- Boston Common -

Judy Seeks Rainbow on Common Tonight
Boston Evening Globe 08/31/67

The young lady who insists beautifully that things are pretty good over that rainbow is expected to reaffirm her philosophy at Boston Common tonight.  Judy Garland is in town with songs to sing - some old, some new, but all magnificent in the Judy tradition.  She will perform at 8:30 at a free concert sponsored by the brewers of Knickerbocker Beer, and a huge crowd is expected to greet the star of yesterday and today.

A small but enthusiastic crowd was on hand at Back Bay station Wednesday night as Judy stepped from a train and was officially greeted by Park Commissioner, John Tierney.  She was presented a bouquet of roses by Cathy Sandler, daughter of Malcolm Sandler, New England operations manager for Rupert Knickerbocker Co.

"Oh, they're pretty," Judy explained, as her more ardent followers tenderly offered "Oh, Judy, Judy."  Most of those on hand to greet the singer were young men, and they stayed with her as she was being interviewed.

Last Sunday night, a local TV station treated late night viewers to the 1955 Judy Garland triumph, A STAR IS BORN.  Tonight, 12 years later, Bostonians get the real thing on The Boston Common.  Those who witnessed her closing night at New York's Palace Theater, last week, will never again see the outpouring of human emotion that greeted Judy's farewell down the aisles as her worshippers reached out to touch their idol.  Those who heard thunder that shook the theater as she thanked the audience from the stage, will never hear its equal.  In its many years of hosting the many greats of entertainment, neither did the theater.  For this column, or any other for that matter, to capsule garland within its confines is an insult to a legend.  You don't write about Judy Garland, you merely announce her coming. 

Greatness makes its presence felt, to describe it only dulls its luster.

Lovable, durable Judy Garland brought a rainbow and a lot of love to more than 100,000 adulating fans at Boston Common Thursday night in Boston's first free pop concert.  The 44 year old songstress ran, crawled, jumped, shuffled and stomped through 13 songs and medleys in what the concert sponsors, Knickerbocker Beer, described as a birthday gift to the city.  It was Ruppert Brewing Co.'s 100th birthday, but Judy was a half-hour late for the party.

Her fans didn't mind it a bit.  Many had sat for 11 hours and through two rain storms waiting for her appearance.  Splashed in a gold and green sequined mod pants suit, Miss Garland romped on stage as the 26-piece Bobby Cole band broke into IT'S ALMOST LIKE BEING IN LOVE.

"I love her.  I love her," Marlene Schroeder, of Durham, N.H., screamed. Miss Schroeder and her mother, Mrs. Annette Schroeder were two of the first four on hand.  They arrived at 10:30 am with picnic lunch and dinner.  Glenn Theroux and his Mother, Mrs. Margie Theroux of North Smithfield, R.I., were the other two early birds.  "Judy's real," Theroux said.  "She forgets notes, words.  She goes off key, but she's real."

She was so real one male member of the audience proposed marriage.  "You looking for a nice wife?" Judy asked.  "Well, I've had numerous...Well, never mind."  Judy bantered ceaselessly with the audience.  "I want you all to come back to my hotel suite so we can get to know each other," she announced delightfully.  Obviously tired after a few numbers, she asked the audience to sing to her.  "What do you want t hear?" hundreds roared back. She told them. "Hello Judy, Hello, Judy. It's so nice to have you back where you belong...."  She made them sing it twice as she danced, clapped, frugged and charlestoned through the renditions.

During one pause, Matt Meagher, 19, of Hingham, handed Miss Garland a small batch of pink roses.  The flowers had been passed up front from a group who waved a sign reading:  "Hi Judy -- from your flower fans."  At another pause, hundreds rushed the 6-foot high stage and stretched out their hands. Judy managed to touch most of them before a cordon of 14 police pushed the crowd back.

Just before Judy's last number, Boston Mayor Collins presented her with a Paul Revere bowl.  "Ordinarily, I'm mayor of Boston," he told her, "but tonight I'm just one of 100,000 fans.  We have taken you to our hearts.  God love you and bring you back to us."  "I'm greatly honored.  I wish you'd book me back here every night." Judy replied, and she bent down to the footlights and kissed him.

