- O'Keefe Centre -

It Was Toronto's Biggest Ovation

Judy Garland killed them.

A capacity crowd at the O'Keefe Centre Sunday night, roaring and clapping, stormed the stage as, sweat pouring off her face, Judy Garland finished her concert with nearly 3,500 people screaming.

In a pair of black slacks and a multi-colored jacket she stood before the 28 musicians and played the emotions of the crowd as if it were a vast orchestra.

Never has there been such an ovation in a Toronto theatre.  Sables and minks were trampled in the aisles and the audience behaved as if the Argonauts had won the Grey Cup.

With superb artistry she sang for two hours going from ballads to blues and finishing with a series of old Al Jolson songs which finally brought the audience storming down the aisles to grasp her by the hand and fill the great auditorium with cheers, whistles and shouts.

How do you measure miracles?

How do you record that the massive pile of the Centre shook; that the air inside stirred and shuddered strangely and that a host of citizens  were supernaturally shocked with pleasure.

And how, above all, do you explain that it was due to the uncanny powers of one tiny woman singing songs?

For that's all Judy Garland did... She sang 26 songs. But how she sang them!

With her heart swelling in her throat, threatening to slip out at any minute and soar... or perhaps shatter.

And that was enough to bring hundreds of obviously shaken patrons surging down the aisles to drop on their knees, literally at her feet.  They knelt dozens deep along the full length of the wide Centre stage and shrilled their delight, reaching to touch, to caress, and in some cases, to kiss her outstretched hands.

It was an astonishing climax to an already incredible evening in the theatre.

Things started slowly.  At 8:38 p.m. the house lights dimmed slightly and an anticipatory ripple of applause ran through the auditorium.

A minute later, the lights dipped lower, the curtain glowed crimson and then abruptly lifted on the 28-piece orchestra arranged in tiers around a bare stage under the Centre's stark orchestral shell.  A sharp blaring overture of familiar songs and then Miss Garland, in a black sheath dress topped with a scarlet mandarin jacket, stepped out of the wings into a thundering wave of applause. 

Without pause, obviously tense and at least a little frightened, her huge, dark eyes as vulnerable as a child's, she swung into her first song, When You're Smiling.  The response when she finished was warm and full, but not yet fully unleashed.

She moved on to It's Almost Like Being in Love and This Can't Be Love. Again, strong, but not overwhelming applause.

Judy apologized for a frog in her throat, stepped to the wings and returned with a glass of water and a handkerchief.

"I don't know why I can't perspire-I just sweat," she quipped.

She told a story of a sagging Parisian hairdo and now the crowd was warming quickly they were with her but still not dominated.

Six more songs (Oh, Do It Again, Never Never Marry, Alone Together, Who Cares, You Do Something To Me and Oh, What a Little Moonlight Can Do), another anecdote about a London Press conference ("The story said:  "She's not plump, she's not chubby she's fat."")

And then the first tremor really rocked the theatre.

Somewhere midway through The Man That Got Away, it was evident this audience was transfixed, seized by the appeal of this woman as by no other artist in the Centre before.  In one passage, there wasn't a sound in the theatre but her voice and the rustling as one musician shifted his music -- not a cough, a sigh or a shuffle among 3,500 souls.

Immediately she swung into a fiercely driving version of San Francisco and when the house lights blazed again for intermission at 9:25 her triumph was already complete.  She might have stopped right there and it would have been a spectacularly successful evening.

But thirty minutes later she was back, this time in slim black slacks and a vivid sequined, hip-length jacket to skip and dance through That's Entertainment.

Two songs later, after I Can't Give You Anything But Love Baby, the second shock ran through the Centre, with an incredibly moving rendition of Come Rain or Come Shine.

For three more tunes, You're Nearer, If Love Were All and Just in Time, she chose to settle on a straight back chair, accompanied only by conductor Morton Lindsey at the piano.  Then she was back on her feet at centre stage, the whole orchestra crashing behind her, as she again gripped and shook the audience with Stormy Weather.

