by Sid Luft
Later in the conversation, we tried to come to some sort of an agreement. “I think that Judy cannot stand this harassment any longer,” I told them, “and I don’t think that she’ll function properly unless we have an understanding.”
“Freddie, I would like for you to draw a check to Sid for, like, $1,000,” Begelman said. “Here’s what I’d like to propose . . . that we give Sid $1,000 for each episode of Judy’s new television series. You follow me? I mean give him the $1,000 now because he needs it tomorrow.”
“Or yesterday and the day before,” I uttered.
“But give him $1,000 a week,” Begelman continued, “subject only to a relationship between us—you know what I mean. That’s certainly not a buy-off or a payoff. This is the only way we can make our handshake a little more realistic with you . . . it’ll take the pressure off of you to try to come up with a plan . . . because when you’re under pressure . . . when you’re desperate, then you obviously—you translate your desperation to her. Will that relieve some of that pressure?”
“Of course it will.”
“Well let’s start with that. Sid, you know, look, we’re playing such a fucking dangerous game with you and I don’t care, so I’ll go all the way with you. All right.”
“And I’ll only tell you this,” Fields interrupted. “If you—in anger, in an emotional, weak moment, or for any other reason—ever really divulge all of this, then I’ll laugh. Then I’ll just . . . I’ll never talk to you again, but I’ll laugh, you know, because you’re a schmuck.”
“Deny it,” I told him.
“No, I won’t deny it,” he said. “I’ll just laugh because I think it’ll all work against you in the end. You know?”
“Yeah.”
“You know?”
“Yeah.”
Freddie and David were only talking to me in their own self-defense. They were trying their best to appease me, and at the same time intimidate me, after the Steinberg report came in and we’d all been made aware of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in unreported income. I took that one check for $1,000, but that was it.
The tragedy was that this great artist should have fallen into the hands of three guys like Freddie, David, and me. I’m to blame. I’m to blame because I shouldn’t have let myself get carried away with Aerophonics. I should’ve continued handling Judy’s career. I could have done both.
On September 5, 1963, the courts granted Judy custody of the children and gave me visitation rights. The next night, I went to the Rockingham house and had dinner with Lorna and Joey. I was about to leave around eight o’clock when Judy suddenly appeared in the living room. “Would you like a drink?” she asked.
“A scotch, please.”
She made herself a vodka martini, which was unusual since she was a sipper and liked long drinks. There were four or five glasses around the house at any given time. She’d sip on one, put it down, then get another drink. “I know you’re in bad shape financially while I’m making a lot of money,” she said.
“I’m busted,” I told her, “but I’ll get by.”
Judy told me she was going to give me anything I wanted. “You’ll never be broke,” she said. “I want to see you get that job at CBS and we’ll start off and I’ll give you $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000. Whatever you need.” With that, Judy wrote me a check for $10,000. “Now put this in your pocket,” she instructed me, “and pay off some of your debts. You’ve helped me, now I’m going to help you.”
So far so good.
She began to compliment me, telling me, “You’re the best producer,” this, that, and the other. “You know how to do things. You can build houses, you can make pictures, you can do anything!” She was very sweet, very nice, and very affectionate.
She went around the bar, got another drink—not a long one, but a quick martini—which she tossed down almost in one gulp. Then, without any warning, Judy turned on me. “I’m so fucking mad at you!” she began. “To think that we could be so good, so right together, but you’re insisting on digging up all our past financial troubles. I want to forget it, darling.”
“Judy, I don’t think I can get to you,” I said. “I’m confused about us. We get along momentarily, and then we don’t. You never want to hear about your tax problems. You have them, Judy, and I’m going to level with you. Things that happened in the past will catch up with both you and me when the government does an audit.”
“Sid, I don’t want to hear what’s going to catch up with me,” she said.
“What I’m trying to tell you is—and you won’t accept this, but in the very near future I have either to join you or disown you as a husband, as far as our taxes are concerned.”
“But, Sid, why didn’t you take care of those things then?”
