Judy Garland - Me and My Shadows, 2001

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Review: Movie, "Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows"

Host: NOAH ADAMS
Time: 9:00-10:00 PM

NOAH ADAMS, host:

This Sunday and Monday, ABC Television will air a four-hour miniseries called "Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows." It's based on a memoir by Garland's daughter, Lorna Luft. Australian actress Judy Davis stars. Ken Tucker has a review.

KEN TUCKER reporting:

I had two simultaneous, contradictory thoughts as soon as I heard that Judy Davis was going to play Judy Garland. The first was she's perfect. There's enough of a physical resemblance that with a little makeup could allow for this terrific actress to pull off a credible impersonation. My other thought was Judy Davis on TV doing a four-hour impersonation as Judy Garland, icon of camp sentimentality and emotional and pharmaceutical excess? Why would Judy Davis want to do that?

Well, it turns out that Davis, who starred in movies ranging from "My Brilliant Career" to Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry," is extraordinary as Garland. She's got Judy Garland's essential creative paradox and iron-willed vulnerability down cold. And I've never seen an actress pull off the quality of lip-syncing that Davis does in the full-length musical numbers recreated from movies like "Meet Me in St. Louis" and Garland's landmark 1961 Carnegie Hall comeback concert.

And the thing is the TV movie, directed by Robert Allen Ackerman, is amazing for a full 45 minutes before Judy Davis first appears on screen. Tammy Blanchard, a relatively unknown young actress, plays Judy as a child, and her performance, even when reproducing extremely familiar scenes from "The Wizard of Oz," is fresh, involving and right on the money.

The main flaw in this production is its source material. It's too bad they used Lorna Luft's book, because "Me and My Shadows" becomes more about Luft's own tough times at precisely the moment where we want to see more of Judy Davis entering Garland's grand diva period, popping pills and suffering breakdowns that never finally break her down. We want more scenes of unsparing examinations such as this one, where Judy Davis takes a tritely composed scene, a psychiatric session, and makes it hum with tension.

(Soundbite from "Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows")

Unidentified Man: Tell me about yourself. Tell me about Judy Garland.

Ms. JUDY DAVIS ("Judy Garland"): Which Judy Garland is that, Doctor? There's the little girl who just wanted to be a nurse. That was in Photoplay about 1937. Or maybe you'd prefer the Life magazine version. That one had Judy in a white blouse with a perfectly sweet little bow--quite the homemaker. The studio does everything it can to keep Judy Garland's star shiny.

Unidentified Man: All right then. Tell me about Francis Gump(ph).

Ms. DAVIS: Oh, she's long gone; at least we all hope she is. Nobody wanted her, especially not Judy Garland.

TUCKER: "Me and My Shadows" suffers from the limitations of network television. It can't really plumb the depth of Garland's substance abuse, and it's annoyingly coy with intimations about the homosexuality of her father and a couple of her husbands, including the great director Vincente Minnelli, who's portrayed by Hugh Laurie in as witty a way as he can with such a frustratingly small amount of screen time.

As it is, though, Judy Davis' Garland will probably stand as one of the great performances you'll see on any screen, big or small, this year.

ADAMS: Ken Tucker is critic at large for Entertainment Weekly.

(Soundbite of "Over the Rainbow")

ADAMS: Entertainment in the Holy Land coming up on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

Content and Programming copyright ¿ 2001 National Public Radio, Inc. All rights reserved.

Yellow Brick Road as a One-Way Street to Misery

By CARYN JAMES, New York Times

Published: February 23, 2001

TELEVISION/RADIO; The Rewards And the Risks Of Playing an Icon

By BERNARD WEINRAUB (NYT)

Published: December 10, 2000

LOS ANGELES - THE scene is a harrowing one. Judy Garland is sitting in a conference room in the early 1960's. Her television variety show is on the ropes. A smarmy CBS executive tells her that compared with other stars on the network, she makes the audience uncomfortable. ''Who makes them comfortable?'' she asks. The executive solemnly replies, ''Lassie.'' Garland says, wanly, ''I'm not Lassie.''
The scene from ''Me and My Shadows,'' an ABC film starring Judy Davis as Garland, both illustrates the humiliations Garland faced at the end of her career and testifies to her extraordinary impact. If television executives found her excessive, live audiences surged to see her. ''She aimed for an intensity that became thrilling for both herself and the audience,'' Ms. Davis said. ''Her songs and orchestrations wind up and reach some peak you can't imagine. If she went any further, she'd have a heart attack and she'd be dead in front of you, and you get the feeling that even then she wouldn't mind.''

