by Sid Luft
“Yep.”
“He broke his leg.”
Freddie was right: I wanted a double martini. I had $30,000 coming to me from Roman II’s insurance.
Then Norman Weiss, an agent at MCA, rang to tell me that Judy could play Ben Maksik’s Town and Country nightclub in Brooklyn, and that the chances were Maksik would advance money against a future appearance in March after England. This sounded marvelous.
Early in the evening, Judy arrived wearing a big straw hat, with a trillion pearl bracelets covering her wounds. “Hi darling, how ya doin’?”
I had four martinis in me by now, Roman II had left me a legacy, and close friends had come through. “I’m doin’ fine, baby.”
I thought the deal was nearly finalized with Maksik. Judy/Cinderella was in her princess mode, wearing an exquisite fur collar and looking terribly continental. I’d written checks all over the place, to Cunard Line, to the dancing boys. I’d sent money to the house. Later in a cubbyhole downstairs in the bar I met with Maksik and Weiss and a deal was struck. We were going to have nine days in England before Judy opened at the Dominion. Time to promote, and time to rest.
The day of departure was scary. We were aboard the United States and her whistles were blowing, and there was no sign of Maksik aboard with the cash I needed to cover the checks. Judy was casually buffing her nails in a corner while I sweated out Maksik’s arrival and waited for the chauffeur who was going to deposit the funds. (The insurance money from Roman II would be sent to London.) I took a deep breath of relief when, in a flurry, everyone came aboard at the last minute. Norman Weiss was holding the contracts, Judy was ignoring the reporters, and Maksik was waving a brown paper bag filled with cash.
The ocean crossing was like going to heaven. Judy didn’t take so much as a motion sickness pill. It was all shuffleboard, Ping-Pong, captain’s table, and romance.
Alan King had taken his wife, Jeanette, to Europe for a holiday. I knew he wasn’t interested in working but I needed him. He was a wonderful entertainer, and Judy loved to work with him. I’d called Alan in Rome and awakened him in the middle of the night. I was convinced Alan had to work with Judy in London. I asked him to meet with the J. Arthur Rank people who owned the Dominion while in London. “Let me know what you think of them.” I was counting on him seeing his name in lights, something I’d arranged to change his mind. He couldn’t say no. Forgive me, Alan! In the end he agreed. I took some heat for booking him, as he was still unknown over there. I always came back with “This is Judy’s preference.”
Judy live with an audience was unsurpassable. It’s tragic that not one of these extraordinary performances was ever filmed or recorded. There were problems miking a pit orchestra; rarely was anything set up acoustically for live recording as it is today. The state of the art didn’t advance until 1962, when mobile units were brought in.
During the Dominion engagement Judy performed at the Palladium as part of the Royal Variety Gala—it was a command performance. The singer Mario Lanza was also featured in the program. He was managed by the Mills Music Co. Mills was an older man who happened to be staying at the Dorchester, where we were living. He approached me, concerned about Mario’s place in the revue. Judy had asked to perform her tramp number. Val Parnell, who organized the gala, thought there wasn’t enough time. However, Judy insisted, and Lanza had to follow her act, which had brought the house down. Lanza sang well enough, but the audience cruelly laughed at him. It was a turn of events nobody could have anticipated. He suffered every performer’s nightmare, and we were horrified. Immediately after he finished onstage Mario made a getaway straight to the toilet, where he vomited his guts out. He couldn’t take it. It was a vivid example of the obverse of adulation: the crowd can love you and the crowd can kill you! Judy respected Mario, and in 1960 she asked me to manage him. I declined. I really never cared about managing any performer other than Judy.
Godfrey Winn, a popular London journalist, invited us to his house for an interview. I persuaded Judy to keep the appointment, as I felt it would be helpful. Judy was negative: “Don’t tell me what to do.” I was able to convince her it would be good PR. For the interview Judy wore a classic black dress and coat, and a little Juliet hat decorated with brilliants and pearls, Judy’s tiara.
Winn asked Judy about my impact on her career, and as always she answered that she depended totally on my taste and my sense of “show”: “Sid has entire control.” Little did Winn suspect the fiasco that had preceded our arrival at the White Cliffs of Dover!