I tried to explain the complexities of the tax returns, but she snapped, “You just do the goddamn income tax! Do it, and I don’t want to hear about it. I’ll do my shows, and don’t interfere. Don’t bother me or else I’ll be so upset I’ll blow the whole thing.”
She started to berate me. I didn’t say one thing. I just listened. I finally spoke up and asked, “Is this the way you really feel now?”
“Yes, that’s it,” she said.
“Oh, fuck, Judy!” I shouted. “Here, take your check. I cannot accept it this way. I could if we were on a friendly basis, but there’s too much hostility between you and me and I don’t need your money. You just aren’t going to make it. These programs aren’t right for you.”
I tore up the check and said, “I can’t take your $10,000 like this. I won’t. I’m not being dramatic about this, and I will accept it when you want to give me a check with affection, and you want to do something like a husband and wife should do. Then I’ll accept it.” And I said good night.
I wasn’t about to settle for anyone else’s terms. Not unless I was going to be treated fairly. I was forty-seven years old. I’d given half a million to a million dollars to my marriage and I could prove it. Judy just needed to be fair with me. Be nice. Don’t give me $10,000 and then tell me what a villain and bastard I am. I’m not. And she knew better than to say “Here’s $10,000” like she was giving it to some actor.
I went out to the car and started to drive away, but Judy closed the gate on me. I walked back in again and she was in the kitchen making a peanut butter sandwich. I said, “Judy, let me go home. I’m tired.” She continued making her sandwich. “This is too goddamn serious now,” I told her. “I can’t live this way, in this house or out of it. . . . This is a walkout, Judy. As far as I’m concerned. I’m going to walk out of this house and I’m going to walk out of your life.”
I went back to the car, drove to the gate, and, again, it closed right in front of me. I went back in and said, “Judy, I’m exhausted. Open the gate. . . . Darling, this is no good. No fights.” She was smiling a kind of naughty child’s smile, but I wasn’t falling for it. “Judy, I’ve got to get out of here. Now, for Christ’s sake, let me out!” This time the gate remained open for me to drive through, and I headed back to my place. It was about 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning when I finally got into bed. Then at about 4:00 AM the phone rang. “Judy?” I asked. Who else would it be?
“There’re prowlers about!” she said in hysterics. “Come back here, you son of a bitch, and guard your family!”
“Call the police, Judy,” I told her. “There are no prowlers. Just keep the gate closed.” I hung up. The phone rang again and again; each time it was Judy. “You son of a bitch, you’re no husband, you don’t love me, you don’t love your children,” and so on. I finally told the switchboard to just cut off all my calls.
The Judy Garland Show premiered on September 29, 1963. The cavalcade of guest stars appearing over the course of the series was unrivaled: Tony Bennett, Vic Damone, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Ethel Merman, Barbra Streisand, and even Miss Liza Minnelli, who was becoming a star in her own right. Judy gave a party when the first show aired, and I was invited. “Where have you been?” she asked. It was be
coming predictable. “What are you doing? I miss you! What chance do we have?” She seemed to not remember what had gone down between us. She was on something then, too, though. If you watch her on the show, she was very good—phenomenal, even—but you can tell she was constantly under the influence of some form of medication.
There was a void in Judy’s life now that I was out of it, but she sure didn’t waste much time filling it. During the making of her shows, Judy was telling everybody how much in love she was with Canadian actor Glenn Ford. Glenn had known Judy for many years, all the way back to the time when he was eighteen and she was still a member of the Gumm Sisters. Soon, word around town was that Glenn was hanging around the set and that he and Judy were seen holding hands. They had a history together, and this seemed to initiate a fling that lasted for several months. I didn’t pay too much attention to it. I knew this guy well, and I knew that this was the blind leading the blind. Talk about a sick man. He was an irritable drunk! I just felt sorry for Judy that Glenn Ford was the best she could do. My conclusion then was that I would not interfere or cause any trouble. I would just go away quietly.