The film, which will be shown in late February (in either three hours on one night or four hours over two nights), is based on the 1998 book ''Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir'' by Garland's daughter Lorna Luft. Early screenings of portions of the film show Ms. Davis -- with the help of makeup, wigs and prosthetics -- bearing an eerie resemblance to Garland. At 45, she is two years younger than Garland was when she died of an accidental overdose of pills in 1969.

The expensive ($12 million) film, which recounts Garland's troubled life and her intense bond with her children, is a risk because she is, like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, an iconic cultural figure whose talents have almost been consumed by her tragic persona.

Susan Lyne, executive vice president of movies and miniseries at ABC, said that the biggest risk for the network was finding the right actress. ''You've got to do a movie about Judy Garland only with an actress who has the juice to take on that role -- and Judy Davis has it,'' Ms. Lyne said.

Ms. Davis, a smart, funny and engaging actress who has played other divas, including Edith Piaf and Lillian Hellman, said that Judy Garland was the hardest role of her 25-year career. Weeks after filming had ended, she said, she could not entirely free herself from Judy Garland.

''With Garland there's always a line you're frightened of crossing,'' Ms. Davis said, seated in the coffee shop of a West Hollywood hotel shortly before flying back to her husband and two children in Sydney, Australia. ''It's daunting to play someone that talented. And whether she's just sitting there having a drink or whether it's hysteria, there's a line that you must not cross, because then you go into caricature and that's too awful to contemplate.''

Ms. Davis said she had become unusually upset and broke down watching a scene in which she, as Garland, realized that her managers were stealing her money and that she was broke. ''It was upsetting because it was real, and she was also physically sick and obese and sick with drugs and I was relating it,'' Ms. Davis said. ''This role demanded every part of me. She was bigger than me, much more talented with much bigger emotions. She was braver. So I had to get bigger to play her.''

The film covers Garland's life from the time she began performing on stage as Frances ''Baby'' Gumm at the age of 2 in Grand Rapids, Minn., through her stardom in ''The Wizard of Oz'' and her golden but tortured career at MGM, where she worked nonstop and became addicted to the pills that eventually killed her. In her 30's and 40's, Garland's life and career were marked by failures, comebacks, money problems, a suicide attempt and shattered marriages. Her voice was dimming, too, partly because she had overworked it and partly because of her addiction to pills, which damaged her vocal cords.

''She was a tremendous pill abuser -- she was known to take 40 Ritalins a day,'' Ms. Davis said. ''She was a creature of great extremes. It's hard to avoid the reality of what was done to her at MGM when she was 13. Once they realized her effect on audiences and that she was brilliantly talented, they just worked her into the ground. The only time she had a holiday was when she had a nervous breakdown.

''Maybe the system destroyed her, but everybody participated in it, including Garland. She wanted to be a movie star. She was very ambitious. And she made her pact with the devil: 'Yes, I'll take the Benzedrine to lose weight. I'll take them all. I'll do whatever you want.' ''

Ms. Davis said she had read every book about Garland and had watched the numerous videos of her interviews and performances. ''Playing her scared me, to tell you the truth,'' Ms. Davis said. ''It was the sort of challenge I didn't need because there was an in-built failure to it. I was frightened all the way through filming, which was unusual for me. Every day. But I knew I couldn't have taken one step forward if I kept worrying that people who knew her will say, 'Well, she didn't walk that way,' or, 'She didn't speak like that.' I suppose in the end the danger for me was that I would not be able to inhabit her in a truthful way.''

Garland's life has proved surprisingly elusive for television and films. Jackie Cooper directed a 1976 television drama, ''Rainbow,'' that featured Andrea McArdle as Garland through her work on ''The Wizard of Oz.'' It was critically panned.

The producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron acquired the rights to Luft's book two years ago. They have made television musicals like ''Annie,'' ''Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella'' and ''Gypsy'' (with Bette Midler), as well as the TV drama ''Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story'' with Glenn Close and Ms. Davis. Both Ms. Close and Ms. Davis won Emmys for their roles in the real-life story of a lesbian seeking to break down barriers in the military.

Mr. Zadan and Mr. Meron said that Ms. Davis was their first choice to play Garland, partly because of her talents and partly because of a faint physical resemblance. ''We needed a truly great actress who would not do an imitation of Garland but would have the talent and depth and intelligence to create a character that would remind us of Garland,'' Mr. Meron said.

By coincidence, Martha Luttrell, Ms. Davis's agent, had called Mr. Zadan and Mr. Meron to tell them that her client -- who had performed in musical theater in Australia -- was seeking a singing role and to ask if there was anything in the offing. Mr. Zadan told Ms. Luttrell: ''You're not going to believe this, but we just bought this book about Judy Garland. And the only person Neil and I can think of is Judy Davis.'' (Ms. Davis is not heard singing in the movie; she lip-synchs to recordings of Garland.) The cast includes Victor Garber as Sid Luft and Hugh Laurie as Vincente Minnelli, two of Garland's five husbands, and Marsha Mason as Ethel Gumm, Garland's mother, who relentlessly pushed her child's career.

Robert Allan Ackerman, the director, whose credits include ''Bent'' and ''Salome'' on Broadway, said that the danger in making the film was focusing on Garland's personal life at the expense of her artistry. ''This is a great artist, a thrilling artist, and it would really do her a disservice not to focus on that,'' Mr. Ackerman said. ''You didn't want a horror movie or 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.' You had to exercise restraint at every level. And what people forget is that she not only had that voice, she was also an incredibly gifted actress and comedian, which was repressed by MGM because they wanted her to play a certain kind of well-intentioned, well-meaning, vulnerable girl.''

Ms. Luft, who is a co-producer of the film and who was on the set in Toronto, said she had written her book because other biographies of her mother were inaccurate. ''I wanted to talk about Judy Garland as the person I knew her as -- my mom,'' said Ms. Luft, who was 16 when her mother died. ''I didn't know her as an icon. I didn't know her as an idol.''

Ms. Luft and her brother, Joey Luft, a photographer, are the children of Ms. Garland and her one-time manager Sid Luft. Liza Minnelli, Ms. Luft's older half-sister, is the daughter of the director Vincente Minnelli. Ms. Luft said she had tried to convey in the book that Ms. Garland, although deeply troubled, was a caring mother.

''She loved her children more than anything in the world,'' Ms. Luft said. ''Sure, maybe it wasn't a conventional childhood, but it was the only childhood I knew. We lived in hotels, we lived in houses, we lived in apartments. I went to God knows how many schools. It was exciting and, yes, it was sometimes sad.''

Ms. Luft added that the biggest misconception about her mother was that she was a tragic figure.

''She wasn't tragic,'' Ms. Luft said. ''She had tragedies in her life. But she had great optimism and a great sense of humor. And she knew how brilliantly talented she was.''

Ms. Davis said that she had shied away from speaking to Ms. Luft about her mother. ''I asked Lorna about something once and she seemed to be a bit taken aback by the question,'' Ms. Davis said. ''I felt that there are probably areas of the relationship with Garland that Lorna has maybe blocked out or it's too painful or she just doesn't know or doesn't want to go there -- doesn't want to contemplate the possibility that it might be true. I respect that. I didn't want to trample all over her.''

Ms. Davis, who is married to the actor Colin Friels and has a 13-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter, said that dropping her Australian accent had not been a problem. She has done so many times, after all, as one of Woody Allen's favorite actresses, having appeared in ''Celebrity,'' ''Alice,'' ''Deconstructing Harry'' and ''Husbands and Wives,'' which earned her a 1993 Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. Although most of her work is in American films, Ms. Davis said she has never contemplated moving to Los Angeles. ''It makes me terribly nervous here,'' she said. ''Every second person is an actor. I wanted a more normal city.''