Zing, Went The Strings of My Heart (complete with a few spirited high kicks) followed, a touching For Me and My Gal and then once more she brought the crowd screaming to it's feet with the Trolley Song.

A final rousing treatment of Rock-A-By Your Baby, and Judy began to bow off.  But the customers knew this couldn't be the end and rumbled and roared till she returned to deliver her ultimate trademark, Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

At the close, dozens of near-hysterical patrons were pouring down the six aisles and crowding about the tiny figure bobbing behind the footlights.  She finally hushed the house once more, motioned the crowd around the stage to crouch down so those behind them  could see and, with a battered old topper on the back of her head, rollicked through Swanee.

By now, the roar inside the Centre was deafening with more and more rapt listeners running and stumbling down the aisles, dropping to their knees at the edge of the throng already huddled there.

In answer to shouts from the balcony, Judy swung into one last song, Chicago, and with the auditorium still trembling with thunderous acclaim, she bowed off smiling. 

It was a great, big, noisy evening last night at O'Keefe Centre - a night full of wonderful noise and love, love for everybody . . .  noise, love and Miss Judy Garland.

The Centre had wheeled out its band shell, hitherto reserved for symphony concerts, and a big orchestra filled the stage behind the star.

The volume was terrific, coming close to being a real din.  Sometimes, at the front of the jam-packed house, the orchestra drowned out the star, but from the back the word came that a proper balance was achieved.

The audience was noisy, too.  If anybody had come with a show-me attitude, he must have checked it at the door.

There were at least 11 outbursts of applause before Miss Garland even hit the stage.  And as she built up our affection to uncontrollable peaks, that applause became more and more thunderous.

And finally, there was cheering and standing and running down the aisles to try to shake Miss Garland's hand.

But the noise that mattered of course, was that special noise that Judy Garland makes.  You can't simply call it singing, for everybody can sing.  You can't just call it that, although as that, it was wonderful and Miss Garland was in splendid voice. 

No, it was rather the sound of a heart overflowing, pouring itself out to all us wonderful, wonderful people.

Miss Garland is the one star who never takes her ovations for granted or the affection which greets her.    Her discover of it is spontaneous as spontaneous as her singing is.

And you are reminded how much spontaneity is a part of Miss Garland's particular, unique art of self-expression.  She sang for a whole evening without even on short intermission and went from climax to climax until the house vibrated with the wonderment at the limitless power engendered by this little girl, and always with that same spontaneity.

And little girl she is, forlorn and needing help, close to tears at all times but also a little girl with a wonderful smile.  You very quickly get past the slight disguise the years have insisted on.

Stocky she may seem at first glance, all right, a bit pudgy maybe, but you can't help admiring those legs.  And the grace of those hands.  And by the time you look back at her face, there is the little girl smiling at you.

Her slight nervousness of movement at first, and some difficulty in hearing her above the band which led to clouding of lyrics, marred the opening impact a little, but soon you forgot all such trivia.  But I for one was still grateful when things quieted down for the sentimental numbers, and enjoyed the few selections with piano alone most of all.

The first of these was You're Nearer, and it was shear delight.  I'd have liked that best of all if it had not been for the superb way she interpreted Stormy Weather.

And that would have been the best if  it hadn't been that her interpretation of  I Can't Give You Anything But Love was just the greatest . . . . And then there was The Man That Got Away.

Of course, you do have to admit that those strutting, shouting, trumpeting songs - she calls them parade songs - are her special, special metier.  That's Entertainment, and The Trolley Song for instance, and Come Rain or Come Shine, Zing Went the Stings of My Heart, San Francisco (with that opening "I'll never forget Jeanette MacDonald") and Chicago and Swanee. 

Swanee was done at the end of the show, after Somewhere Over the Rainbow (the only song which really disappointed me perhaps because the buildup was just too great for all those bluebirds).  She did it with the battered hat, in full possession of 3,200-plus hearts, skipping about the stage like a little boy showing off at Christmas.

