Good evening and welcome to the Hollywood Babylonians. Oh hello, hello friends.
This is your happy Hollywood History host mister Ben Burke here with another episode of
the Hollywood Babylonians, your Favorite Classic Film in Hollywood History podcast, in which
we talk about the greatest classic films of old Hollywood and the history behind them.
And today we are talking about our seventh film on the Hollywood Babylonian seven.
Can you believe it? We're really getting up there, And that is
producer Arthur Fried's and Vincent Minelli's nineteen forty four Technicolor musical Family Valentine Meet me
in Saint Louis, starring Judy Garland, Mary Astor, Lucille Brimmer, Joan
Carrol Marcot, O, Brian Leon, Ames, Harry Davenport, Marjorie Main
and on, oh and Tom Drake the Boy next Door, and on and
on and on. And today I have joining me that wonderful actress, that
wonderful songstress of the Broadway stage, off Broadway stage all over, and I
think a lover of Judy as well. And that is my great friend Ruby
Racos. Hello, Ruby, Hi, Ben, Thank you for inviting me.
Oh of course I am so excited and so honored to have you on.
How have you been lately? I've been good. Not much going on
in the theater world for me, but you know, I'm still here,
I'm still kicking. Well that's okay. How much you're performing is not based
on yourself worth. You're a wonderful human being no matter what you do.
So I'm so glad that we finally got to record this episode because I feel
like I messaged you over a year ago and was like, let's do an
episode on meet me in Saint Louis, and then life got in the way.
And then a year later and I messaged you, and then it was
several weeks of I got sick, and then you had something, and finally
we're getting together and we're doing this, so I hope it's I hope this
goes well. I'm making sure that it's recording so we don't have to do
it again. But anyway, I would love for you too. I've been
talking a lot, so I would love for you to tell your the our
audience kind of your your background and how that led into your involvement with Judy
and what you've done that has brilliantly depicted Miss Judy Garland. Yeah, so
I have played Judy Garland in a new musical about her childhood called Chasing Rainbows
the Road to Oz for almost nine years maybe now, since I was in
high school. And so this it's a part of her life that's not widely
explored or discussed since it's not as sensationalized as other parts of her life.
But it starts with her at six years old, you know, moving to
Antelope Valley in California and going to Hollywood, and then you know, jumps
to her twelve years old performing with her sisters as the Gum Sisters on the
Vaudeville circuit and finally landing a contract at MGM, and eventually ends with The
Wizard of Oz with the filming of the Wizard of Oz. So it's only
up through like age sixteen, and I think it's a part of her life
that is really interesting. And I've spent most of my research on Judy focused
on that earlier part in her life. So this is actually I'm not as
familiar with Meme and Saint Louis or her life at that time as I would
be you know, other movies, but it's still I mean, Judy did
say it was one of her favorite films, so I'm happy to talk about
it. Oh yeah, and yes, I mean anything that involves Judy Garland.
I think she had really a life like no other. But she had
a life like no other. So whether you know it's little Judy when she
first started performing, or whether it's Judy at twenty one, you know,
she basically by the time she left MGM, she had lived seventy five years
compared to a lot of us for what she had done. I was just
listening to the commentary on the blu ray that I have of Meet Me in
Saint Louis done by the fabulous mister John Frickey, which I know, you
know, I have not had that pleasure, so hopefully one day I will
have the pleasure. But I don't know if there's anybody I've ever heard or
read about, or any anybody that loves Judy like John Fricky does, and
he talks about her with such passion, And what I appreciate about him is
that he doesn't over sensationalize her life, which I feel like so many people
do, because she has such an interesting backstory. Yeah, John John is
actually he's our sort of resident Judy historian and consultant on Chasing Rainbows and a
friend of mine. I love him very dearly. I've been going through some
of his books that I have to do research for this episode, so I
definitely will be will probably be quoting some stuff that he wrote. He is,
he is, he is truly. His thing about Judy is that he's
he's very protective of her and he cares very deeply about her as a person,
and to sort of boil her down just to the tragedy or the like,
you know, the negative things that happened in her life is really just
kind of missing the whole point. So he's he's really wonderful. Yes,
he is. Well, yeah, he's awesome. Hopefully one day I'll get
to meet him. But he was on a podcast recently called The Extras,
and he was talking about Judy at one hundredth. Also, this is her
one hundredth birthday this year. It was back in June, so yes,
and but he was talking, well, he just talked about her, Like
I was like, there's probably her husband's probably didn't even love her as much
as he did, you know, and more than likely because the majority of
their her husbands were homosexual. But he's seen her perform live too, which
is he did. Yeah, Okay, he saw her twice, I believe.
Okay, do you know, I guess that was in the sixties more
than likely. Maybe in the yeah, yeah, but yes, and yeah,
it's it's amazing. After her film career, she went on to a
very fab or just an amazing, prestigious career on the stage as a concert
performer. And that's where she made all she made and lost all of her
money and her later years as well. But I was going to say,
talking about like Judy, this is her favorite movie. She she loved the
like the ending sequences of the film, and this entire film is built upon
sequences and vignettes in Saint Louis when it's snowing and the families together at Christmas
time, because that reminded her of her childhood in Minnesota before her mother picked
her up and threw her into California and being with her father, And she
loved that because it reminded her of the close as a family and feeling good
and feeling warm, and you know, she never had that after she left.
