- Atlanta Municipal Auditorium -

Love at First Site 
Judy Pours It On, Captures Atlanta 
By Sam F. Lucchese, The Atlanta Journal

Judy Garland met Atlanta Thursday night and it was love at first site. 

When the curtains parted (20 minutes late) and leader Morton Lindsey gave the 28 piece orchestra the downbeat for an overture that included snatches of a number of the diminutive thrush's biggest hits, it was the signal for applause that continued throughout the evening. 

And when Judy appeared it triggered an exuberant ovation, with many of the 4,000 customers jumping to their feet and shouting at the top of their lungs. 

It was fantastic. 

I have never been a witness to such adulation. 

It was a grownup audience, but age didn't keep them from being carried away by something akin to idolatry. 

It is doubtful if the Municipal Auditorium has ever witnessed such a reception for an individual performer.

Judy deserved the reception she got. Shouts of "Bravo!" followed every number she sang. (She went through some 32 songs and exhausted her supply of orchestrations.) 

Judy is plumpish.... top heavy would be a better way to describe her physical appearance, but she can still belt out those songs. 

She had to be good--and loud--to top the brass section's tooting in some of the numbers and the efforts of the two wild men in charge of the timpani. 

Fetchingly attired in a stylishly short navy sheath, Miss Garland wore with a sky blue peau de sole hip-length mandarin jacket lined in Kelly green and embroidered in jewels. 

It looked like a rough evening for the singer when she had to interrupt her program after the first number to minister to what she described as a "frog" in her throat. Sips of water turned the trick and Judy then began to really pour on the music in a program that would have exhausted a person who did not possess her fire--or talent. 

In addition to her musical numbers--her ballads were my favorites, since the maestro kept while she sang them--Judy told some personal anecdotes, did a bit of clowning, did a vigorous dance number, told some jokes, helped the stage hands and put up with a backfiring public address system that would have disconcerted most artists. 

Not so, our Judy. 

She came to sing and sing she did, with the audience enthusiasm mounting at the end of each number. She had them at the tips of her fingers and even led them in a community sing. 

After the intermission she returned dressed in toreadors and a flashy sequined overblouse and it started all over again. 

She reserved her most popular numbers. "The Trolley Song," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby," Richard Rodgers' "You're Nearer," "Foggy Day," "Stormy Weather," Noel Coward's "I Believe," "Rockabye My Baby, With a Dixie Melody," "Swanee River" and others associated with her, for the last half of her show. 

And the audience's enthusiasm mounted to fever pitch. 

When she started taking curtain calls after what was ostensibly her last number, she still had not sung "Over the Rainbow," although the orchestra was playing it softly. 

This drove the crowd frantic and they stood and shouted and screamed for the climactic tune. 

Atlanta has never seen anything like it. 

This was no ingenue as remembered from "The Wizard of Oz" days. This was a matronly stagewise trouper, who has been through the mill of life with its vicissitudes and come out on top. No rust has gathered on her pipes. She hits the high notes and sells a song like nobody's business. Judy can't be relegated to a back seat when any feminine singer is mentioned. She certainly deserves the title of "Miss Show Business." Thursday night's audience recognized all of this and she had them at her feet.

Miss Garland sang several encores and then had to confess that they had run out of music, so she repeated "San Francisco." 

She came down to the footlights and shook hands with the ringsiders. Someone handed her a double bouquet of American Beauty roses and she tossed them bloom by bloom to the almost frenzied audience. 

Finally the curtain closed and the devotees of Judy Garland reluctantly left the auditorium. 

Judy had made her first appearance in Atlanta and it was a memorable occasion.

The little girl with the big eyes and sobbing voice can still belt out a song. Judy Garland hit Atlanta for her concert debut Thursday night at the Municipal Auditorium and took the audience home in her sequined pocket. Little Judy has grown up since Andy Hardy and Wizard of Oz days but she has never lost her ingenue charm. 

A nearly-full house of 40-ish aged Atlantans turned out to reminisce through "The Bells Are Ringing", "You Go to My Head" and all the old favorites of the war years. 

Judy did them proudly, looking trim and acting almost as lively as in her child movie star days. She was all dressed up--in a blue satin jacket over a short black dress for her first act. She switched to slim black and a sequin-covered blouse after intermission. 

The pretty actress with the pug nose and saucer eyes proved to be a veteran trouper as she pulled out all the tricks of show business. She danced, clowned and chatted through her songs, telling stories of her travels. 

But most of all she gave the audience the Garland treatment--plenty of nostalgia and plenty of volume and emotion in such old favorites as Foggy Day, Zing Went the Strings of My Heart, I can't Give You Anything But Love. 

The old quiver and sob is still in her voice but the volume has been turned up since Judy sang little girl songs in the movies. She could give Ether Merman competition now. 

She switched from blues to torch songs, out-sobbing Jolson as she did. The audience sobbed and grew starry-eyed as they reminisced with her.