She was in the throes of another separation from Minnelli. “I’m broke. How can anyone save money in this business? When Vincent and I were together, I spent $70,000 decorating our house. Since our separation I’m paying $1000 a month rent on another. It’s tiny; no nursery for my baby. But I have to keep working.”
I begged her to go to the Menninger Clinic. Treatments there had done much good for Robert Walker, her co-star in The Clock. “There’s nothing the matter with my head,” she replied. “It’s my body that’s tired.”
A few days later she entered the Peter Brigham Hospital in Boston, with Louis Mayer personally paying the bills, and stayed there for several months. Back in Hollywood, fighting to lose weight again, she finished Summer Stock with Gene Kelly. Then, during rehearsals for Royal Wedding with Fred Astaire, the headlines screamed that Judy Garland, suspended for refusing to work, had cut her throat in the house she’d spent $70,000 decorating. Stories told of her racing into the bathroom, breaking a glass, slashing her throat. In fact, the scratch could have been as easily made with a pin. The cut wasn’t serious. It was more a case of nerves than anything else.
Her mother had long since given up the hopeless task of staying close. She was working as a theater manager in Dallas. When she heard the news, she got in her little jalopy and drove thirty-six hours nonstop to go to her daughter. “Judy,” she said enigmatically, “will never kill herself.” She stayed on in California, working in a job in an aircraft plant that Ida Koverman helped obtain for her. She died of a heart attack in the parking lot there. Previously, she used to plead with her friends: “Please don’t introduce me as Judy’s mother.”
Judy has walked the rocky road back to the top of the mountain with Sid Luft by her side for most of the miles. Sid is her husband, “manager,” and a gambling man who can kill $10,000 in an afternoon. He loves horses and fast motor cars. It was Sid, with whom she has led an on-again off-again life as Mrs. Luft, who arranged her first tour that opened at the London Palladium, where she was an absolute sensation. She has two more children by him: Lorna and Joe.
“I don’t think there’s any actress in the world that can produce like she can when she’s going,” said one member of the group that accompanied her to London. “When she’s going, she’s the greatest thing on wheels. When you’re with a dame that’s fantastic like that, and you don’t know if she’s going to get on or off or anything, you’re bound to crack under the strain.”
Many people wondered how Judy Garland got her amazing contract from Jack Warner to make the musical version of A Star Is Born. There was a clause in it she didn’t have to work before 11 A.M. If she was ill they wouldn’t expect her to work. It was a fantastic deal. Here’s the story.
When it came time for Jack’s beautiful daughter Barbara to have her coming-out party, he promised to get her anything she wanted. What she wanted was to have Judy Garland sing at the party. Her father told her that was impossible. “But, Daddy, you promised to give me anything I wanted, and I thought you could do anything.” Then she burst into tears and hung up the telephone.
Father went to work. He called Judy. Her answer was: “Why would I do that? No.” He called her again: “What would I have to give you to change your mind?”
Then it was that Sid Luft came on the phone and said: “We want A Star Is Born,” naming an astronomical price for Judy and special clauses in the contract. Warner had to buy the story from David O. Selznick at a cost, I believe, of a quarter of a million.