Silver Screen (Jun-Oct 1940)

THE UGLY DUCKLING IT WAS moonlight and the air was filled with the fragrance of flowers as a lone little figure, in a white party dress with a gardenia in her thick brown curls, trudged down a winding road in Brentwood, California. Unobserved, she had slipped out a side door of the big white house on the hill, where lights and music told plainly that a party was in progress. At the fork of the road, the child, for she was discemibly a plump adolescent of teen-age, stopped and waited. Suddenly, a sedan drove up. The car door opened and she flung herself in, heedless of the fragile ruffles on the dainty frock. Simultaneously, she broke into sobs. "Why Judy Garland," said her mother, turning off the ignition switch, "what ever has happened? Why did you telephone me to come and get you? Why didn't you stay at the party?" "I couldn't bear it, mother, they laughed at me! Some of the girls stood in a corner and whispered and poked fun at me," Judy sobbed in her mother's arms. "I heard one of Deanna Durbin's friends say, 'She'll never be an actress. She just thinks she can sing. She's too fat. Imagine her being a movie star!' Then they all laughed." And then came afresh the release of pent up emotions and disappointment and child heart-break. A few seconds later the tears suddenly stopped. "I should have slapped their faces," exploded Judy, her quivering chin now rigid with indignation and determination. "But I'll show them. I WILL be somebody in pictures. I WILL." And she is. "I was pretty mad," Judy remembers. "But I really owe some of my spunk to those 'catty' girls! "When I was making a personal appearance in New York, a boy sent a note back stage to me. It said that I was a hypocrite singing that I loved New York and was happy. 'You just live a glamourous life in Hollywood and don't know what real honest clean fun is! And you don't look so hot up there with your petticoat showing a couple of inches — and you on the stage! Yah!' — he wrote. "My temper didn't rise a bit at the note. I felt sorry that anyone should be so bitter about anyone else. I had the usher bring him back stage and we talked. I told him that I wasn't a hypocrite — and he said well he thought all people who had lots of money were two-faced! "He'd just been released from a reform school — and didn't seem to like anyone or anything. I told him I had lots of fun. That I lived with my mother and sister and went with boys and girls my own age, and swam and played badminton, went to movies and did most anything any boy or girl does. "Too, I explained that my petticoat was not showing, that my dress was made with a bottom ruffle. Well, he seemed really sorry for being so unkind. Said if he'd thought more, he wouldn't have sent such a note. The next day he sent a letter of apology. I believe he always will feel friendly towards me. Probably, if I had stopped and spoken to those girls at Deanna's party they might have become friends, too. I've thought about it a lot. I know now that the way to deal with people, who want to be unkind to you, is to be so nice, they'll like you in spite of themselves." Strangely, Judy lives in a new white house on a winding road near the very hilltop house where jealousy first reared its ugly head and two thoughtless girls squelched her adolescent pride, but fired her determination. "This is my very own house," Judy said, proudly showing me through the spacious rooms and out onto the patio where we glimpsed the badminton court and the new swimming pool. A huge St. Bernard dog rounded the corner and all but knocked Judy over in his attempt to bestow (Continued on page 73) Left: In 1937, Judy was still pretty much of an ugly duckling as she attended the premiere of "Broadway Melody of 193 8." Above: Nowadays, Judy is one of the loveliest and most successful girls in Hollywood, not only in films but as a star on Bob Hope's radio program. Right: With Mickey Rooney at the premiere of their film "Babes in Arms."