But Judy survived the flop that A Star Is Born proved to be, as she has survived all the incredible excesses of her life. In every performance—at concerts, on television, in her new pictures—she has the power to stir an audience to the depths of their hearts, like an old-fashioned revival meeting. “We have all come through the fire together,” she seems to say, “and none of us is getting any younger, but we’re here together, and I’ll love you if you love me.”
This feeling she gives out to and gets back from an audience may be the one crush of her life that will last. She used to be her own worst critic. Before she went into a number for the screen, her co-workers had to keep telling her: “You’re wonderful, wonderful!” But she never thought she was good. “I was awful” was her own self-judgment whenever she’d finished. But now, as she literally tears her way through her songs, her audiences go crazy listening to her. They crowd around to touch her, and she believes in what she can achieve.
Ethel Barrymore, one of her greatest boosters, told me: “I think she has a tremendous frustration. She’s always felt she wasn’t wanted. She has a complex common among women—she wants to be beautiful. I told her: ‘God is funny that way. He divides these things. When you open your mouth to sing, you can be as beautiful as anyone I’ve ever known.’ But you’ve got to keep telling her.”
Judy suffers from nightmares concerning her mother. She has lost something of herself somewhere along the road. But so long as she has millions of people loving her and fighting for her, she’ll keep the ghosts in the background.
Her performance in Carnegie Hall was one of the most amazing things I ever witnessed. Her fans screamed and applauded after every number. She gave encore after encore, promised: “I’ll stay all night if you want me.” She threw her head back and used the mike like a trumpet.
She repeated the same frenzied performance in the Hollywood Bowl, this time in the rain, and nobody moved. You sat enthralled because she’d cast her magic spell as she did first when she sang “Over the Rainbow.” This was our little Judy, who came home and persuaded the natives that skies really were blue and that dreams really do come true.
Eight
One bright morning last spring, a fat young woman with a baby carriage ambled along Hollywood Boulevard. First to catch my eye were the pink Capri pants and her wabbling derrière that was threatening to burst right out of them. Next item I spotted was the cigarette dangling out of her mouth, sprinkling ashes on the baby. I put on speed to catch up with her, though I didn’t know her from Little Orphan Annie.
“I wonder if you know how you look from the rear. You should be ashamed of yourself, and you a mother, too.”