A word, before we conclude this elegy to a very popular singer.  Miss Garland has one gift that came as a great surprise.  She moves with grace and brilliance.

Anchored as she is to a microphone, you are struck by these few excursions around the stage, the perfect rhythm of those jerky little struts, the nimble ease of those high kicks.  I hope one day she returns to the Centre in a musical where that extra talent can be exploited more.

The personal appeal of Judy Garland needs to praise from drama critics.  You may try, but any cool investigation of the Garland mystique goes by the board after you find that unexplained moisture in your eyes.

All you wonder is how,  in that great big, crowded, noisy house, Judy Garland can find you out and sing directly to you so much of the time. 

They had a big hey rube most of the summer about Roger Maris trying to hit 61 home runs so he would smash Babe Ruth's record.

Judy Garland hit 62 home runs last night at O'Keefe Centre.

And didn't swing anything heavier than a battered silk hat.

Toronto Leafs' Steve Ridbik throws a high hard one.

Judy Garland made Ridbik's high hard one look like Pat Scantlebury's slow ball - and struck out 3,200 cash customers, in order, simultaneously, and time and again.

And wait - does it every night she gets up on a stage and starts belting out songs.  She's done 40 of these concerts this year, does another at the Centre Tuesday night.  Every spot she hit she flattened.  She flattened the Centre last night just as she did the others, and she'll flatten, completely demolish, leave in ruins, any place she hits for some years yet.

As singers go, male or female, this doll starts where the rest of the field stops.  At the top.  As stage performers, troupers go, she's in a class by herself.

Her album from her Carnegie Hall appearance has as much applause in it as music.  We've heard she's had audiences hysterical, in tears, screaming for more, rushing for the footlights and pleading for her to continue.

But this was Toronto.  On a Sunday.  And chances are, the "squarest" audience she's come up against yet.  Squares from Squaresville.  Now don't get hot.  This was practically a hand-picked audience.  All but 280 seats went season ticket subscribers and to members of the preferred mailing list.  So this was hardly an audience made up of too many of the duck rear hairdo, black leather jackets, "take it off" set.

So what happened?  There were seven crashes of applause before Judy even made her appearance.

But they went mad when Garland, all five feet of her, stepped out from the wings and took a stance at the microphone.  She takes a stance like she's going for a 300 yard drive.

The applause thunders out with every song she starts.  It must be they love her from an old picture yet.  There's a thing between this tiny woman and her listeners.  A rapport.  Maybe the catch in her throat when she sings about the man who got away.  We know this man has to be an ogre to leave this poor little kid.  He has to be imbecillic besides.  This doll can make a buck.

Maybe it's for the troubles she's had in her close to 40 years.  an inferiority complex, they say.  Nerves.  The tons of herself she puts into her performances.  So when she starts with "If You're Smiling," look how brave she is after what she's been through.  maybe they applaud before she starts because they know what they've bought.  They've bought a winner.  It isn't quite like that at the race track.  or in the market.  Or even in real estate.

It aint fit'n for a race tracker to go into contrapuntals or polyrhythmics and things like that, so we'll leave them for Nathan Cohen and the upper register type critics.  All we can tell you about her singing is that we are convinced that the bridge at San Francisco is a real gone bridge, if we never believed it before; that nobody's had the Stormy Weather this gal has had; that the strings of her heart actually went "zing!"; that the bells never rang for her an Gene Kelly; and that if she can't give you anything but love, that will do.

La Garland tried to get off, well it appeared she did, about 10:30, finally made it 20 minutes later after a terrific smash of Rock-a-bye My Baby (Jolson was never like this), Over the Rainbow and Chicago.  Amid the most frenzied scenes in Toronto's show history.

From somewhere a few young folk rushed to the footlights to shake her hand.  Everybody stood up and shouted "More, more!".  Pretty soon hundreds rushed the footlights clamoring for "more."

You'd have to bet somebody had a claque in action.  What this girl would need a claque for we wouldn't know.  It would be like fixing a race for Man O'War.