- Camden County Music Fair -

Judy Isn't Over the Rainbow Yet
By Wayne Robinson - Philadelphia Bulletin

Call the happening at Camden County Music Fair tent last night a Judy Garland love-in.  The tentful of fans, more than 2,000 strong and highly vocal, waits patiently through the expected hour of warm-up acts -- Rip Taylor, a comedian whose specialty is crying through his laughs, and veteran song and dance man John Bubbles.

After intermission the tension begins to mount.  A red carpet is rolled down the ailse from the star's dressing room to the stage.  Red roses in vases are on stage for Judy.  At last the orchestra is in place.  A drum rolls, the lights go down, and a spotlight directs all attention to where the star will first appear at the back of the tent.  The orchestra is playing 'Over the Rainbow.'  One young man waves a sign: 'We love you, Judy!'  It is ten minutes to 10.  Time for the star.

She walks on high heels down the red carpet -- a slim, bob-haired Judy Garland in a sequined gold and green mod suit, green neckerchief, green earrings.  On stage she circles and smiles.  Her left hand flutters nervously to her mouth, her brow.  The crowd cheers everything she does. Someone throws a long-stemmed American Beauty rose.  She picks it up, kisses it, puts it on the on-stage piano, and goes into her first number -- 'I Feel a Song Coming On.'  The house hushes instantly to hear her.  She belts the lyrics, warming up the Garland pipes, the famed tremulo, her own style. Judy is looking good, sounding good.

'Why It's Almost Like Being in Love...' Ovation.  She chats a while, a queen being informal with her subjects at a garden party.  I must say theater in the round is very -- peculiar,' she tells them.  'I never like to turn my back on an audience.  Maybe if I just stood still, you could move around me!'  Laughter.  Applause.

She settles down on a stool by the piano.  She swats at a bug.  Another song begins -- 'Just in Time.'  It's not the full orchestra behind her now, but just the soft piano.  'You Made Me Love You,' she sings, and the audience loves her back with its hands clapping.  'The Bells Are Ringing...' The audience sings along.  'Clang, Clang, Clang Went the Trolley...' Shouts and cheers.

'I think I will live up to my image,' she says then, and reaches for the glass on the piano.  'I don't perspire, I just sweat,' she says, mopping her brow in the heat under the stage lights.

Then she introduces Lorna from the audience.  Lorna wears a white mini-skirt.  Fond mother sits on a stool and admires her own protege who sings a cute song about the problems of being a teenager.  Lorna follows this with a rock 'n' roll number.  Lorna can belt, like her mother and like her older sister, Liza, and there's that distinctive Garland sound in the voice.  Now it's 11-year-old son Joe's turn.  He plays a drum solo, but no one minds.  Judy looks proud as Joe goes through his repertory of riffs. Then mother, daughter and son do a turn together singing 'Together.'

It's 10:30 now.  There's a storm outside -- thunder and lightening.  The lights go down on Judy alone.  It's 'Old Man River.'  Her voice throbs out the words -- 'Tired of livin''... scared of dyin' to a big finish.  The tent explodes with cheers, louder than ever.  Requests are shouted.  'San Francisco... Swanee...'  Several young men from the audience jump on the stage to shake her hand.  She welcomes them.  More follow -- boys, girls, men, women, crushing around her.  Anxious managers rush down to protect her.   A public address announcement asks all to return to their seats.  They do, obediently.  Judy is holding another rose.

It is nearly 11.  She is sitting on the stage in one spot of light, and she is singing 'Over the Rainbow.'  All the story of Judy Garland is in that song.  'If birds fly over ther rainbow... Why, then, oh why can't I?'  She exits on that, up the red carpet.  The crowd keeps calling 'Judy!  Judy!' But the spotlight is off.  The house lights are up.  The thunder and lightening have brought hard rain.  Reality waits outside.

'She was good tonight,' said a veteran New York theater manager, filing out with some other New Yorkers who had come down to cast a professional eye on her summer act.  'That family bit is a sure thing,' said another.  'She's going to keep that at the Palace, isn't she?'

Judy has been booked into New York's Palace Theater, scene of one of her earlier triumphs, for four weeks.  But this week she belongs to Haddonfield and it's summer tent.

Her fans gave Judy Garland a five-minute standing ovation before the star ever got on stage last night at the Camden County Music Fair.  When she appeared, nothing could stop their applause; at one point the management even had to make an announcement to 'clear the stage' when a crowd of exuberant worshipers surrounded her and kissed her right in the middle of the show!  They loved her -- and rightly so, because she was terrific.

Looking slim and healthy and using the good sense to show her hair in its au naturel grey, Miss Garland sported her famous sequined paisley pajama pants-suit, but she had apparently not reckoned with the extreme heat of the summer evening weather.  The audience naturally forgave her obvious struggle to pretend that the steaming tent did not bother her!  In fact, they forgave her when she frankly muffed her lines on some requested songs.  This entertainer can do no wrong!  Each and every song... brought outbursts of cheers and bravas.  Throughout her much-too-short hour in the spotlight, most of the audience was on its feet. Every Garland gesture and vocal inflection brough adulation from the crowd.

A delightful surprise for everyone was the star's presentation of daughter Lorna, possibly prettier and more vocally talented than her sister Liza Minnelli.  Also little Joe, the apple of Miss Garland's eye, did a most precocious set on the drums!

Even at 44, with a thinning voice that was never artistically 'trained' from the beginning, the Garland magic endures.  But what is the magic?  some say Judy reminds her fans of better, more youthful days.  Others contend that she evokes pathos when remembered as Dorothy who did, indeed, get over the rainbow in THE WIZARD OF OZ movie, but never quite had such good luck in her personal private life.  This reviewer thinks no such explanations will do.  Instead, the Garland magic lies in the rarest of talents:  the star's ability to pour all of her great vitality into her songs and 'project' that vitality over the footlights into the hearts of her audience.  This is not a simple achievement.  Very few entertainers can 'give' themselves to their audiences like Judy Garland does; and that is why the public has tried to repay her and has rewarded her with fame for 'lo these thirty years.

This whole week will be chaos at the Camden County Music Fair while Judy Garland is appearing, but it's great entertainment, so who cares!