I don't think but that she often referred to that as the happiest time
in her life. So that's one reason why she said Esther Smith was her
favorite role. So I wanted to ask you, Oh, I had a
question on the top on the tip of my tongue, but I can't remember
about something about John Fricky, But so you talked about Oh, I was
going to ask Chasing Rainbows. So I wasn't sure because I knew that was
a big deal at paper Mill Playhouse right before the pandemic, and I was
going to get tickets, but I couldn't because I mean, we were introduced
by a wonderful, wonderful person named Lacy Franklin, and she was like,
oh, you can get tickets at the last minute, It'll be fine.
And then I tried to get tickets and they were like five hundred dollars and
three left, and I was like, what happened? It's because you're so
talented and the show was so amazing. So is it still like, oh,
is it still going on or are there are people behind it that are
still trying to I guess plug it. Yes, one hundred percent. The
panda did not kill us, That's that's for sure. There's a lot of
really fun and exciting stuff coming up. You know, I can't talk about
it, but you know, just keep keep an ear out, you know,
Yes, it's still here. It's still kicking, awesome, amazing,
that's so exciting. Yeah, and you had a spectacular cast in that as
well. And I know a lot of us are very excited that it might
one day go to the Broadway. But I guess we'll just have to wait
and see, and that you'll be there to lead the way. But anyway,
I wanted to now segue into the film that we're actually talking about,
which is Meet Me in Saint Louis. And do you remember, like the
first time, what your thoughts are, just you know, general thoughts on
this movie and Judy, I've only seen this movie a few times. The
first time I remember seeing it was only a few years ago. Yeah,
I think it was Christmas. I think I decided to watch it because,
I mean, for some reason, you know, everyone always says it's a
Christmas movie, and so I was like, okay, i'll watch it.
And it was on Christmas and I'm watching the movie and I'm like, there's
about I don't know, thirty twenty thirty minutes of it that's Christmas, Like
it's I was like, oh, okay, it's not a Christmas movie.
It just has like one of the best Christmas songs of all time in it,
and so that the whole Halloween sequence is absolutely insane. Yeah, I
don't I don't know what my first impression of it was, mostly that I
was surprised that it wasn't a Christmas movie. Probably yeah, because I know,
I know a lot of people who it's like their favorite Judy movie,
whereas MY favorites are usually her early stuff, where I, you know,
I just mostly don't think she's on you know, on screen enough in the
earlier stuff. Basically. Yeah, And the music from some of the older
films are in the show Chasing Rainbows, and I, you know, sing
them myself. Hearing them is always a joy. But I didn't realize how
many there's not that many new songs in this show. I mean, we've
got me, We've got like the Boy next Door in the trolley song,
and I think have yourself a merry little Christmas. And I think that's it
for original music that was written for the show. Yeah. Oh, and
skip to My lou Apparently Ralph it says it's Ralph Blaine. Also did the
music and lyrics to skip to My lou And then there's a deleted song that
I have not found. It's called Boys and Girls Like You and Me and
she did go on to perform it in some places, so it's got to
be around somewhere. Yes one. Yeah. Boys and Girls Like You and
Me Were was written by Rogers and Hammerstein for Oklahoma the Broadway Show in nineteen
forty three. And there's a lot of listening to the commentary by John Fricky
because he just knows everything about Judy. This movie had so many deleted scenes,
and I think the original runtime was over two hours, and Boys and
Girls Like You and Me was one of the things that got dropped because Minnelli
felt that, you know, this film was one of the very first to
kind of stray away from the movie musical formula in the fact that it psychologically
and emotionally furthered the plot and what the characters were feeling, and it gave
you new information about how this plot develops. And he just felt like Boys
and Girls Like You and Me was Minelli did was commentary on exactly what was
going on. He was like, we don't need this because this is you
know over this is overstating a hat on a hat exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, well, one thing that Judy was very surprised by working with
Manelli because this is the first time she's really she's worked with him as a
director. And she had said that the first that first scene with her sister,
right lou Sail Brimmer with Yeah, with Lucille Brahmer, he made her
do it eleven times, which up until that point she's kind of she was
kind of known as like a one take wonder pretty much. She you know,
shows up, does it perfect the first time and goes home. H
So she's very surprised and was just thought she had completely lost her talent and
her touch because she was like, how like he maybe do it over and
over again, like was I really that terrible? And it turned out he
really just wanted to get her out of herself and into into the character of
esther, who you know, significantly younger than her and you know, it's
nineteen oh three, she's you know, seventeen years old, so he was
just trying to get her, you know, more to be more natural,
right, And once she sort of caught on to the way that Manelli works
and what he wanted from her. They had a a great working relationship and
then obviously later marriage. Yes, yes, and that that's awesome. I've
heard about Like the very first scene that Judy shot with Manelli. She had
been working with Charles Walters for several weeks and he's the one that did really
like the skip to Myleu sequence, trolley song sequence, and Chuck Walters was
a choreographer MGM, a choreographer and director at MGM who also directed Easter Parade
Funny Enough, another film with Judy. But the very first day that she's
shot with Manelli, she I know that everybody was a little bit stand offish
because Manelli had only directed two films at that point, which where I DoD
It in Cabin and This Guy, and both were successful for the studio.