In general Judy found American audiences enthusiastic but insecure as to how to react to the performer, while the English audience was more at home with variety and revues. One of the most requested medleys was the “Born in a Trunk” sequence from A Star Is Born. We never thought of the production number as a live performance and we’d not brought any orchestrations with us, but the audiences were interested in the thirty-two bars. We eventually adapted it to the stage for Judy’s Metropolitan Opera House tour. Meanwhile, Gordon Jenkins, Judy’s musical conductor, had written a special number for her, “The Letter,” which didn’t compete with Roger Edens’s material.
Judy would invariably tell an interviewer that “Over the Rainbow” was her favorite song. Judy had many favorites, and there’d be times when she’d resist singing “Rainbow.” Professionally, of course, she wouldn’t give it up, as “Rainbow” closed the show and never failed to bring down the house. Judy would confess that more often than not she’d force herself into it, and then find herself genuinely crying by the end of the number.
Our children, Joey and Lorna, were natural born troupers; they fit right into our London adventure. They had a wonderful time seeing the sights and meeting other children. They were outgoing children with a lot of energy. Judy never spoke down to them. She enjoyed relating how Joey at age two ran across the room holding not a toy but his favorite record of his mother, insisting she play it. The press ate this up. Judy would talk about the children’s interest in words, how their new vocabulary would be rhyming words from songs: rice, ice, nice. Lorna would call Judy from the connecting suite and beg her to come in and listen to some new word she’d taught Joe. Judy was very family minded in these interviews, even referring to Johnny as “our” child: “We have an eight-year-old and an eleven-year-old.” Johnny and Liza were both in private schools.
All of Judy’s children were born in a trunk. Liza was motivated to perform early on. She worked hard at becoming an artist. Lorna, who sang, and Joe, who played the drums and sang, were around Judy’s performances from birth. Lorna understood the word “recording” when she was just a tot.
Gordon Jenkins’s orchestration, his use of strings, matched Judy’s emotional pitch in texture and sheer strength of voice. He understood her phrasing and distinct sound. It was a wonderful marriage of talent. Jenkins also had a wacky sense of humor. After the command performance, he arrived bombed at the gala. The party had been in progress for some time, and it was jumping. A footman announced the arrival of each guest. When Gordon was asked to give his name he said, “Mr. and Mrs. Men’s Room,” and so the couple was presented.
While we were in the UK, Aly Khan asked me to go to Newmarket and bid on a filly. I was away for a few days and Judy swallowed a few uppers, which gave her insomnia. She persuaded Alan King to stay up with her and take her to look at the hookers in Petticoat Lane. She kept him up all night, sending him back to his wife exhausted. Fortunately, her behavior did not escalate into a bender.
I purchased a filly for forty thousand pounds, a very good price for the horse. On my return Judy cooled down, and our life proceeded without a crisis.
In the old days, Walfarms had been a good racing stable. Within one week we’d won four races with three horses: Bir Hakeim, La Franza, and the Driller, who won twice. The papers thought it was newsworthy and wrote us up, which was unusual in those days. We were to sell Bir Hakeim in Florida, but we won considerable money with the Driller, which was a claiming horse
and raced for eleven years, becoming a great winner for us. I’d claimed La Franza for $7,500; he was a winner as well. Once I ran the Driller in a stake race. Nelson Bunker Hunt, the tycoon who owned a thousand race horses, was shocked. “Sid, what are you doing running a claiming horse in a stake race?” The Driller was on the board 20:1, but as the day went by he was 7:2. Bunker was astounded. We made a bet: Bunker’s horse, a stake horse, would lose to the Driller. Bunker’s horse ran last, and the Driller, God bless him, was next to last, so I won the bet!
Rainbow Farms was equal to Walfarms, but I was not certain how long I could sustain the operation. Gone were the halcyon days when I’d take Liza, Johnny, and Bill Sergeant’s little boy to the stable and to the racetrack to see the horses. The children had been in love with the barns and the horses. Liza and Johnny were growing too old to play with little Lorna and Joe. A sense of leisure was going out of my life.
