- O'Keefe Centre -

Judy's Voice is Gone, But They Still Love Her
Globe & Mail - February 9, 1965

"We still love you!" A single woman's voice sounded out of the packed O'Keefe Centre last night to sum up what most of Judy Garland's audience obviously felt.  Even when Miss Garland had to ask the audience to sing her favorite song, RAINBOW, for her -- they did so willingly, helping out a childhood friend who was having a rocky time of it.

Miss Garland has been piling up that affection for years.  Since that clear eyed child first sang in the wonderful world of OZ, in fact.  She has added many such favorites to everybody's list.  Proof of it is the burst of applause that comes when the musical cue is given for one of them, SWANEE, THE TROLLEY SONG and others.

It comes in handy now, that affection, when she needs a non-critical audience.  She stands up there, that tiny figure, with the Irish strut still in evidence, the spunkiness and the outgoing trust, and the audience forgives everything.  That spunkiness was never more in evidence.

When her voice cracks the first time, she stopped and started the note again.  But toward the end of the evening, there was an apology for trying songs that are beyond her now.  And she came back on stage having promised RAINBOW and knowing she had to face it before the crowd would leave.  That takes courage.

And she tried it, but quickly capitulated to ask the audience to sing it for her.  We did, in all our basic monotones.  And Judy stood there and praised us and gave us the words and begged us to come in strong for the final phrase and joined us in it.  It takes courage of a rare sort, because Miss Garland knows she is endangering the very love and affection she lives by.

She couldn't help but notice that those two people who came down to the footlights looked awfully lonesome.  One knelt down, the other returned to his seat the gesture made but not followed by the crowd.  It takes courage, for Miss Garland has done everything so save the situation.

She waits for the second half of the program to appear and even then she calls in the Allen Brothers to share the load.  They sang I WISH YOU LOVE with her.  Then she further postponed the vocal ordeal by joining Peter Allen in a little dance number.  But the ordeal had to be gone through.

She introduced some new numbers, ones that didn't put such a strain on her as those famous old belters.  She sang THE MUSIC THAT MAKES ME DANCE and JOEY and a medley of spirituals.  She also did reasonably well with an oddly 
defiant number called BY MYSELF.

The quality of Miss Garland's voice has deteriorated in the last three years, however as well as her ability to reach those top notes, and none of the new songs brought the kind of applause that she is accustomed to.  What the audience wanted were the Garland specials even when it became heartbreakingly apparent that she could no longer sing them.

It was apparent she hadn't started well.  It was also apparent that most people did not care how badly, how tunelessly, she sang.  She was their Judy and they were not going to desert an old childhood friend.

Judy Garland had been on stage 40 minutes and was midway through her ninth song last night when it happened.  Her voice broke.  She reached for a note and it came out a croak.

The capacity O'Keefe Centre audience gasped and waited.  Judy clutched her throat and said 'ugh' in frustration and went on.  The applause at the end of the song was, if anything, more vigorous than ever.

But six songs later, it happened again.  She was climbing a swanee crescendo when it cracked.  "We'll try that once more," said Judy unsmiling, "everybody deserves a second try."  The orchestra backed up and tried again, again Judy broke.  "I'll be damned," she muttered.  At that moment, a woman's voice trilled from the balcony.  "We still like you."  And the rest of the audience roared its accord.

They proved it a few minutes later, when Judy started OVER THE RAINBOW, and stopped after a few bars.  "I can't sing anymore," she said lightly, "you'll have to sing it to me."  They did.  And when it was finished and Judy stepped to the edge of the stage blowing kisses, they rushed down the aisles in dozens to clutch her hands, to touch her, just as they always do at a Judy Garland concert.

But this time it seemed a mechanical gesture, a ritual demonstration by emotional matrons and doe-eyed young men, awaiting their chance.  There was a moment of hesitation before four middle-aged women hurried down the aisle together.  They wore expressions of concern, as though they were no their way to visit an ailing neighbor and you could almost hear the whisper, "Come on, Sadie, somebody's got to go."