But they felt that he was too green and Judy had always played as I
know, you know, she was. Mayor called her his uh her,
his little hunchback, you know, he had she had always been this this
smart girl that wasn't pretty enough. You know. Mickey Rooney really didn't realize
that he was in love with her until the very last real because apparently she
wasn't beautiful enough. She was the next door neighbor who was who had a
very wry sense of humor. You know, she kind of came out with
Zinger. She had a great sense of humor, which I don't think many
people realize. But up until Esther Smith, she had never played like the
Lana Turner type on Janu at MGM, and I know that she really didn't
want to play this role, and so she was saying all the lines with
kind of a wink and a nod, particularly because you know, she thought
the script was a little bit silly. Everybody did, and she also it
was just Judy's sense of humor. It was Judy Garland being Judy Garland,
and it took her. I know. They took several takes in the morning
and then Minelly Broke called for lunch, and then at lunch, Arthur Freed
came to see him and said, well, I've just talked to Judy and
she thinks she's lost her talent. She's absolutely heartbroken, which made Manelli kind
of distraught, and he was like, don't worry. I told her,
you know exactly what you're doing. So they came back, and you know
it, it was a time before he completely got her to break down into
that character, which I think is a really beautiful character because like, like
you know, we talked about, she had never played the entreneur before,
and she this kind of beautiful type of leading lady she had never done.
And he was the one that first photographed her, you know, framed her
in beautiful composition, in beautiful technicolor. And then on top of that,
Dottie Pontadell, do you know who she is? Her makeup woman. So
before Dottie Pontadell, I believe Judy was just her makeup was done by the
head of Metro's makeup department, which was Bill Tuttle or William Tuttle and William
and she never was made to feel beautiful by William Tuttle and Minnelli. Somebody
brought in Dorothy Pontadell, who had done makeup for a lot of people at
this point. But Judy came in with all of these caps for her teeth
and disks that she would insert into her nose to make her nose look different,
and you know all of these things. Was like, you need to
do this to make sure I look like this on screen, And Dottie Pontadell
said, no, no, you're a very beautiful girl. We don't need
to do much. So she just raised her eyebrow, made her bottom lip
very full, and then put white eyelander under her eyes and put a very
very thin layer of bass on and she said, and she was Judy,
and she was beautiful, and she plucked her hairlined a little bit, but
that's besides the point. So but it was. I think it was one
of the very first times. And that's one of the reasons that I think
Garland fell in love with Minelli the way she did, because she had kind
of a stand off. She didn't like exactly working with him, because he
was a perfectionist. Most people that see this movie are like, it is
just technicolor fluff. There's not much to it. Technically. It's an amazing,
amazing film for the time, because so many of the shots are these
great, big, swooping long shots throughout the house, throughout a two story
structure that they built, and they built an entire streak for this movie.
What he does with lighting, Manelli and the cinematographer, what they do with
lighting, Oh no, I've lost my thought again. But going into like
Judy looking beautiful, it being technologically more advanced than other films there. Yeah,
there is a lot to it. And then I mean, we could
talk about so many people say there's absolutely no plot to this film, which
I think for nineteen for war torn America in nineteen forty four, there is
definitely a plot to the film. Yeah, which was you know, it
came out at the absolute perfect time in November of nineteen forty four, because
people were just exhausted by the war. They wanted it to be over and
to show a film. I mean, this is a type of film that
you know, would show up these type of plots on television in the fifties
and sixties, but at this time people didn't have television. These were beautiful
family sequences that were constructed very one fully by Manelli and by everyone involved.
And it touched America's hearts, I guess you could say, in a different
way than it ever had before. And the fact that it broke away from
the American musical film formula, you know, and it gave people a nuisance
of what a musical could be was one of the reasons that it was.
I believe it was the most successful film musical that MGM had ever seen.
Also, well, and it might have been the most successful film that MGM
ever saw outside of be Gone with the Wind. But what I was going
to say about Judy and Minelli them Judy seeing herself in the rushes and being
like, oh, you actually actually shot me very beautifully, was that she
did not like working with Manelli because he was a perfectionist. She was known
as a one take wonder and he would have them like the dinner sequence at
the very beginning of the film was an exhausting sequence because he had to you
know, there were so many things on the table, there were so many
things around the room. They had to constantly be reset and reset and reset.