Ms. Davis said it would take a while for her to get over playing Garland. In her research she read about Garland's lovers, including Artie Shaw, Tyrone Power, Orson Welles and the writer and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz. ''I found something Mankiewicz said that stayed with me,'' Ms. Davis recalled. ''He said Judy was like an animal from a forest covered with dew. And you see her in those early films and you see what he means: she's all trembling and vulnerable in the true sense of word. Not weak, but strong, too. She's very naked and exposed, and that's unusual for an actor.'' With a smile, Ms. Davis said, ''I don't think I'll ever play anyone like her again because there was no one quite like her.'

Another Complex Character; Judy Davis Tackles a Hollywood Myth and Mystery

The Washington Post; 2/25/2001

In hindsight, we might remember Judy Garland in snapshots: Star of a landmark movie, "The Wizard of Oz," and other hits as well; singer of "Over the Rainbow," a song that raised tears in the eyes of sympathetic listeners when she sang it later in her relatively short, troubled life.

ABC sets out Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m. to turn the snapshot into a miniseries portrait, "Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows," based on the memoir by Lorna Luft, Garland's daughter and half-sister of singer-actress Liza Minnelli.

The lead role goes to the talented Australian actress Judy Davis.

Luft, a vocalist whose singing talent never carried her as far as her mother and half-sister, is a co-executive producer of the TV project, which chronicles Garland's roller-coaster personal and professional ride over 45 years -- from her first stage appearance at age 2 to her death at 47 in 1969.

On hand to help tell the tale are Victor Garber as Garland's third husband, Sid Luft. Hugh Laurie adds Vincente Minnelli, the distinguished movie director and husband number two, and Marsha Mason plays Garland's show-biz minded mother, Ethel Gumm.

At the heart of the show, of course, is Garland, a complicated woman played by Davis, who has demonstrated mastery of complex roles before.

Davis, approaching her 46th birthday in April, sang with a band for a time before committing herself to acting.

She once played Juliet to Mel Gibson's Romeo at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Australia. Actor Colin Friels was a fellow student, too, and he and Davis married.

Her work has often found her playing distinctive, strong women, occasionally on the eccentric side. Critic Leonard Maltin calls her one of the best actresses working.

The role that put her on the American movie map was that of Sybylla Melvyn in "My Brilliant Career." The 1979 film received international acclaim. In 1984, Davis was nominated for an Oscar for her work in "A Passage to India."

Recent work has included the movies "Barton Fink" and "Absolute Power" and the role of Lillian Hellman in "Dash and Lilly" on A&E.

Now the actress from Perth plays a precocious talent from Grand Rapids, Minn.

Garland had a recording contract at age 14, was a major movie star while still in her teens in "The Wizard of Oz" in 1939, and made one of the film's songs, "Over the Rainbow," an icon.

That, it turns out, is only part of the story.

-- Michael E. Hill

Copyright 2001, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

`Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows,' airing on ABC.(The Dallas Morning News)

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service; 2/19/2001; Bark, Ed

Clang, clang, clang goes the ringing endorsement for ABC's "Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows."

Its centerpiece performance, by an altogether sensational Judy Davis, ranks high on the list of television's all-timers. Also included: newcomer Tammy Blanchard's star-is-born turn as a teen-age Judy Garland.

Their parlay zings the strings, usually from the vicinity of heartbreak hotel. In the annals of high-profile entertainers, few outwardly soared so high, inwardly cried so hard. Garland threw herself into show-stopping renditions of "Get Happy" without ever finding a way to close the deal herself. She died in 1969 at age 47 from an overdose of sleeping pills. Fifth husband Mickey Deans found the body. You won't find a better show biz bio than this.

Adapted from the 1998 bestseller by Garland's second daughter, Lorna Luft, "Me and My Shadows" is not in the "Mommie Dearest" mode of tell-all backatchas. Nor is it a varnished Valentine. Emotionally mutilated by a domineering stage mother and a belittling movie studio, the former Frances Ethel "Baby" Gumm found herself battling demons almost from birth.

