy, you had to have raced a horse once before at that particular track. And there’s a limit to what a horse can be worth in each division. If a horse is worth more than $15,000 he would run in allowance races, and if the purses are bigger he can compete in stakes. I wanted to claim a horse named Bir Hakeim, so I went to the office to put up the money. Win or lose, I would own that horse. “If there’s one or more buyer for that horse, all names go in a basket and the name pulled becomes the owner . . . darling.”
“That’s a funny gamble, darling.”
I agreed. I told Judy how I claimed two horses; the second one, Bir Hakeim, cost $4,500. The horse was a wreck. He had worms, he had not been trained properly. (Judy put on a face of extreme compassion, but she didn’t make me say “darling.”) I claimed him because I liked his breeding. Bir Hakeim was taken to Saratoga, where he was mostly fed and brushed and pampered. Julio, the trainer I found, gave him vitamins and lots of carrots. Eventually I got to Saratoga and went directly to Julio’s barn.
“Fella, you want to see your dead horse?” A gorgeous horse came out of the stall
, with a magnificent coat, dapples, everything. He looked like a stake horse.
“This isn’t the same horse.”
“Yes, it is,” Julio assured me, “and he can run.”
Bir Hakeim was a beautiful bay color, a warm brown and mahogany with black legs. The next morning, we ran Bir Hakeim against a stake horse. He ran three quarters of a mile and kept up. Julio said, “We need to go to Pimlico, you’ll win a big bet.”
Sometime after I returned to Los Angeles Julio called me to tell me Bir Hakeim was running Pimlico Saturday and to bring money.
“What price do you think they’ll pay?” I asked him.
He said, “No idea. He could be anywhere from 5:1 to 2:1.”
I was elated. We could really win.
Now, the Chickenman was Julio’s friend who owned a wholesale chicken distributorship, and he was a big bettor. He and Julio were partners on the track. The Chickenman would put up $10,000, and Julio would tell him what horses he was running. Naturally, they would split the money if they won. I was unaware of this partnership at the time. So I got on a train with my $15,000 and went to Baltimore. I arrived late and joined Julio at the clubhouse. It was raining cats and dogs. Julio said, “Oh boy, look at it rain.” Bir Hakeim loved the mud. We got so much rain it was a gulch on the track.
“Julio, do you think this horse is gonna win?”
“Yeah,” he said, “by a hundred yards.” I told Julio I’d brought $5,000, and I gave that amount to him so he could bet the money. It was the last race of the day. A mile and a sixteenth. I entered the horse for $5,000. Bir Hakeim hadn’t raced since March; it was now August. And he went off at 5:1 because he was a California horse. I bet the remaining $10,000 with two bookmakers in New York and two in Boston, $2,500 each. I watched the race from high up in the tower. When the gates opened up Bir Hakeim walked out on his hind legs! I couldn’t believe it was true. A young South American was his jockey.