And Margaret O'Brien at five or six years old, kept constantly playing pranks
on the prop master and messing everything up, and so they had to go
back and retake and retake and retake, and Minnelly kept calling rehearsals for scenes
like that or like scenes like it. Took a lot of rehearsal with the
camera, with the dancers, with everybody to get that all put together,
and Judy did not exactly like that. He had to keep because Judy would
do like one rehearsal then run off the stage jump in her car, and
he said he had constantly have to call the policeman at the gate to intercept
Judy and be like, no, no, we're not finished yet. But
she didn't exactly fall in love with him until she saw the finished product,
and then she trusted him as a human being and as a director. And
then of course he went on to direct her in the Clock, which is
one of her best I think probably her best performance as an actress at MGM
is in the Clock, and you know, from there on its history.
Yeah, I mean I could understand why she yeah, because since she was
the one take wonder. She was also notorious her being late. There's one
story John Ferky writes about where they were waiting for her to record. I
think it was The Boy next Door or something, and they waited for her
for five hours and she shows up with her two little dogs five hours late,
and they're like, oh, do you want to run through it once?
She's like no, I'm good, yeah, and she does like one
take and then it's like you got it and like leaves and it's and it
was perfect, you know, like she didn't need she didn't need the constant
again and again and again all that time. Yeah, she was also there
was a lot of sicknesses and absences during the filming of the movie. I
mean she herself was out for like a total of three weeks or so,
and Margaret O'Brien was pulled out of the film at one point by her mother
because she needed rest, right and Judy had actually, you know, saw
a lot of herself in Margaret O'Brien, you know, because she was working
when she was five too, you know, in vaudeville, and so she
I think there's a quote about, you know, how that little girl,
you know, she doesn't she doesn't have a life, you know, like
she doesn't get to have a childhood. I think I heard I think still
Brimmer say that at one point that Jady was very close to Margaret, and
you know, they were all sitting around on set one day and she told
Lucille Brimmer and the other dancers, you know, she she it's very sad
because she doesn't have a life. She's not a normal little girl. Yeah.
Yeah, but yes, and you were also talking about, oh what
what what were you just talking about? You're talking about Margaret And yeah,
I was getting pulled out by her mother yes, her being pulled out.
So that's a that's an interesting story. Because Okay, there's a book called
Get Happy, The Life of Judy Garland by Gerald Clark. Have you read
Get Happy? I believe that is the one of the I don't think that's
the one I read all the way through. I think that's the one I
like stopped after the Wizard of was well, there's a few biographies where I
just stop at the Wizard of Oz and like, don't read the rest of
it. I don't. Well, I don't blame you, first of all,
because I feel like Gerald Clark kind of has well. It's a very
informative and I feel at times well educated book, but it does sit a
lot in over sensationalized Judy, and it focuses a lot on her romantic relationships
and her sexual habits, which I'm like, why do we need to know
all of this information? But yeah, he tells the story of Margaret O'Brien.
Okay, so I've I heard a commentary by Margaret O'Brien and I read
the book. Margaret O'Brien said that halfway through the shooting, Margaret's mother got
the schedule for the rest of the film, and she stormed up to Louis
V. Mayor's office. She was like, this is ridiculous. You cannot
overwork my daughter like this, and he said, you'll do exactly what you're
told. So she pulled her out of the film and they went to I
think they went to South America for a little while to rest, but ended
up going to New York where Low's Incorporated, who owned MGM, was located,
and she went to Nicholas Shank I believe was his name, who was
the head of Lowe's Incorporated, and said, if you want to keep working
with my daughter like this, you are going to pay us more money.
So she got the pay raise and then they got start production back on.
But you were also talking about the illnesses well, and for one Judy,
I mean, she never needed, honestly, more than one take, and
that's the person she was. I feel like when she finally got into the
role of esther, it was it just came naturally, like everything else did
for her. But I know, you know, there was a time I've
read several places where she just completely lost her ability to sleep. And when
you're a movie star and you're required to be on the set at five am
in the morning, bright eyed, bushy tailed. You know that's very stressful
if you look absolutely exhausted, and you know she was on uppers and downers,
and you take too many uppers and downers and you lose your ability to
sleep. And so I know that's one reason why she was late. And
she had to call the ad so lots of times and say, will not
be in today because I cannot sleep, And she called Arthur Freed several times.
But I know there was a sinus infection that ran rampant through meet me
in Saint Louis and added lots of days onto the shooting schedule. But Mary
asked her who played the mother. She eventually got inn ammonia and was in
the hospital for two weeks, and then Joan Carroll, who played Agnes,
got an emergency appendectomy, so she was out for several weeks. Harry Davenport,
I can't remember what happened to him, but he was just he was
just old, you know, and old people in the nineteen forties didn't live
for very long. I don't think anybody lived very long. But I know
he was constantly out due to some different illness. But yes, it was
I would think for the for the type of movie that they were shooting,
that that had to be a very very stressful set for Manelli to be like,
Okay, I set this goal this high and we have to come in
and do this every day. But everybody's getting sick. I'm having you know,
Judy doesn't exactly trust me. And yeah, talking about Judy, this
book by Gerald Clark, who well talked about her relationship with Tom Drake.
