by Sid Luft
In the last trimester Judy began to suffer insomnia. She wanted me to stay up with her. I was sympathetic to Judy’s late night restlessness, but I had to be at the office in the morning. I tried to do both, remain with Judy through the night and be at the office on time. This lifestyle did not work out. I was overly exhausted, the growing circles under my eyes a trademark. I hoped Judy would understand. I needed to get proper sleep to continue on with our business goals. The night came when I kissed her good night and went to sleep before two in the morning, alone. She very often would be going to sleep as I left for the office. By early afternoon, she would awake in good spirits and call me at the office to tell me jokes and inquire what I would like for dinner. “Sleep” would be my most frequent request.
Eddie Alperson, Vern Alves, Bobby Heasley, and I were busy developing A Star Is Born. Eddie devised a plan for nine films over a five-year period, with Judy starring in one out of three. The first three would be Man o’ War, A Star Is Born, and Snow Covered Wagons. I was hoping to produce Man o’ War as a starter, for the experience of making a big Technicolor film. We no longer needed Sam Riddle’s approval, since the man had sadly died. There were no Riddle heirs, and his estate had been turned over to a local Pennsylvania institution.
Judy’s contract with the William Morris Agency was due to expire. In this way Transcona would be clear of any contractual holds on her. By a process of elimination, we targeted Warner Bros. They were not in production, so the studio was empty; nothing but money and grips remained.
Maybe Jack Warner Sr. had let his talent go to please Washington? Jack was right wing when it was fashionable—he’d produced special projects for Hap Arnold during the Second World War—and it was now an era of paranoia in Hollywood. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had left wounds. The McCarthy hearings had rattled the nation. At one point Judy had joined her peers and traveled to Washington to observe the hearings, but Judy, a staunch Democrat, didn’t perceive either Jack Warner or L. B. Mayer as the reactionaries they were.
I had many thoughts on the subject myself, but I confess these negative aspects didn’t affect our zeal when it came to striking a deal with the studio. We knew that Warner Bros. had recently divorced itself from its chain of Warner theaters. A law had been passed forbidding motion picture studios from owning theaters. The studio was now open to independent producers and had already made a deal for an independent company with John Wayne. Alperson, through Benny Kalmenson, Warner’s booker for theater chains, had received serious interest on the part of Jack and Harry Warner.
Jack Warner Sr. was head of production at Warner’s. He wanted the power and was undisputedly king of his domain, but his older brother Harry controlled the money. Harry was the president of the studio and the boss of economics; he never put his foot in production until distribution decisions were about to be made. I saw little of Harry, but I was aware that he also owned horses. In those days racing stables were classified under agriculture training, and if a stable did not show a profit every five years the enterprise was a write-off. Many moneyed people ran stables for the tax break. I did not; I was devoted to the thrill and romance of the racehorse. Harry and I were both involved with films, and we both had horses, but we had nothing to say to one another.
So Jack was our in. I had already taken one meeting with him, and I was to meet him again at a lavish at-home, black tie party given by a matron who wrote a local society column. This time we did not discuss business. However, later in the evening Jack approached Judy: “You’ve got to make a picture with me.”
I told her, “Darling, you see we’re going to do it. Hollywood is interested.”
Very late that night, Judy suffered a migraine headache. She was still struggling with insomnia and was irritable as a result of not sleeping. She convinced me she needed a doctor’s help to get through the night, so we called Lee Siegel to give her something to ease the pain. I’d been gently excusing myself to go to bed for several weeks so I could function at the office. I could not have thought, under any circumstances, Judy would secretly bear any grudge against me, any feelings of abandonment, or that I would be held responsible for her anxieties. I thought the prospect of A Star Is Born must have loomed up as more of a pressure, the need to be on the lot on time, to be “camera slim.” Judy was experiencing the old patterns of worry and abuse accelerated by her pregnancy.