Make no mistakes, this was a loving audience that finally wound up on its feet in a standing ovation.  But the applause seemed largely a matter of reassurance, as swelling end of that sympathetic cry from the balcony, "we still like you"... no matter what.

There must have been some genuine delight as well as pure loyalty in the applause, however, for Judy had sung 14 other songs without incident.  Sung them well and easily and happily.  And she never looked better. Stepping on to the stage to begin the second half of the show in an ankle length, white silk gown, appliquéd in gold with typical box jacket, she looked fine.  Her figure was trim too, when she turned up later in slim white slacks and sweater.

She seemed the Judy of old, with the endearing gestures, the hand on hip or lifted to press her cheek.  And the sweet husky voice was powerful, with the big band pounding behind through all the favorite standards.

Everything was going grand until the awkward breaks and there were no explanations for those.  No mention of cold, or fatigue or nerves.  Just one quip: "I think I lost my voice at the press conference yesterday.  One of those newspaper men must have it."  Everyone chuckled indulgently.

But they must have wondered:  when would she have it back?  Tomorrow night?  By the final night?  or would it take longer?  And would those devoted rushes down the aisle start slower and slower from now one, grow thinner and thinner until they were gone too?

Judy Garland suffering from a severe cold and laryngitis, yesterday canceled her afternoon and evening performances at O'Keefe Centre.  Cancellation of the matinee was announced at 1 p.m. yesterday.  Cancellation of the evening performance followed less than three hours later, after Dr. L.A. Kane, a Toronto physician specializing in ailments of the ear, nose and throat, advised complete rest for Miss Garland in her King Edward Sheraton Hotel suite.

At O'Keefe Centre, Bruce Corder, assistant to general manager Hugh Walker, said that Miss Garland's manager was hopeful that she would be able to fulfill the remainder of the week's engagement.  O'Keefe Centre employees were set to work yesterday afternoon phoning out-of-town customers who had bought tickets by mail.  Mr. Corder said the warnings reached most ticket holders.  A few were not so lucky, he admitted, including two Party Sound customers who had left by train for Toronto 20 minutes before they were phoned.

Since there was such short notice of cancellation of yesterday's matinee, an audience had begun to gather minutes after the no-show information was posted.  However, the reaction of the matinee audience was sympathetic.  Only 200 persons asked for refunds; the rest exchanged their tickets for later performances.  The advance sale for both the canceled performances was 'pretty good,' Mr. Corder said, but no exact figures for the gross sales for Wednesday would be compiled until today.

On Tuesday night, Miss Garland carried a much heavier portion of the show than at Monday's premiere.  She held the stage for the entire second half of the program, about 90 minutes.  However, as the clock moved toward 11 p.m., she said that her throat was bothering her, that she did not know what sound might come out when she opened her mouth.  She carried on until 11 p.m., ending her performance with a belting, old-Garland rendition of CHICAGO.

She did not sing OVER THE RAINBOW.  She told the audience -- about half of the O'Keefe Centre capacity -- that she had sung the song 8,000,000 times, and could no longer even remember the words.  The audience, she said, would probably have to sing OVER THE RAINBOW to her -- as indeed, Monday night's audience had done.

They said it couldn't be done, but last night Judy Garland did it.

After being silenced for a day with laryngitis and a bad cold, she returned to O'Keefe Centre stage, with much of the old Garland music than the audience had heard from her in two performances at the beginning of the week.  In fact, when she allowed herself to be persuaded, at 10:30 p.m. to sing OVER THE RAINBOW -- a thing she had refused to to Tuesday night -- 25 years seemed to drop from her, and from those in the audience who could remember the first appearance of THE WIZARD OF OZ.

By the time she got to her theme song, Miss Garland had finished her scheduled program and sung one encore, CHICAGO.  As the fans standing along the edge of the stage continued to yell for more, she said to them:  "I suppose I could crack out OVER THE RAINBOW.  Suppose you all squanch down -- there are people sitting -- now you all behave."  But she did not croak out RAINBOW.  Her singing was free from the hoarseness and vibrato that had plagued her early in the evening and I don't think I'm kidding myself when I say that the song had nearly the same warm wonder that it held all those years ago.

