Judy Garland: A Biography by Anne Edwards

Author:Anne Edwards [Edwards, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781589797888
Google: ARaTF1kc27sC
Amazon: B00COJIIOK
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
Published: 2013-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

26In an interview before her Los Angeles opening Judy told the world, “Sid has done it for me; that’s my fella.” And Luft had added: “I love Judy. I want to protect her from the trauma she once knew. I don’t want her to be bewildered or hurt again. I want her to have happiness.”

Judy was desperately in love and experiencing new sensations. There was a certain abandon in her feelings toward Luft that she had never felt before. Sid was tough, strong, and opinionated. From the onset of their relationship he was Number One and Judy the follower. She loved the role. It made her feel extremely feminine. She told herself she would be protected now, cared for, understood. But at heart she remained dreadfully insecure. Accordingly, she found herself constantly testing him. Therefore, there was never truly a time when they didn’t have “spats.”

While still with Luft, she wrote an article for Coronet magazine titled “How Not to Love A Woman,” in which she stated, “We [women] must know, beyond doubt, that we’re safe with you [men]. That you can take it, that you are not bluffing about your strength and most of all, that you care enough to win.” And in another part of the article she writes, “We will seem to be fighting you to the last ditch for final authority . . . But in the obscure recesses of our hearts, we want you to win. You have to win. For we aren’t really made for leadership. It’s a pose.”

Luft was not about to yield his leadership or hand Judy the reins, as she might have feared. Yes, there were moments of confusion, twinges of alarm, an instinct that perhaps she should pull back. Always moved by the passage in the Bible in the Book of Ruth, “Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge,” she comments at the end of her Coronet article on this philosophy: “We weep because we think of it as a beautiful description of woman the follower. To many of us it means that you [men] alone must be the leader. If you are, nothing else really matters.”

There was, however, that key word “leader”—its interpretation and the confusion it brought to Judy. Luft had a strength that was born of toughness, not courage, and an ability not so much to lead as to drive others who could help him satisfy his own needs. In Judy’s case and at this point in her life, the latter worked as a positive force. Luft craved the limelight, a showy, ostentatious life—wanted to be “in the big time.” He had already come to terms with his own inability to gain these ends by himself. All of which gave his one true talent—the art of promoting—a thrust forward.

Luft was, however, no Mike Todd or P. T. Barnum. Lacking their genius, he had to first have a presold product. Where he could not succeed in making Lynn Bari a star of the first magnitude, he could take a star—Judy—and keep her in orbit.

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