And okay, did you know that Tom or the boy next door was supposed
to first be played by Robert Walker, who started opposite her in The Clock,
which I think would have been wonderful. That would have been a different
kind of boy next door. It would have been very bad. That would
have been even added even more chaos to the set because he was a raging
alcoholic. Well, yes, and at that time, at that time,
okay, so you know, Robert Walker was boyfriend girlfriend. His girlfriend was
Jennifer Jones, who was under contract, who was a big movie star under
contract to David O's Selznick. And he found out around this time Robert Walker
did that. Jennifer Jones and Robert Jennifer Jones and David O Selznick were having
an affair, and so that's one reason that perpetuated Robert Walker's alcoholism when he
found out that Jennifer Jones was having an affair with David o' selznick. Yeah,
it would have been absolutely crazy. Another choice Robert Walker didn't work out,
and then they went to Van Johnson and Van I don't know why he
wasn't okay. I mean, he would have been the great boy next door
too. It almost seems like for what you need in the Boy next Door,
Van Johnson would have been a little bit too much. Have you seen
anything with Van Johnson before? No, I haven't, okay. He was
in like some of her later films, like in the Gods Summertime Till the
Clouds Roll By. I think he only made two films, two or three
films with her. But then they finally got to Tom Drake, who was
brand new to the studio, and so was Lucille. Lucia Brimmer was there
because she was Arthur Freed's protege end quotes. I've heard many places that she
and Arthur Freed were hooking up on many, many different levels, and that's
why she got the two or three years at the studio that she did.
But Tom Drake, according to Get Happy Gerald Clark, Tom Drake, you
know, like many men in Hollywood were, was a closeted homosexual, and
so she judy latched onto him, and when they tried to consummate the relationship,
he could not perform, and she took that as a great insult to
her, so she shut him out after that. But also John Fricky has
written that they stayed great friends throughout the years, and that when she was
taping one of her television shows in the early nineteen sixties, he was in
the audience. She brought Tom Drake up to the stage and said, this
is my boy next door, and seeing the boy next to her door to
him, and it was all very sweet and whatnot. So you know,
you really don't know who to believe, do you. No, No,
And it looks like we did a lot of the same research because I read
those same exact stories, except I didn't know about the the Clark stuff.
I didn't know about that, but I did know the all the different all
the different boys next door, the Tom Drake coming on to her show in
the sixties. I mean, I've talked a little bit about like why this
film is so important. I just just have to say on this podcast,
because every prison I talked to about me, Me and Saint Louis, this
is this is one of the very first films I can ever remember seeing,
Like I've been watching old movies with my grandparents since I was three or four
years old, and it's not one of those things that you remember a first
time. It's just always been there, like your parents or your grandparents or
siblings or something like that. And I think, you know, I fell
in love with it because it was very it's a very very comfortable film to
watch if you're part of a big family and you have that in your life.
Also, you know, some people could be like, well, this
is just a bunch of privileged white people, you know, living a high
falutine life in Saint Louis in nineteen oh four. But that's besides the point.
I mean, I think the point that Manelli and Freed were trying to
make was even if this is not how the past looked, this is how
the past should have been, which gave people an even greater warmth. And
it's the evolution of a family over a year. And to say that it
doesn't have a plot is like to say that our lives don't have a plot
or they don't have a point like big families don't. So anyway, I
have to say that say about that. But I did want to talk a
little bit about I mean, I have some notes over the development of it.
And it came out of like Sally Benson's stories, who was She published
her story short stories in a magazine. Arthur Reed read them, Arthur Freed
bought them, and then he went through lots of different screenwriters before he could
find two under contract at Metro that actually wrote something that he liked. But
then also there were all of these little subplots that they had to cut out.
Did you know that Lucille Brimmer was supposed to have a very large love
interest in the film, played by Hugh Marlowe, who was in All about
Eve the Colonel. Have you read some of this? Uh, yeah,
that you know. And there was a plot where Esther is trying to set
her up with the colonel and hides a closet and ends up getting arrested.
Yes, And then there's this big lawsuit I mean they were Yeah, in
the film, there's supposed to be this big lawsuit against the family and they
were grasping at straws. I feel like some of the screenwriters to be like,
this film has no plot. We have to get how do we make
it dramatic exactly? How do we give it some sort of a conflict.
But I mean it was the entire plot, the entire point conflict to the
film is There's no place like Home, which Arthur Freed loved and he was
one of the people that was kind of got Wizard of Oz on the road
with producer Morvin Leroy, even though Arthur Freed is not credited for that film,
but he loved the idea of a big family and it was it.
Does it seems like conflict enough to me? I don't know about other people.