Unfortunately, The Judy Garland Show never really had much of a chance. There was trouble brewing from the very beginning, probably because CBS never laid out a clear plan. There was a chain of three different executive producers, but the biggest obstacle Judy faced was the show’s time slot, opposite Bonanza. CBS president Jim Aubrey and the network brass refused to move it to another night or time. By the time they started to get their act together, the series was set for cancellation after its twenty-sixth episode.
“I wasn’t disappointed that we didn’t get higher ratings,” Judy said in the papers. “I don’t think we deserved them. The time slot was impossible. After four or five years of loyalty to Bonanza, I can understand why viewers did not switch to my show. . . . But I did prove to everybody that I was reliable. They said I’d never answer the bell for the second round. But we turned out 26 shows. And some of them were damned good, too. Especially the last five we did.”
PART VII
End of the Rainbow
44
BY SPRING 1964, Judy was traipsing around the world with her new beau, a young actor named Mark Herron. The two had met at a party on New Year’s Eve; he was a gay fan of hers. CMA booked Judy for shows in Australia—two in Sydney and one in Melbourne. Neither Freddie nor David was along with her for the journey, just this young Mark fella. I was worried about Judy. She was like a zombie at this time. I’d never seen her in such a state. The shows in Sydney came off OK, but Melbourne was a disaster. She arrived onstage more than an hour late, was off-key, and kept forgetting her lines. The audience booed her. Many walked out on her, and others demanded their money back. The headlines were brutal: JUDY STONED, JUDY DRUNK, and JUDY DRUGGED.
Judy was not feeling well when she and Mark headed next for Hong Kong. When asked what she was suffering from, she replied, “Australia!” Arriving at their suite on the twenty-second floor of the Mandarin Hotel, they were met by Typhoon Viola, the worst such storm in that country’s history. During the typhoon, Judy overdosed and fell into a coma. She was admitted to the hospital, her stomach was pumped—unsuccessfully—and she had to be placed in an oxygen tent. At one point, a nurse informed Mark that Judy was dead! Reports began to flash around the world, but it was just a false alarm.
What wasn’t false was that Judy’s sister Susie had died in Las Vegas around this same time. It was announced that she’d died of cancer, but it was actually an overdose of pills. She was forty-eight years old. In fact, none of the women in Judy’s family were to enjoy long lives. Judy herself would live to be forty-seven, while her mother, Ethel, died at fifty-five. Judy’s niece Judaline died at an early age of emphysema, while her mother, Judy’s sister Jimmie, was fifty-nine when she died of a heart attack, having lived the longest of any of them.
For now, however, Judy left the hospital, and when they returned to their hotel, Mark hired a private nurse named Snowda Wu. She was Chinese but spoke fluent English, and she was able to care for Judy round the clock. Once Judy recovered, she and Mark were “married” by a Buddhist priest in a Chinese wedding ceremony. Headlines reading JUDY GARLAND MARRIES MARK HERRON IN CEREMONY OUTSIDE HONG KONG HARBOR began to surface, and I started getting phone calls from friends all over. I just laughed it off. How could they get married? Judy and I weren’t even divorced yet! Her lawyer quickly denied the marriage headlines to the press. Someone from Newsweek called me and said, “We understand you’re still married to Miss Garland.” I told them, “If you ask me, they got married on the Good Ship Lollipop. It’s a fairy tale. I’m sure Judy and Mark are aware of their legal status. She and I are still married.”
The couple came back to America, and Judy moved back into the Rockingham house with Mark sometime that December. The private nurse, Snowda Wu, came with them and lived in the pool house. The children called her “Snowy” and were awfully fond of her. I was not impressed. Snowda Wu changed Judy’s whole life. She was giving her all kinds of daily injections, and I don’t even know what the material was. I don’t think it was heroin, but I hold her responsible for the state of mind Judy was in at that time. She had many raging, screaming outbursts, and the children were often frightened of their mother.
I obtained a child custody hearing in Santa Monica that fall. Judy had full custody at the time, meaning I could see Lorna and Joey just two Wednesdays and two weekends a month. But she was nowhere to be found, and I was angry! My children were being raised by the help at the Rockingham house when they should have been with me. My lawyer argued on my behalf that Judy was mentally unbalanced and emotionally disturbed. We didn’t hold back this time. “On at least three occasions during 1963 and no less than 20 occasions in previous years, she has taken overdoses of barbiturates. On six occasions she has attempted suicide by slashing herself on her wrists, elbows or throat.” After that Judy and I had joint custody.
