The studio brushed off somebody else in Judy’s life, too—her first husband, David Rose, the serious-minded, preoccupied composer to whom she was married at nineteen. She made two mistakes in that. She married him without consulting Mr. Mayer beforehand, which was a fracture of MGM protocol. Even worse was the fact that she married at all.
A star’s life was supposedly controlled twenty-four hours a day by the studio. She was told what to do, both at work and after working hours; where to go; what to say; whom to mix with. Mayer didn’t want any star to marry because that introduced a foreign influence in the control system. A husband could often influence a star against the studio for her own good and sometimes for his own power.
They turned on Judy like rattlesnakes. On Academy Awards night, she had sat for years at the number-one table along with the rest of the MGM stars. As Mrs. David Rose she was deliberately humiliated and seated at a much less desirable spot on the side and out of the spotlight. That year she called to ask if I’d like to sit with her.
“Love to,” I said, then proceeded to give the tsar hell by telephone: “Louis, you are treating her outrageously. Even if you personally don’t like her, think of what she has done for your company. You should be ashamed of yourself.” But he was immune to shame or compassion. I wasted my breath.
They actually believed that she belonged to them, body and soul. They’d created her; why couldn’t she show more gratitude? The marriage hadn’t a chance. The studio told her so. David Rose was the wrong man for her, said the sycophants who clung to her like leeches. “He’s trading on your popularity. You’re a star; he’s a struggling composer.” If they passed the two of them in the Culver City streets, they’d greet her but ignore him.
After Judy left him, as she inevitably did, her private life changed in many ways. Her father had died and her mother remarried to become Ethel Gilmore. Both sisters were married, too. Metro assigned a publicity writer, Betty Asher, to stay with Judy, and they lived high, wide, and not particularly handsome.
She turned from her mother and her old friends. When they warned her about the new set she was going with, the rainbow girl screamed: “I’m old enough to know what I want. When I want your advice I’ll ask for it.”
The dismal cycle of benzedrine and sleeping pills began again. The studio kept up the illusion of Judy’s perfect health. She plunged on, beating her thin chest and saying: “I feel fine.” Of course, she knew she wasn’t, but she was too riddled with ambition to let someone else take over a picture scheduled for her.
She listened to anybody who flattered her ego. Joe Mankiewicz, the director who suffered the tortures of the damned on Cleopatra, was a great ego booster. “You could be the greatest dramatic star in the world,” he told her. “Anything Bernhardt did, you can do better. I’ll write material for you, make you another Bernhardt.” That was something he never did.
Metro smiled on marriage number two—to Vincent Minnelli, who had directed her in Meet Me in St. Louis and The Clock. They felt this gentle man would bring her under control. Judy was married in her mother’s home. Louis Mayer gave the bride away; Betty Asher was matron of honor; Ira Gershwin the best man. Ida Koverman was not invited, nor was I. Judy was then twenty-three.