36
NO MATTER HOW CREATIVE, how imaginative I was in coming up with ideas for concerts and tours, they couldn’t all equal the Palace, a Broadway appearance, London. I knew by now that Judy lived to perform, but I had learned to be on guard whenever we toured a city she perceived was not of her class. Just when I thought I’d appeal to her reason, she’d pull something—if it wasn’t a sore throat, it would be news of the death of a performer she’d once worked with. We began to have fights in the dressing room. I’d shake her up: “Baby, you’ve got to get out there.” And more often than not, I was taking her by the hand, leading her onstage to explain Judy Garland had laryngitis. I wanted the audience to see that she wasn’t falling down drunk. Sometimes the audience would chant “Judy, Judy, Judy” and she’d begin to sing, in her robe, and she’d get into it and give a bravura performance. But I couldn’t rely on it.
For all of Judy’s success at the Dominion, the run had not earned us a profit. Financial responsibilities were mounting. At home, Judy’s days were occupied with Lorna and Joe, but I sensed an uneasiness about her and I was on guard. It was a bad time for my ex-wife Lynn to ask for more money for Johnny, who was in boarding school.
It occurred to me that we live in a huge house, so why not have Johnny move in with us? Lynn was married to a psychiatrist, Dr. Nathan Rickles, and they lived in an apartment in Beverly Hills. I thought rather than pay out more child support, my son could join our family. This required going to court. And the judge did award Johnny to me. Lynn made a scene in court, exclaiming, “No, no. He’s my life.” The judge said he believed it would be better for the boy to live with a family.
I’d won, but I knew that winning was not a victory. I wasn’t able to be at home; I couldn’t oversee the children. I had to depend on Judy and the servants, and Judy was not her normal self. Sure enough, in ten days’ time, Johnny was back with his mother, where he remained until some years later, when he went off to college.
Lynn would continue to use Johnny to subtly express her ambivalence toward me. One minute she’d be pleased he spent time with me, the next instant she’d be sabotaging the father/son relationship. And she’d find new cause to bring me into court over one thing or another. I never knew when she’d attack. She was in the business of cooking up causes: lifelong support for the boy, schooling, college—in and out of court, she never let up. During Johnny’s teenage years, he’d have little contact with me or my family.
Then from out of nowhere in 1972 Lynn called me and asked if Johnny could come to live with me. “You take care of your son,” was her command. The boy was now a young man of twenty, who had somehow survived the 1960s but clearly not without scars and habits. I felt introduced to a stranger. Nonetheless Johnny joined my new family—Lorna, Joey, and my fourth wife, Patti Potts. He was with us for one year and left without a word to anyone. I didn’t hear from Johnny again until the day after Lynn died, in November 1989. A period of sixteen years had passed.
Judy faced her own child-rearing issues with her ex, though hers were not as severe. Vincente had agreed to send $500 a month for Liza, but his accountant argued that as Vincente legally was to have Liza six months of the year, he owed but half. However, Liza lived with us year round. Money was never an issue in our relationship with Vincente, which was friendly. I wasn’t going to argue the point.
Liza as a child adored her mother. She was an amazing dark-haired little girl with incredible black eyes and an energy and cheerfulness that never flagged. She was a few years older than my son Johnny, who by contrast had fiery red hair. By 1957 Liza was a preadolescent who spent her days at school, and this time around she did not have time for a kid brother; in fact, they tended to scrap.
I was still working hard to stabilize our income. Judy was in and out. I now relied entirely on the staff to run the household. Judy would be up all night, cut off from me, sometimes not going to bed until noon.
The contractual obligation to Ben Maksik was coming due, and Judy was not eager to play the Town and Country nightclub in Brooklyn. Every time I discussed Maksik with her she was negative. I was always encouraged when she came to me saying, “Darling, I think I should go to a clinic for a few days.” She’d have to shape up for Maksik’s, but it didn’t look as though it was going in that direction.