Judy closeted herself with Lee, explaining I was not to be present, that she wanted privacy. “Darling, nnn, this is between myself and my doctor.” She spoke in her rapid childlike speech, the seductive little girl asking for independence, a chance to be a grown-up. There was no apparent reason for me to interfere; our marriage was based on mutual considerations. I respected her privacy and I trusted Lee, so I went to sleep.
The next evening, I returned to the house and Judy greeted me from the couch, her legs folded beneath her pregnant tummy, a pair of my loafers hung over her knees, and a cigar wedged in her mouth. She spoke rat-a-tat-tat, imitating Abe Lastfogel. She knew her shtick would always break me up. And she could easily slip from a sexy presence to Chevalier to a drunken Tallulah.
Once during the earlier days of her pregnancy I had found Judy beautifully made up, waiting for me, our favorite opera La Bohème coursing through the rooms. She swooshed over to me for a romantic kiss before I could change clothes. We sunk into a large wingback chair, embracing. I was about to lift her into my arms and take her to our bedroom when I realized her left arm was in a sling fashioned out of fabric that matched her silk lounging pajamas. She teased me when she saw my alarm. “It’s nonfunctioning, like me.” I insisted she tell me what was wrong. Judy said it was some kind of temporary numbness from a pinched nerve, and she proved it by poking herself with a straight pin. I remarked, “Baby, what a strange way to treat one’s body.” She assured me the condition would go away. Judy was not worried; if anything she was detached. For that moment the sense of the intimacy dissolved. I brought up the subject of her arm later, after dinner. Judy quickly dismissed it, teasing, “None of your business, darling, it’s all right. Don’t poke in.” I knew she meant it.
Benny Kalmenson had set up Transcona’s first big meeting with Jack Warner. It was in the trophy room at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank. The room was on the first floor and Jack’s office was not far away on the second floor. The trophy room was lined with tiers of glass shelving displaying European awards, Academy Awards, plaques, cups, a sum of all the studio’s success.
I was aware of Jack’s reputation as a power monger, a snob, and a practical jokester. But he also had an exuberance about him; he seemed to enjoy life. He was in and out of society. We were on a first-name basis from the outset, but I quickly realized he didn’t like anyone. He drove his Rolls-Royce to the studio every morning at eleven o’clock, well groomed, wearing hand-tailored suits, a white shirt, and a high Barrymore collar and tie. Jack was dressed to kill.
Originally, I had thought it would be best for me to work with a producer from Warner’s. Eddie disagreed; he believed the only way A Star Is Born could work was if I was the producer and Judy worked for me. I would have the entire studio at my fingertips. I was not to be an associate producer, and in those days, executive producers didn’t exist. I understood his point: he wanted to show the money people that someone was there to ensure Judy’s reliability, and who better than the husband of the star? Kalmenson had been to New York to see Judy at the Palace. We had spent time together, and he too insisted I was the one to produce.
When the time came for me to meet with Jack one on one, I had a two-page outline stating what we needed to agree upon, who had artistic approval and casting approval, the maximum advertising cost spent for distribution, how many prints were to be made, what Warner’s responsibility was to deliver to Transcona and vice versa. I said Judy’s hours on the set would be from ten to six, not beginning at six in the morning. It would be impossible for her to function otherwise, since the film was to be a tour de force of her talen
ts: she would be on screen in virtually every frame. We even discussed Judy’s extreme episodes of PMS. I needed every safety valve possible for Judy. Jack would scissor out different sections from his proposal and initial them. In this manner we fashioned the preliminary contract for A Star Is Born. There would be details about which I couldn’t make a decision without talking to Judy.
We eventually agreed on $3 million for three films: Man o’ War was first on the list, A Star Is Born was second, Snow Covered Wagons third. Word got around that we were busy working on a musical version of Star, creating a kind of cynical grapevine response from the old MGM crowd and prompting Arthur Freed to remark, “I can’t believe those two alley cats are making a movie.”