I’m not a doctor, of course, but to be honest, I truly think Judy had become very mentally disturbed. She had a history of so many illnesses. How much of this could the children take? I felt the children needed to be with me. That Christmas, Judy told everyone I’d kidnapped them, but they wanted to be with me. On Christmas Eve, a bench warrant was issued for my arrest for not having returned the kids. I had a wonderful time with my children. I would rather have gone to jail than miss my first Christmas with them in three years. It was a happy and delightful holiday.
Once I went over to Rockingham to take the children out for the afternoon when the phone rang. Judy said, “Oh, darling.” It was Mark Herron. She said to me, “I’d just love for you to talk to Mark.”
So I got on the phone. “Hello, Mark.”
“Hello, Mr. Luft.” I called him Mark, he called me Mr. Luft. He said to me, “You know, I’m very much in love with Judy and we’re getting married. I love the children, too, and I’ll be a very good father.”
“Listen,” I said, “why don’t you just play husband and I’ll be the father.” That was the only time I ever talked to Mark Herron.
Our divorce was finalized in May 1965, and Judy and Mark got married in Vegas the following November. She was just totally out of it for the occasion, so wobbly that she could hardly stand up. It was pathetic. Snowda Wu was along for the trip, so that explains it. The nurse wasn’t around for long, though. Judy turned on her, and Snowy packed her bags and headed back to Hong Kong.
Mark Herron didn’t stick around long either. He and Judy separated within six months after their wedding ceremony. To hear her tell it, Mark simply went away and didn’t bother to leave a forwarding address. “He just walked into my life like most people have as if I’m some kind of terminal,” Judy later said.
Like Grand Central Station, people just walk in and out, or right straight through. Some stay around until the building closes. After I married Mark, I practically couldn’t find him. He actually left right after the wedding ceremony; he said he had to be back
in Los Angeles to work with some little theater group. It hadn’t been too bad to fight with Sid Luft. He could fight back. But I never knew where Mark was. I used to hear from him once in a while. I think he called from a phone booth on casters.
So Judy and Mark split up. Godfrey Isaac, Judy’s new lawyer, later asked for an annulment, citing that Judy “entered into the marriage as a result of fraud” and that the marriage had never been consummated. That’s unsurprising, as Mark was gay; he went back to living with his longtime lover, actor Henry Brandon, who was sixteen years his senior.
From 1961 to 1966, Judy’s gross income was between $12 million and $15 million. But no matter how much she worked, no matter how many concerts she performed or television shows she did, she was always in debt. By the fall of 1966, Judy realized how serious her financial difficulties were. There was no money coming in, debts were piling up, and her house was threatened with foreclosure. “It’s because of the people I’ve known most of my life,” Judy tried to explain to a reporter. “They get into the Judy Garland business. They take all the money and I find myself with nothing left but bills.”
Judy had been advised to file for bankruptcy, but she refused. She was more than $100,000 in debt and owed more than $400,000 to the government. There was a sign placed on Judy’s house on Rockingham saying it was to be sold within ninety days because she hadn’t made any arrangements with the IRS whatsoever. The government had also put a lien on Capitol Records and any people who owed her any money. My thought was always that the American government should have paid Judy—as a national treasure!
Judy was also recognizing that those she’d considered to be her real friends were no longer her friends at all. They’d all disappeared, including Fields and Begelman, who wouldn’t talk to her. She couldn’t even get them on the phone anymore. Judy was desperate. That’s when I was called back into the picture. It was September 1966 when Judy phoned me to say she was penniless and didn’t have any food in the house. “I want to see you, Sid,” she said. “I’m broke!” This was after twenty-six episodes of The Judy Garland Show, fifty or more successful concerts, three stints in Vegas, and the Carnegie Hall album. She’d earned over $10 million, and now she was broke. And I had known she would be.