- Hollywood Bowl -

Judy's Concert in Bowl Rare Sight and Sound
 By Dick Williams, Los Angeles Mirror

I have seen some extraordinary sights over the years in covering show business, but none of them were more striking and few as memorable as the Judy Garland concert in Hollywood Bowl Saturday night. 

On a damp, drizzly night much more suited to frog hunting or roasting chestnuts than sitting outdoors listening to a singer, a huge audience of 20,000 filled the Bowl and stayed until the last bell-like tones of this singer's singer had died away far out beyond the uppermost tiers in the misty night. Then with a mighty football throng kind of roar they tendered her a last final
accolade.

There were all ages at Judy's one nighter, and they came fortified with raincoats, scarves, hats and blankets, prepared to stay the evening even if it poured. One Bardot like blond behind me watched the entire show through dark glasses. Another girl in an adjacent box, heedless of the heavy "dew," sat in short sleeved dress through much of the program.

I recognize Judy as one of the great singers of our time, but I am always amazed by the paroxysms of emotion which seize many of her followers. Her initial appearance on stage was enough to propel four-fifths of the audience to its feet for a long standing ovation. Frequently through her program, various young men throughout the audience bounded spontaneously to their feet wildly clapping with shouts of "Bravo."

Judy appeals to the emotions of her listeners as few singers can and the fact that she has the voice to belt, cry or coo, coupled with a dramatic presentation of her songs, makes her irresistible.

She sways like a buffeted willow in a rain squall as she quavers her impelling way through one of her sad songs of unrequited love. She confesses intimately in her mellow songs of amour and stands feet planted firmly apart, shouting on of her lusty, happier numbers.

To miss witnessing Judy in person and to rely only on her records is to miss half the excitement. For she is as much show-woman as singer, one of those rare personalities like the late Al Jolson who mesmerizes her audiences.

"What a nice intimate room," she greeted everyone when she first came on stage. Later, she told a joke about her weight.

Actually, she looked fine in her short hairdo, sequin trimmed red satin jacket and black skirt, exchanged in the last half for iridescent jacket and black slacks.

The numbers were mostly old favorites that Garland fans have come to treasure over the years. The program closely paralleled the Carnegie Hall concert last April when Judy teed off her current tour.

There were, of course, 'The Trolley Song,' 'The Man That Got Away,' 'Rockabye Your Baby' and 'I Can't Give You Anything But Love.' One of her finest was a tender, slowly intoned 'Stormy Weather.'

She sang a sweetly nostalgic 'Do It Again,' the drizzle was really coming down now and umbrellas popped up here and there like toadstools throughout the amphitheater. In the great beams of red and blue light from the spotlight towers, the moisture appeared as hard driving rain. But Judy sang on oblivious and so, to a considerable extent, were her listeners.

"I'm known for singing sad, tragic ballads," Judy said, "They (meaning her public) won't let me sing jazz, but I like jazz." Then she summoned nine musicians from the symphony sized orchestra backing her up on stage and they joined her out front to do a medley of fast, upbeat numbers.

After that she sat down on a chair by the pianist to sing 'Just in Time.' It was lilting, lyrical, rhythmic and intoxicating.

So the songs went, seemingly effortless as the falling drops of rain -- 'When You're Smiling,' 'Come Rain or Come Shine,' 'San Francisco,' 'What a Day This Has Been,' 'That's Entertainment.'

It came, as all evenings must, to a close and when Judy had disappeared without singing 'Over the Rainbow' a finale, the howls and entreaties of the crowd were unrestrained.

It's all a game of course. Judy is never going to close a concert without singing that hopefully, happy promise and her fans know it. But they like to beg her. And she likes to let them.

There was at least one heretic (and I strongly suspect a number more) in the great, well mannered throng. The gentleman in front of me periodically pressed a transistor radio to his ear to listen to the Dodger Milwaukee game. Non-believers have been drummed out of the corps for less.

The impact of a personality on the public can be such that an audience will endure bad weather, pay any price for tickets, overlook musical technicalities, and react to a formality or on an ad-lib with equal fervor. 

Such a personality is Judy Garland, whose Saturday night Hollywood Bowl concert, presented by Concerts Inc., was completely sold out.

She held her audience spellbound during a drizzly evening and received a standing ovation both preceding and following her program, a tribute which even the orchestra took part.

There may be better singers than Miss Garland, there are surely more pleasing voices. But there are few personalities as dynamic, as winning, as powerful as this magnetic performer whose every note and gesture is a personal gift to her public.

That she gives unsparingly of herself is the real secret of Miss Garland's phenomenal mass appeal. Any technical drawbacks to her work - occasional inaccuracies of pitch, for example - become entirely irrelevant in the wave of her delivery, which transcends the boundaries of mere vocalism.

Not that the voice itself counts for nothing. It can beguile and beseech or it can brew storms of rhythm powerful enough to raise cheers, which is exactly what it did when Miss Garland sang her best known tunes: 'San Francisco,' 'The Man That Got Away,' 'The Trolley Song,' 'Swanee' and 'Chicago,' along with 'When You're Smiling,' 'Stormy Weather,' 'Come Rain or Come Shine' and countless others.

The moment she walked out on a specially constructed ramp spanning the pool, she lit a fuse in the celebrity studded audience that never went out.

Fully as appreciated as her rehearsed numbers were the spontaneities - her bout with the tangled microphone wire, an impromptu dance during 'Zing Went the Strings of My Heart,' jokes about the weather, and when she returned after intermission attired in slacks and a sequined blouse, the proceedings became even more relaxed.

Needless to say, Miss Garland was urged back amidst bravos and cries for more. 'Over the Rainbow,' complimented with special rainbow colored lighting on the Bowl shell, began the four encores, which came to a halt only when Miss Garland ran out of orchestrations and had to repeat 'San Francisco.'

The orchestra, conducted by Mort Lindsey, gave the singer firm support and played with enthusiasm, doubtless as enveloped in the Garland personality as the audience.