I was more and more occupied, away from the house and not always available when Judy tried to reach me. As she came closer to giving birth, she began to exhibit a lack of enthusiasm about making a film. I noticed she was cranky, even short, especially after dinner. I automatically blamed it on her condition. At one point, feeling homebound, Judy started to work on her autobiography. She lasted about a week on the project before losing interest. She related details of her family and early childhood in a straightforward fashion. There have been considerable variations in theme since those days. Luckily, some of Judy’s original work in progress has been preserved. In addition to the passages I’ve already shared, Judy also said:
My grandmother was Fitzgerald, but then she got divorced and married a man named Milne. So mother was Ethel Milne. . . . She was black Irish, rather pretty, about my height, a little under five feet and dark eyes. My [maternal] grandfather was an engineer, ran a train in Duluth. And, of course, my mother hated my grandmother. She derided my grandmother, whose name was Eva, and had something like seven children. My grandfather was an absolute terror.
He frightened everyone to death because he would get stoned. There was a great enormous hill, and he would get so drunk driving this train that he would get to the top of the hill and open up the whistle and everybody knew that there might be a stunning crash which would wipe out, first of all, his wife and children. He threatened every day to kill them all and my grandmother went strange about it, and my mother, I think at the ripe age of four, punched him in the nose with a metal pitcher full of water—she poured it over his head, the water first, and then hit him right smack in the face. She didn’t have any trouble with him anymore, proving that she overcame that by being very brutal and then she went ahead with that same behavior pattern when she raised her own kids, one of them being me.
Mother was plump, very plump and very bad legs. I didn’t look like anybody in my family. I don’t know why I wound up having the features I have . . .
Father was a terribly handsome man when my mother first met him. He was so handsome it was incredible. He was so slender. Five feet eleven, slender, sensitive, he was French and a little Irish. He had a magnificent shock of beautiful dark hair. I’ve seen pictures in the family album that disappeared somewhere, but he was awfully attractive. He was engaged before he met my mother to the woman who finally wound up marrying the comedian and actor Joe E. Brown. And then when he met my mother, he broke his engagement and married my mother and settled down. [Francis Gumm met Ethel Milne in 1913 at the Savoy Theater in Superior, Wisconsin.] My mother had a job playing in the pit. Singers would come out in front of movie screens, where they’d show slides and sing. And she would accompany them. And then she met father and they decided to go on the stage. They’d wheel a piano onto the stage. A singing team: he sang, she played piano. He bought a theater [the Rialto] when he realized that they were going to have a family. He became rather paunchy but still attractive. Marvelous, loud laugh. Funny explosive temper.
I was afraid to ask mother if she had a middle name. At any rate, they decided to have an act and get into vaudeville. They changed their [stage] names after they were married to “Jack and Virginia Lee, Sweet Southern Singers.” After all, he did come from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Mother was born in Duluth. They traveled regionally . . . into small places where they booked themselves directly. When they discovered that Mother was going to have a baby, Father decided to go into a sensible business. So he bought the only theater in the town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. He showed movies. The only time [the New Grand Theater] had a vaudeville act is when my two sisters became the sort of town darlings and they came out and did a sister act, a duet. They sang harmony. They were constantly singing “In a Little Spanish Town.” When I got into the act, mother and father, for some unknown reason, sold the theater and we all traveled west. They were still Jack and Virginia Lee and we were the Gumm sisters.
My oldest sister’s name was Mary Jane, seven years older than me; the middle girl whose name was Dorothy Virginia was five years older; and along came Frances Ethel. George Jessel, many years later, changed our last name to Garland, and my older sister suddenly decided she hated Mary Jane and she got awfully classy and chose the name Suzanne. I’d always been called “Babe,” or Baby Gumm, and that’s a rough rap. So I decided that if she could change her name to Suzanne, I could change mine, and I liked the song, very popular at the time, called “Judy.” I chose to change mine simply so no one would call me “Baby” anymore. I wouldn’t answer if they called me Babe or Baby.
I didn’t return to see the small town of Grand Rapids until I was in the movies. I was about fifteen years old. An official “Judy Garland Day” had been declared in the town where I was born.
