- Riviera Theater -
May 30, 1957 - June 5, 1957

How Judy Whips a Show into Shape
By J. Dorsey Callaghan -Free Press Theater Critic
Thursday, May 30, 1957

You have a date with Judy at the Riviera Theater.

It's to be fitted in during the rehearsal of her show, which opens Thursday night for a run of one week.

The Judy is, of course, Judy Garland, the gifted entertainer who personifies show business in our day, just as it has been personified by a personage in every generation.

The house is dark and the stage a glare of light, bringing Judy and her outlandish rehearsal costume into high relief.

A show is taking shape, slowly and with infinite patience as orchestra leader Jack Cathcart and Judy work over the background rhythms that make "Rain or Shine" a long-time hit number.

There is a community of thought and purpose between Judy and Jack.  They know what they want, even though Judy is apt to change things in the full stride of singing on Thursday night.

Cathcart was with her during the two fabulous runs at the Palace Theater in New York.  Now he has the job of bringing a local pickup orchestra to show pitch in time for the opening curtain.

It's not like rehearsing a symphony, because the material shifts and moves like a pool of quicksilver under the magic of performance.  Judy stops in midsong and sits on the edge of the stage.

"Gotta rest," says Judy.

"You're telling me," echoes a fiddler in the pit as he dries his brow with a shirt sleeve.

Judy rests by doing a few of the trickier measures of "The Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow," and confers with the pianist as she sings.

You are sitting next to Gene Byram, voice coach who flew in from Hollywood for the opening.  He'll fly back at midnight Thursday.

"Judy is a smart gal," he confides.  "She knows a whole lot more about music than she'll admit."

You remember back in '38 when Judy, a small flatterer in her teens, told you that you made her think of her "most favorite person in Hollywood."

"No reason to change my mind now," she insists later at a real break in rehearsal...still the small flatterer, and you must admit you love it.

Judy explains that her rehearsal costume is a lucky one.  It consists of a pair of black toreador pants, a ruffled shirt with the tails hanging out, and a straw hat she picked up in a Chinese restaurant.

Off stage, a carpenter is raising hell with a screaming saw, and a stage hand is driving nails, seemingly at random.  In the audience, husband Sid Luft is talking microphones with the engineer.

On stage, Judy seems oblivious to all things except the rehearsal.  Like all real artists she is able to eliminate everything else from her consciousness, and that includes you.

You say goodbye and leave, realizing that even a few minutes out of a show preparation is a sizable item.

Does a star ever weary of repeating the particular song or role that brought her the most fame?

In the case of Judy Garland and the song "Over the Rainbow," the answer is no.

"I'd hate to be stuck with a song like 'Some of These Days,' and that's no reflection on Sophie Tucker," the effervescent Judy said here yesterday.

"But 'Rainbow' is such a beautiful song that I love to sing it because it makes me feel warm and good."

In town with her new musical revue, "Judy Garland Sings," which opens a week's engagement at the Riviera Theater tonight, Hollywood's onetime child star didn't conceal the fact she is nervous about opening here.

"I'm always a bundle of jitters when I first step on stage," she explained during an interview in her hotel suite.

"But," she said, with the kind of winning twinkle that has always won her friends, "I usually get over it after an hour or two of singing."

Dressed in black silk slacks and a frilly white blouse, Judy added that she never has felt better than she does now; also she thinks she is singing better.

"If I do sing better," she said, "it is because this old dame of 35 has started taking voice lessons -- and you'd be surprised how much easier it is for me to sing."

Judy, just five feet tall and possessing the same little-girl charm that once captivated movie-goers, was a willing and ready speaker on all topics.

Being a child star, she said, has made her later life somewhat rough because you always have to live up to yesterday's performances.

"But," she said, "if I had it to do all over again, I think I would do just as I've done.

"Now I would like to try my hand at a Broadway play or two -- something in which I could sing a couple of songs.  Also a film, if the right one comes along."

Of all her movies, including a long tour of duty as the girl next door to Andy Hardy, Judy said the picture she liked most was "A Star is Born," which won her an Oscar nomination.  Naturally "The Wizard of Oz" is a close second.

Much slimmer than she has been at various times in recent years, Judy herself brought up the subject of her weight. 

"Don't you think I'm too fat?" she said several times during the interview.

Each of these queries brought prompt denials from those assembled.  Each time, too, she seemed happier because of their remarks.  It was as if -- for all her fame and success -- Judy Garland still welcomed a vote of confidence.

She came on stage.  She sang.  And Judy Garland had very little trouble conquering her audience at the Riviera Theater last night.

In less time than it took to finish the first musical number, the near-capacity crowd was won over.  When she left, a couple dozen songs and 80 minutes later, most everybody was on their feet; not to leave, but to ask for more.

The basic format of Judy's show, opening a seven-day engagement here, is like most so-called "in person" revues.  There are four variety acts on the first half of the bill.  Then the star herself takes over from intermission to close.

But here the comparison with anything you have seen ends completely.

Judy Garland, singing in the spotlight of a large and empty stage, is something to remember and, if you are a Garland fan, to cherish.

She is still a little girl in a sense, even though her 35 years have taken a certain toll.

But more than that, Judy presents a curious picture of wanting, almost desperately, to be liked as she sings all the great songs that have made her famous.

Last night, for example, she was obviously nervous and, at times, enough uncertain as to make her audience a little uncomfortable, too.

Yet when she sang, sometimes melancholy, sometimes boisterous, age and all its effects vanished into the background.  With numbers like "Come Rain, Come Shine" and "Rockabye My Baby" she was the confident and youthful Judy Garland, exploding her enthusiasm on every note.

In the more haunting songs, including several Irving Berlin numbers, there was her equally apparent tenderness that has been so much a part of her makeup.

Always, too, the Garland charm dominated the scene, together with the slight giggle and the warm friendliness.

Judy is aided in some of her numbers with a dancing and singing group called "The 11 Boy Friends," who do a wonderful job in supporting the star and dancing the time away while she is off stage making a change.

Also the other acts add to the night's enjoyment, particularly comedian Alan King with a delightful and refreshing routine of suburbia patter that brought down the house.

The show, however, is always Judy's -- whether she is wearing a modest black chiffon dress and singing alone in the spotlight, or cavorting and dancing with her boy friends in scanty shorts and jacket.  Or, reminiscent of her famed act at the Palace, singing her lovely "Over the Rainbow" number while in the grotesque costume of a dirty-faced clown.

Last night, incidentally, Judy's "Rainbow" was accompanied by a brief storm of temperament on her part.

Earlier in the evening she had complained, good-naturedly, about the noise of the theater's air conditioning system.  But when it came time to sing "Over the Rainbow," which she does sitting on the stage apron and without benefit of a microphone, she was distracted by someone talking in the 
rear of the theater.

Stopping midway in the number, she suddenly said, "If that person will shut up, I'll finish my song.  There isn't much more to it."

There was another start and another pause.

Then Judy finished the number, although its magical spell was broken and everybody, and Judy probably most of all, wished it hadn't ended just that way.  Somehow two wrongs don't ever make a right.

A swollen ankle slowed Judy Garland to a chair and bathrobe last night.

The singer, appearing this week at the Riviera theater, twisted her ankle in her dressing room just before the show.

She went on anyway, hobbling through a few dance steps in the first portion of her hour's performance.  However after a break, supposedly for a costume change, she returned on stage wearing a bathrobe.

Explaining to the audience that her ankle "pained too much," the star sang the remaining musical from a chair on stage.

A spokesman for the theater said that Miss Garland would go on, as scheduled, tonight.  The chair, he said, was being held in reserve.