Still, she became her own worst enemy in the end, succumbing to a lethal cocktail of self-adulation born of terminal insecurity. Everyone eventually would betray her. She'd see to that. A constant regimen of drugs, booze and cigarettes didn't help either.

The four-hour miniseries begins with 2-year-old "Baby" singing "Jingle Bells" at a talent show in Grand Rapids, Minn.. Momma Ethel (Marsha Mason) is in the audience while father Frank is in the wings holding hands with another man. It should be noted that the film, awkwardly at times, hints at the bisexuality of three principal men in Garland's life _ her father, second husband Vincente Minnelli and fourth husband Mark Herron. Garland, whose own sexual orientation never comes into play, long has had a huge following in the gay community.

"Me and My Shadows'" principal despots are Ethel Gumm, eventually disowned by her daughter, and MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer (Al Waxman), who refers to his prize property as "my little hunchback."

Constantly prodded to lose weight and artificially energized by studio-condoned pep pills, young Judy is portrayed as a sweetheart being eaten from within. Her beloved father's sudden death accelerates the process.

"I look at the rushes and all I see is this fat little frightening pig in pigtails," she tells fellow MGM child star Mickey Rooney. He empathizes with her but otherwise has eyes for the studio's more glamorous girls.

Blanchard superbly plays the giggly, formative Judy, who both yearns to be somebody and longs to be left alone. But her yellow brick roads are always cul-de-sacs. Boxed in and programmed by MGM, she becomes dependent on uppers, downers and the ever-demonic Mayer. In a chilling scene, he orders her to stay away from a hot nightspot, Ciro's, and bandleader Artie Shaw, with whom she's become infatuated.

"I love you as a father loves a child, and you have been a bad girl," Mayer says. "But I'll forgive you Please, don't break a father's heart."

Exhausted and vacant-eyed from copious pill-popping, Judy later collapses on the set of a musical after director Busby Berkley keeps demanding more, more, more of her. It's an incredible sequence.

Blanchard's performance is so vivid and appealing that it briefly seems a shame to lose her about two-thirds of the way through Sunday's Part One. But Davis quickly takes command in a seamless transition that has her on the verge of starring in an amazingly replicated "Meet Me in St. Louis." The film's director, Minnelli (Hugh Laurie), soon will be her second husband despite warnings that he might be not be a suitable bedmate.

"He adores me," Garland explains. "And I need to be adored."

They have Liza together before she drives him away with her increasingly erratic behavior. Dumped by MGM and strapped for money that once came easy, she's a virtual has-been by the time she meets and marries Sid Luft (fine work by Victor Garber).

He's soon plotting a triumphant comeback at Manhattan's historic RKO Palace. On Oct. 16, 1951, Garland becomes a star anew before a celebrity-packed audience.

This also is the point where Davis registers indelibly while performing "Over the Rainbow" in a tramp's outfit. Her lip-syncing is flawless, but it's her up-close range of emotions that capture what this performance must have meant to Garland. Her face smudged with greasepaint, her eyes welling with tears, she sits on the lip of the stage and is instantly spellbinding. What a way to end Part One, but what can Davis possibly do for an encore?

Monday's conclusion shows she still has plenty in reserve. Whether ballooning to 180 pounds (a startling makeup job) or slimming back down to a chain-smoking lush, Davis is never in less than magnificent form. Memorable scenes abound, whether she's psyching herself backstage for a classic Carnegie Hall performance or upbraiding CBS executives who say her new variety show has "too much touching of the guests."

By this time, Garland has left Luft after having two children with him, Lorna and Joey. Their custody fights are heart-rending, with Garland repeatedly falling into various states of disrepair while her kids pay steeper prices.

Davis never spares herself, increasingly looking like hell while putting others through same in a series of tough, raw scenes. On Garland's last birthday, June 10, 1969, she's in London getting greetings over the phone from her three children.

"Goodbye. A million kisses to each of you," she says, seeming to really mean it. Then she immediately tells new hubby, Mickey, "I need a drink."

No question she means that, too.

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