Our house was on a corner. The lawn went across the front and around the corner—a white clapboard house, two stories high; it was on a swell of ground. If I turned right again, it became a rose garden. The house was in the middle of that. I never did get to know the people [next door]. It’s funny. I’ve always been called “the girl next door,” but I never knew a girl next door. My two sisters shared the same room, and I was always put out into some room that they could sort of manage to find. Sometimes I slept with my father, sometimes I slept with my mother, sometimes I slept in an extra bedroom that was upstairs, by myself.
Sometimes in the winter, when my dad would be at the theater and my mother would be playing piano there, my older sister took care of me. We’d go out in the snow and we’d make angels. We’d lie down, do our arms like a bird, and then get up and it looked like an angel. And then we’d go into the house for hot milk and that Thompson’s cocoa. I adored that. Everything about Grand Rapids had charm and gaiety. The first time anybody took any notice was my father playing the piano. I had a little girlfriend, she was just my age, and he taught us to sing “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” He had an upright piano at home. He called my mother and my sisters in to listen to this little girl and me. And I was proud because they said, “She was good.” Baby. Baby Gumm. . . .
The day soon arrived when Eddie and I shook hands with Jack Warner and drew up a formal contract. Jack brought a few men from the Warner legal department. Not long afterward, the contracts were hand-delivered to Canon Drive.
We had a list of possible writers and actors. Humphrey Bogart was one name. Jack, who was aware that Bogie hated his guts and couldn’t wait to get out of Jack’s studio several years before, said, “He’s too damn old for Judy Garland.” I brought up Sinatra, whom I’d met earlier in the week at the Brown Derby. Jack responded to his name with a laugh. “He’s finished.”
Was Jack a difficult man? I knew Errol Flynn disliked Jack, as did Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. But, again, there was no longer anyone under contract to Warner’s. I reminded myself they have the grips, and the money. He’s got to approve of someone.
26
OUR DAUGHTER, LORNA, was born November 21, 1952, by cesarean section (as were all of Judy’s children). She was robust, with blonde hair and blue eyes that remained blue. Another adorable baby girl for Judy. Judy agreed to stay in the hospital for a week after she gave birth.
As fate would have it, the day she picked to leave the hospital and go home (with Vern Alves in attendance), I was in San Francis
co at the Bay Meadows Racetrack watching our horse Florence House win a big race. When I returned to Los Angeles, I went immediately out to Santa Monica only to find that Judy and the baby had already left. I had let her down; I was not available for her when she needed me. Where was I? At the races. Of course, Judy knew I would be flying out there for the day. I had not purposely disappointed her, but I was aware she had decided to make a point. I went along with her game, apologizing even though she’d given me the impression it was not that critical. She seemed thrilled that Florence House had won. It was not as important, however, as watching our new little baby laugh! We had decided on the name Lorna, as my mother was Lena/Leonora, and Judy had been fascinated by the character of Lorna in Clifford Odets’s play Golden Boy.
No sooner were mother and newborn baby daughter seemingly snug at home when Judy slipped into a postpartum depression. The familiar words before and during her period, “Darling, I’m miserable. Please bear with me,” were missing. Now she didn’t apologize. In fact, she was uncontrollably testy to the staff and irritable, cut off, and short tempered with me. Her eyes looked glazed. Again she battled insomnia. We were back to sleeping at different times. The nights we slept together it was clear she was on something. But what? And how? There would be no communication. She’d descend into a depressed state and, no doubt, take something to pick her up. But whatever she ingested was not working, and she became more and more depressed.
I’d come into the office and straightaway Heasley or Vern would say, “What’s worrying you today?” I couldn’t figure out why Judy had fallen off. Here we were, a husband-and-wife team moving steadily forward, our seed blooming every which way, and suddenly there was a frightening specter looming over our family and career: addiction. Was it only that she was intent on returning to size six, the future requiring a slim Judy, and she again resorted to pills? In the evening she barely touched her food. The not eating was a sign of speed in the system.