I love this movie so much and I talked to it, talk to
other people about it. I'm like, I just feel like I watched the
entire thing with rose colored glasses, Like I don't know any better. You
know that it is just a beautiful movie. But talking a little bit about
like Vincent Manelli, did you I mean in Chasing Rainbow is it probably doesn't
even bring him up because it's about the younger Judy. No, yeah,
I mean, he's not even I don't even think he's working at MGM yet
at that point. But Roger Edens, who did the musical adaptations for the
movie, was Judy's longtime vocal coach, and there's a lot. We have
a lot to do with him in the show. That's awesome, And I
mean I love Roger Edens because he I mean, he did a lot of
the arrangements. He was her vocal coach for movies and movies on top of
movies going into the nineteen sixties. But do you know much about Roger Edens
working on Me, Me and Saint Louis. That's one thing in the commentary
that John Fricky didn't mention. Yeah, not really. And in the books
that I have, you know, there's like, I think one photo of
him in reference to Meet Me in Saint Louis. So I don't think he
really had that much to do with this movie. I think he was more,
you know, he did the arrangements and stuff and then was just sort
of you know, out of the picture right well. And at this time,
also, you know, Kate Thompson, who is Liza's godmother, had
come to I think she'd come off of Broadway, had recently come to Metro
and she, from what I've read, she was a little bit too eccentric
for Arthur Freed, so they did not put her under contract as an actress,
but he put her under a contract as a vocal arranger, which she
had done a lot in the past, and she was a great performer on
Broadway. So I know that at this point a lot of Judy's gestures,
just how she sold a song was primarily influenced by Kay Thompson. And you
know, Kay Thompson was under contract at MGM in the mid nineteen forties,
So I don't even know if Roger Edens had that much as much to do
with this film as he did with Judy's previous films. Yeah, you know,
that seems to be what was going on. Yeah, because even in
the story of her showing up late to record, it was Kay Thompson who
asked her if she wanted to run through the song. So I think she
was the one who was there on set with her, yes, and it
yeah, more than likely, and she yeah, I would From what I've
read, she had, you know, just several people that she really really
trusted that she kept close to her at all times, and Kay Thompson was
one of them because she became Liza's godmother eventually and for people wondering, really
who Kay Thompson is. She played the fashion designer and funny face with Audrey
Hepperin in Front Stare in nineteen fifty seven, which I believe Roger Edens had
something to do with. Well, MGM had something to do with that,
because they put the entire film together and then Paramount wouldn't let them have Audrey
Hepburn, so then they sold the entire product to Paramount Pictures. But talking
about Paramount Pictures, and you chime in whenever you went to Ruby, I
don't want to hog all of this time because I know you have some great
facts too, and that's why we're here to share these little stories. But
Vincent Manali had come from He's one of my favorite directors from Metro because he
directed so many great musicals well and several great comedies and melodramas in the late
fifties early sixties at Metro. But he was one that was he could the
composition. The visual composition was always going to be beautiful. He was going
to pack it with details, pack it with color, and then arrange it
in a way that was just breathtaking to look at. And I feel like
he was one that was fully enveloped in high art. He wanted to bring
that to musicals and all of his films as well. But he had he
was I think about twenty two years older than Judy, and he had first
worked I believe at department stores in Chicago, dressing windows out, so you
know, first and foremost, that's where he got his eye for composition,
was dressing these giant windows in the Chicago department store. But then he went
on to New York and he directed numbers. He directed Broadway shows, He
directed giant folly numbers at Radio City Music Hall, which you can see some
of the influence of those folly numbers later in his films like zig Felt Follies
and American in Paris. And he had he was also a scenic designer,
and I know Arthur Freed had brought him to MGM around nineteen forty forty one,
but he had worked at Paramount Pictures for a short while in the nineteen
thirties and they had tried to get him to direct musicals because he was such
a big deal on Broadway and at Radio City Music Hall, and that didn't
pan out because Manelli said he did not like working at Paramount, so he
went back to Broadway. Then Arthur Freed brought him to MGM and he had
him direct several different musical numbers and like Strike Up the Band, I think
Babes and Arms, Babes on Broadway, while not Babes and Arms because he
wasn't there yet, but like he directed one of Lena Horn's first musical numbers
and a musical adaptation called Panama Hattie. And also Freed just paid him musical
producer. Arthur Freed just paid him to walk around the lot all day and
go watch rehearsals and the filming of their musicals so he could learn how to
make film musicals, which would be just like a dream job for me.
I was like, I wish somebody would pay mu to go watch them make
MGM musicals. But yeah, that's one of the very first things he did
was he was just paid. He was put under contract to go watch them
make musicals, which I think is absolutely fascinating. But he was also he
was also definitely a character. He was very shy, but he always dressed
very very well and I know one of the very first films he went to
go watch them film was a Shirley Temple movie, the only movie Shirley Temple
did at MGM. He showed up with a full face of makeup, which
shocked all the women you know on the set and so and you know,
Catherine Grayson was always like, he's just not somebody. He's not marrying material
is what the women would call him. And then of course when Judy got
wind of these rumors, she said, well, I can change him,
which anyway, it was a different time, as you will know. Yes,
and she was often attracted to gay, closeted gay men, so because
her father was a closeted gay man, and he died when she was thirteen,
only a couple months after she shined her contract with MGM. So it's
sort of you know, she sort of spent her life looking for him and
other people, right, Well, yes, I would definitely think that,
and I mean, yeah, I know her father they had. One of
the reasons that Ethel and Judy left California was because they had kind of been
run out because her father ran a movie theater in Grand Rapids and this is
nasty, nasty stuff in the get Happy book. But he was caught more
than once doing stuff with young boys in the back of the movie theater.