Though last nights Garland recital was about 15 minutes shorter than Tuesday's, everything about it was easier, closer to what everybody had hoped to hear and see.  On Tuesday, when she moved, she moved stiffly and uncomfortably.  Last night she was obviously relaxed, smiling, and by the time she got to her belting, growling version of CHICAGO, she was strutting across the stage in the best Garland manner.  Tuesday her spoken words to the audience were tentative and even incoherent.  Last night she was warm and natural.  When a fan yelled a request for SWANEE, she yelled back:  "Swanee has a last note that's knocked me out for years."  She came back with a counter-suggestion:  "What about ROCKABYE?  It's been there for years -- it should be good."  It was, with Miss Garland stamping her foot in time to the belt-it-out tempo which currently shows her at her best.

When the shouters first demanded RAINBOW she again countered with another suggestion:  "What about CHICAGO?  That's because we've got the music to it, and that does make a difference."

It was clear from Miss Garland's first entrance that she was not yet free from laryngitis.  In her opening spirituals, the voice had a tendency to break in soft passages, and to develop a Tallulah croak in it's low register.   She had to pause early in her performance to lubricate her throat with the contents of a glass on the piano.

Judy Garland opened in Toronto last Monday with failure and closed Saturday in near triumph.

Saturday still wasn't Judy at her best, but it was close enough for most.  The question is -- which is the real Judy?

Was Monday just a bad night -- made worse by a cold and laryngitis?  Or was Saturday the exception, one of those occasional big nights that pop up as a career declines?

On Saturday, she told her audience, "I have a terrible cold... You have very peculiar weather up here.  You also have some funny bugs flying around getting into everybody's noses and throats."  She also wheezed, coughed, cleared her throat, drank for a glass "This is just water, damn it," she told her fans and even gargled.

At times -- particularly early in the evening and during the slow and soul searching songs -- her voice simply failed to beat the laryngitis.  But once she started on her encores, once the crowd surged toward the stage to offer their undying love, she came close to being the Judy of legend again.

Garland devotees have some strange desire that forces them to hold out their hands trying to touch the girl of their dreams.  Between each song Judy walked along the stage touching them, and seemingly gathering the from their adoration that allowed her voice to soar once again.

Gathered around the stage was a crowd close to 500.  "I love you all very much," Judy told them.  "I'd love to stay here and sing for you the rest of my life."

She started to sing at 9:50.  At 10:25, she left the stage, the signal for her most enthusiastic fans to rush forward.  Then, with them hanging over the stage, Judy's real concert began.

She sang encores for 30 minutes, climaxing with OVER THE RAINBOW.  On Monday and Tuesday her voice had not been up to soaring over the rainbow.  On Wednesday the laryngitis forced her to cancel both matinee and evening shows.  But now she was singing it true and sweet.

Among those grouped around the stage was her oldest daughter, Liza Minnelli, who had flown into Toronto earlier in the day.  Also in the mob were seven out-of-town members of Judy's international fan club.  three, including the international president had attended all six of Judy's shows here.  Four other girls, two from New York and two from West Virginia, flew up for the matinee and evening performances Saturday.

Judy was ecstatic about that Saturday concert.  She told the audience how great they were seven times -- and obviously meant it because after each show she kept raving about them.

As the curtain descended, Judy turned to the Toronto musicians and said, "You were all marvelous.  I'd like to take you all home with me."  After the show, Judy didn't leave the O'Keefe Centre until 1:15 a.m.  Each night she was slow to leave the theatre, slowly unwinding from the emotional orgy she had gone through on stage.

And the question still remains, which of Judy's concerts showed the real Judy?  Without doubt, she had a sever cold throughout the week.  Also the Monday concert that was attended by the critics was by far her worst of the week.  But Judy sings from her throat, not from her stomach.  She belts out constantly, straining her vocal chords.  She insists on trying for those high notes in OVER THE RAINBOW rather than dropping her voice an octave in respect to her age.  Her cold which dragged on for a week, could be a sign that her vocal chords are close to the end of their resilience.