Judy Garland: The Road Gets Rougher, 1960-1969
For those who remember Judy Garland (June 10, 1922-June 22, 1969) in such films as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), or A Star Is Born (1954), they will be surprised to learn about her body of work in the 1960s, a decade which started prodigiously in 1960 with her recording more...
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| Published in: | ARSC journal 2022-03, Vol.53 (1), p.51-79 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | For those who remember Judy Garland (June 10, 1922-June 22, 1969) in such films as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), or A Star Is Born (1954), they will be surprised to learn about her body of work in the 1960s, a decade which started prodigiously in 1960 with her recording more masters than she ever had in her already-long career and ended tragically with her hopelessly hooked on Ritalin and Seconal, and subsequent death in 1969 from "Barbiturate poisoning, incautious self-overdosage, accidental," according to her autopsy report. Her chronic addiction kept her away from the recording studio for most of the latter part of the decade, but the early 1960s produced a cornucopia of astounding recordings: the LP That's Entertainment! (Capitol Records, 1960), the posthumously-issued The London Sessions (Capitol Records, 1960), and, above all, Judy at Carnegie Hall (Capitol Records, 1961), the best-selling double-LP, which won five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. The 26 episodes of her 1963-1964 CBS television series, The Judy Garland Show, also found her in close-to-peak form. Garland made her last recordings for Capitol in 1964, and from then on newspaper reports chronicled suicide attempts, cancelled concerts, overdoses, hospital stays, and the occasional comeback, such as her 1967 run at the Palace, in New York, which the author attended on opening night. But the writing was on the wall. This article strives to highlight her recording accomplishments during the decade, all the while putting them in the context of a despairingly-doomed destiny |
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| ISSN: | 2151-4402 |