And so finally they were kind of shunned and run out of Grand Rapids.
That's why they left Minnesota. And then that's partly why Judy and her mother
went and moved to Los Angeles from Antelope Valley as well. They had to
sell the house, and he was sleeping in the movie theater, right right,
Well, and yeah, that's very sad, And I don't think that
she was completely aware of that. Probably not at the time, No,
And I don't know, I don't know if she was ever aware of that,
but yeah, she was. To come back to the point that you
were making, she was very much attracted to closet a gay men. In
closeted gay men are still attracted to her, aren't they to this day?
To this day, all gay men okay, in the book Get Happy.
Of course, I keep telling you how nasty it is. It is nasty.
It made several interesting points though, because, like we were talking,
she had never played the on Jenue beautiful leading strawberry blonde on Jenoux like Esther
Smith. She had always been the quirky girl with a ricense of humor.
That was Mickey Rooney's best friend. And she so she had gotten married in
forty one or forty two to a man named David Rose. And he was
a He had his own orchestra. He composed like easy listening, like Holiday
for Strings was one of his pieces. He was in his early thirties.
She was like eighteen or nineteen. Have you heard about David Rose? What
a character. Oh, I don't know much about him, but other than
that he was her first husband, yeah, yes. And he also he
was obsessed with trains. So when they got married, they bought a big
house in California, and he laid train tracks throughout like their living room,
their house, and out on their front lawn. And he had like a
little miniature like a little miniature train that you would see like at a children's
amusement park. And after working every day, he would just come home and
ride that train on the tracks around and around and around. And he would
invite friends over just to ride that train. And that's how he blew off
steam. He didn't play golf, He didn't play a sport, you know.
He didn't listen to the radio or go to the races. He just
rode his train, which I knew was very frustrating for her, and the
fact that he was a very much older, more kind of he was definitely
an introvert and she was more extroverted, and they just did not get along.
And another reason that that relationship did not work out was because she did
get pregnant and he did not want a baby. Ethel did not want her
to have a baby, and neither did Louis b. Mayor. So after
she found out she was pregnant, you might have heard this story, but
Ethel went to Judy and said, you know, Judy, this cannot happen.
David doesn't want it. You have a very busy work schedule. You
cannot take care of a baby. And I know Judy loved children, and
that's one of the reasons she got married to him, even though she could
see that it might not work out. For all times, she was like,
at least I get to have a baby. And they I know Ethel
took her to a clinic outside of Los Angeles and they got they they aborted
it, and that that was kind of a nail in their coffin for the
relationship. I feel like, but after that, I mean it was she
was in love with Artie Shaw at a different time. That was a sad
story because he was in his late twitter. Does Artie Shaw pop up and
chasing Rainbows? No, But I think the Areaty Show thing happened before she
married David Rose. I think that's what sort of pushed her into because he
just like ran off and like eloped with Ava Gardner. I think Lana Turner,
Lana Turner some some some beautiful at MGM. Yeah, and like I
think, you know, they were they did have a relationship and then he
just she finds out that he eloped, like in the news basically yeah,
and then she's, yeah, that's sort of what pushed her, uh to
David Rose. Well and David Rose. Okay, so this is going back
a little bit because Judy was like fifteen or sixteen at the time that she
was in a relationship, in a relationship sort of with Artie Shaw, and
he was in his late twenties. And when Judy found out in the news,
she had to that day go on to Bob Hope's radio show, which
she did every Tuesday night, and David Rose and singer Margaret Whiting were the
two people that comforted Judy after she found out about Artie. So then she
lashed onto David Rose because he had been there to comfort her. He felt
very very comfortable. But after her Okay, so now we're going to jump
back into after David Rose's relationship while that was still fizzling out, and they
were trying to get a divorce, which took a long time in California in
those days. It might still. I don't know. I've never tried to
get a divorce in California. But she was. She met and fell in
love with Tyrone Power. He was married to a French actress. They got
along very well, orson wells for just like a hot second, and then
I know that And this may not exactly be an order, but by the
time that she was in talk for Meet Me and Saint Louis, by the
time Freed came to her and said this will be your next picture, she
was dating Joseph L. Makowitz, the Joseph L. Maqwitz, writer,
producer, director of All About Eve and Letter to Three Wives and Barefoot Contessa,
some of Hollywood's biggest and best films, And at that point he was
a producer at Metro. He had also worked as a writer. He wanted
to work as a director, and he had gotten an offer from Fox with
more money to be writer, producer, director, and he you know,
he had dated a lot of glamour girls at Metro, but he stated that
they were all superficial compared to Judy. She was like this raw, pulsing
nerve of emotion, one of the most interesting people he had ever met.