"It was as if her voice had come out of the long years past.  It was as biting crisp and burnished brass.  At times it was a quasi-echo of Dorothy, from THE WIZARD OF OZ.  Then it became a return visit with Polly Benedict of "The Andy Hardy" movies.  Her pipes, as awesome as those in the Mormon Tabernacle, quivered here and there with a vibrato that never used to be there.  She may have slid momentarily over the right key.  But, in the sum total of her performance Thursday night at the Boston Common, Judy Garland delivered with her familiar blockbuster magic.  Judy had come to Boston as a 'reverse' birthday gift to the City of Boston in this mammoth concert on the green.  While Miss Garland invariably dipped into a comfortable bag of personal winners, it seemed she did it less out of convenience and more from shrewd sense of what her thousands of listeners wanted.  The Garland story is for many millions of Americans the incredible fable of the girl who won, lost, won again, lost again and tried even harder with the determination of a snarling tigress.  People find it easy to identify with Judy.  Combine with that her talent and Miss Garland is everybody's sweetheart.

The Garland voice is a powerfully dramatic instrument.  It can leave the blasé a-tremble, can stir the apathetic to cheers and never fails to mobilize a sort of musical catharsis in the multitude.  After a psychological warm-up via an orchestral medley...out came Judy.  When the screams of "Judy, Judy, Judy!" subsided, she strutted out on the red-carpeted 20-foot runway and wheeled into I FEEL A SONG COMING ON.  She belted this all the way to the Parkman Bandstand.  On the last chorus of THIS CAN'T BE LOVE, she literally growled the restatement of the theme;  she opened JUST IN TIME at a wily stroll and gathered a full head of steam to bring it home.

Meanwhile, the I-love-you-Judy's were raining over the Common like wildly swirling butterflies.  Judy responded in kind, always busy on stage.  In response to the pleadings of many fans, she replied, I'll get to OVER THE RAINBOW.  I always get to OVER THE RAINBOW."  (In between her conversational sallies into the night, she shooed camera men who were obstructing the view of the audience.)  There was a special white-hot incandescence in her version of Gilbert Becaud's WHAT NOW MY LOVE.  For Judy, it was a new song, although it's been performed and recorded since 1942 by many artists.

Thursday's crowd came to hear the ear splitting RKO-type ending that is the Garland signature.  In WHAT NOW MY LOVE, Judy kept stroking the blazes to a relentless bolero tempo until the Common exploded from the combustion of voice kindling song.  (When the cheers had ceased a close-up transistorized individual yelled out a contrapuntal, "Red Sox leading 2 to 1")  After Judy, playing the audience like a metronome, had called out:  "I wish you would sing one for me, so I could take a rest."  a youngster called out from the Charles ST. flank: "Take your time, we'll wait all night."  The audience reciprocated with HELLO, JUDY as they had earlier vocalized on FOR ME AND MY GAL, an un-Common sing-along.  On THE TROLLEY SONG she swayed and gestured full-fisted to the end of the line; sang "something new for me," a Jobim bossa nova, HOW INSENSITIVE, swept out over the night with YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU and snapped the whip again on ROCKABYE.  She had fun with the verse of SAN FRANCISCO, wheeled into SWANEE and crowned the evening with OVER THE RAINBOW.

No more Dorothy.  Polly Benedict is mere legend.  The voice is not always true, but the duende -- that blockbusting magic is still part of the Judy Garland package.

She stood there, a small figure in a gold-and-green sequined pants suit, part woman, part waif, and all heart.  "We Love ya, Judy!" voices called out in the dark from among the 100,000 Judy worshippers who jammed Boston Common and spilled out into downtown streets last night.  "I love you, too." Judy whispered back through the mike.  Then, she blew them kisses, first with one hand, then with the other.  Arms flung open, she symbolically enveloped them all.  "I want you all to come up to my room after the performance."  Judy told them.  Earth Mother, Soul Sister, Living Legend.  Judy Garland is all these things to people.

Boston's mayor, John F. Collins, seated next to Mrs. John A. Volpe, the feeling when he presented Judy with a Paul Revere bowl.  "Ordinarily," he told her, "I'm called Mayor Collins," But tonight I'm just one of your 100,000 fans."  Judy stopped over from the 20-foot long runway from which she sang and bestowed a kiss on the mayors cheek, and he looked pleased as Punch.  Leaving early to avoid the crowds, the mayor stopped in his tracks when Bobby Cole's orchestra struck up the last number.  "I'm not going to leave if she's going to sing some more," the mayor told his police escort.  And he stayed.

Like a rush of river in a Spring thaw and just as inevitable, it came.  HER song.  Legs tucked under her, she sat on the runway and belted it out for who-knows-how-many times.  "Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high." Incandescent she is.  "Don't sing.  Just stand there, Judy!" a man yelled to her when she paused between numbers.  The beatniks were there, but so were the bankers, the matrons and the kids.  Garland has captured the children, just as she captured their parents.