Get Happy by Gerald Clarke
Author:Gerald Clarke [Clarke, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-55633-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2000-10-15T00:00:00+00:00
Though he was never in love with her, as Judy had fantasized, Fred Astaire did like working with her. Her showmanship, he said, was uncanny, and he regarded the numbers he did with her in Easter Parade as high spots in his careerâexalted praise indeed. Astaire was therefore as elated as Judy was when, even before Easter Parade completed shooting, the studio decided to put them together again. In Garland and Astaire, Metro thought, it had stumbled on a winning combination, another Rooney and Garlandâor Rogers and Astaire.
The Barkleys of Broadway, their new picture was to be titled, and it promised to be a frolic. They were to play a married couple this time around, musical-comedy stars who begin feuding when the wife, disdaining the fluff that has made them famous, longs for serious roles that will show she can do more than sing and dance. Not until the end does she realize that, for a performer, there is no ambition higher than spreading joyââfun set to music,â as her husband calls it. After the writers, those talented hams Betty Comden and Adolph Green, did a run-through of their screenplay in Arthur Freedâs office, an enthusiastic Judy turned to Astaire. âIf we can only do as well as they did reading those parts, weâre okay,â she said. With Chuck Walters directing, employing the same velvet touch that had proved so successful in Easter Parade, the weeks ahead did, in fact, look like fun set to music. After two of Judyâs oldest friends, Oscar Levant and Billie Burke, were added to the cast, The Barkleys of Broadway began to assume the genial atmosphere of a house party.
A house party it was not to be, however. As much as Judy had enjoyed her collaboration with Astaire, Easter Parade had worn her out. Emotionally, she was back where she had been a year earlier, during the terrible days of The Pirateâtense, nervous and continually exhausted. In early June she pulled herself out of a sickbed to do just one number in Words and Music, Metroâs ponderous salute to the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Singing a duet of âI Wish I Were in Love Againâ with her old pal Mickeyâthe last time they were to appear together on filmâshe was so pale and gaunt that not even Dorothy Ponedelâs makeup wizardry could make her anything more than a shadow of the young woman who was romping across the screen in Easter Parade.
Given her poor health and low spirits, it was almost inevitable, then, that when rehearsals for The Barkleys began a week later, Judy was soon calling in sick, a refrain that was repeated with increasing frequency as June gave way to July. By now, Judy believed, she was nothing but a mechanical hoop that Metro was rolling around for its own pleasure, and it was obvious to her, if to no one else, that she would never be able to finish The Barkleys. âThe rehearsals began,â she said, âand my migraine headaches got worse.
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