He at the time was married, but his wife had gone. His wife
was undergoing psychoanalysis in another state because she had had a severe emotional breakdown.
So he started this love affair with Judy and she Judy told her sister,
you probably know this, well, he's the most interesting man I've ever met.
Judy at this point for me and my gal presenting Lily Mars were two
of her first adult roles, and she really liked that. And so when
Freed came to her and said, well, you're going to play this teenage
girl next door, She's like, ah ah no, not again. And
Mikawitz even said, this is not good for your career because now you're backtracking
back into the Andy Hardy series, which you know, she didn't want to
be a look like looked at that like that anymore about critics and even I
think in nineteen forties, in nineteen forty with Strike Up the Band, critics
had started to say, miss Garland as growing into this beautiful young woman,
why don't you start using her as such? And so so Makawitz had told
her. Makawitz had actually written a script for her, which was called The
Pirate, which she ended up doing in nineteen forty seven, nineteen forty seven,
forty eight. Yeah, you roll your eyes when I say that.
That was Have you heard about the name too? That is Manelli, Yeah,
Jean Kelly, and it is it is gorgeous to look at is Yeah,
but it's really bad. Well, and I think it. The finished
product ended up being a lot different than what they originally had planned. Judy
was all well, they had to cut out so many musical numbers for Judy
because she had just gotten off of maternity leave with Liza, and she had
just cold turkey, stopped all of her pills, all of the alcohol cigarettes,
and then just picked it up immediately. She did not want to be
at the studio. And that's another thing we can talk about. An interesting
article from forty four to forty five with Judy, but yeah, she didn't
want to be at the studio. She was not at the top of her
game. Gene Kelly events at Manelli kind of they g and Kelly said later
they formed their own boys club that they kept Judy out of because they were
trying to create something so big and beautiful in high art that they lost track
of what they were really trying to create. But yeah, what was I
talking? Oh? Yes, Makeowitz had written a script for her of the
Pirate what she wanted to do free and I think the script that they worked
on later was not written by Makowitz because what happened was Judy said, I
do not want to do this picture. And then on top of that,
Makowitz had suggested to Judy that she undergo psychoanalysis every morning before she go to
the studio. And you might have heard this story before, but she ended
up going through psychoanalysis for several months, which caused in Judy Garland a rise
in individualism. And Ethyl Gum noticed it first. And you know, Judy
had always been the good little girl who did what she was told by mister
Mayor and Ethel Gum and Judy started questioning everything. Ethel was telling her to
do and why do I need to do this? Why do I need to
do this? Why do I need to overwork myself? So Ethel found out
about Joe Makeowhitt saying you need to undergo psychoanalysis. And then so she went
to mister Mayor and she said, now this isn't going to work out,
because yeah, it's not going to work out. And uh so Mayor called
in Makowitz to his office and said, now this has to stop. Joe.
You know, she can't continue to do this. And Joe Mankowitz was
like, well, she's a very very sick little girl. She needs,
you know, some sort of help, and you can't just control her.
She is not your puppet. Joe Mancowitz stormed out of the office. They
didn't say anything until several weeks later. They were both on the train from
New York to Los Angeles and Mayor and Makowitz bumped into each other and Mayor
said, now you need to stop with stop this with Judy. You can't
do this anymore with Judy, and Makowitz said, Mayor went on this long
rant about patriotism and a woman's role in society and a man's role in society,
and you know you are my worker and you should do as I'm told.
And then Makewitz said, after Louis v. Meyer was finished, he
said, that is just the ravings of a jealous old man. And so
Makewitz it was kind of you know, he just walked away from the studio
and two weeks later he was over working at twentieth Century Fox for more money
where he could direct, write and produce. So part of the reason that
Judy was so pent up about not doing meet Me and Saint Louis. With
Joe Makeowitz also talking about Ethel Gunn. Did you know she was under contract
to Metro to report to mayor everything Judy did. Uh, yeah, and
I know that she Yeah, she got paid, she had her own yeah,
heycheck, and she made more than Judy did it early early on.
Really yeah, not that Judy's money didn't go directly to her anyway. Right.
Yeah, I'm sorry. I feel like I'm kind of making you cringe
now. You're like, oh, this is all the bad stuff, all
the bad memories. But I mean, it's just very interesting how all this
all came together, with Judy and Joe, Megowetes of all people, and
Ethel Gumm and Louis v. Meyer. For me, it's very interesting,
and the original script had all these different subplots in it that Judy thought were
silly and ridiculous as well. Thank you for listening to the Hollywood The Babylonians.
You have been listening to The Hollywood Babylonians. The Hollywood Babylonians is produced,
edited and hosted by bin Berg and co hosted by Ruby Raco's audio engineering
by Andrew Davis, with artwork by bin Berg and Jamie Lee. If you
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For more Hollywood Babylonians content, tune in next Friday, December twenty second,
as we continue to discuss meet Me and Saint Louis and Judy Garland with
Star They promote Playhouses production of Chasing Rainbows The Road to ourz Ruby Rakos,
thank you for listening and having a good night.