We played a few engagements, including a return to Las Vegas, where Judy performed at the Flamingo Hotel. We arrived the day after Christmas for a three-week commitment. New Year’s Eve found Judy performing in front of an irreverent Vegas booze crowd. No one paid attention to my diva. I realized too late that I shouldn’t have booked her there in the first place. It was my fault. She was embarrassed. Women were walking up onstage high and dancing with each other. Judy was furious there wasn’t any security in front. So Judy left the stage and the job. She returned to our room and switched on the television set, not speaking, furious. Vern, who traveled with us, attempted to distract her, offering to play gin, anything. Nothing worked. In the morning she opened her mouth to express herself: “How could you book me here?”
There were two weeks left to work, and Judy wasn’t interested in my answer. I was responsible for her misery, for the audience’s stupidity. As she yelled she took off her four-inch stiletto-heeled shoe and hurled it in my direction, catching me in the forehead as I turned to leave the room. The show was canceled. We returned home, where the atmosphere was chilly. She wasn’t speaking with me. I was concerned now that the Maksik Town and Country engagement could be aborted, throwing us into debt.
One evening her behavior was so peculiar I wondered if she’d been doing booze and pills. She’d left half-filled glasses around the house as though she’d been only sipping. She wasn’t responding to my questions, and her coordination was off. Judy wasn’t hostile, because she wasn’t there. I frantically searched the bottles in our fancy mirrored bar. They were filled. That didn’t make sense either; people came to the house and there was considerable social drinking, our lifestyle. Why would all these bottles be full? On closer scrutiny I uncovered the mystery: they were filled with water. This was serious. MCA was going to dump us. She couldn’t be insured. She’d fucked up at the Flamingo, and Maksik’s was light years from her idea of where she should be performing. And now Judy was combining her pill habit with heavy drinking.
The day arrived when I had to take a closer look our staff, at the people I’d trusted and enjoyed working with. Vern Alves confessed to me he’d supplied her once. Miro, the all-purpose carpenter, had a big truck with all of his paraphernalia parked in back of the house. Judy had enjoyed everyone I’d hired. Naturally, they were her connections.
“Marvin-Schmarvin” was a high-class gofer. He dressed in blue suits and liked to gamble. He kept a nifty little pad on Doheny, where he’d sit down and roll himself “the world’s perfect joint,” smoke it, and drink “the world’s perfect martini.” Moderation was Marvin-Schmarvin’s bible. I suppose he interested me by his use of the word moderation, a concept I longed to have in our vocabulary.
Harry Rubin, who’d been on our house staff through most of the 1950s,
was an electrical contractor, but when he worked for us he was just someone around the house helping. He’d be a butler, a cook, or do some wiring. Harry was bright and he could banter with Judy. He was young, red-faced, black-haired, and Jewish, and we got along. Harry said Judy had hit on him many times, and he’d gone through a period when he was also dependent on pills. Harry was a loveable guy, but he turned out to be another of Judy’s connections.
I chewed out the staff and fired a few of them. I let Harry go: “I know it’s you.” Harry returned to the electrical business and real estate. The last time I talked to him, he’d bought his tenth house.
I found a note while Judy was sleeping; she’d left it on her writing table in her dressing room. Judy was not religious, but this was an indication she’d acknowledged a higher power, an echo perhaps from the AA meeting. I could only guess; she wasn’t going to discuss the note with me.
Dear God—
I am asking for help. I need help. I need strength and some kind of courage that has left me. My soul needs healing. My needs are many. Give me the strength to crush my fear and cowardice. Let me face life and the fun it must hold. Help with my bad nerves and illness until the whiskey is out of my body. Let me see the loveliness awaiting me. Help me find you. Help me make the most of my splendid life. I have lost my way—please God—let me find it. Let me find dignity and health—
Judy hadn’t slept in a few days. She was becoming more and more irritable and aggressive. It was obvious she was also extremely uncomfortable. Once again she saw me as an obstacle, preventing her from destroying herself, or in her terms preventing her from doing what she “wanted to do.” She’d assail me: “You’re defying me!” Her language had a comic edge, and combined with her petite size, the picture often held an air of absurdity. But, of course, it was more complex: to have to confront the very person I was in love with, who possessed the kind of authority Judy manifested, was like climbing Everest in high heels.