Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1957)

PLAYING THE PALACE WITH JUDY GARLAND ■ I'll never forget my first glimpse of Judy Garland. I had come to audition for her when she needed some male singers for her act at New York's Palace. She sat quietly in a corner but gave each of us a big smile to take away some of the stage fright we were feeling. During the Palace run, there were many unusual evenings. Like the night Bing Crosby was there. He and Julie Andrews, the My Fair Lady star, were sitting in the front row. Judy introduced Julie and Bing, and the audience applauded so loudly that Bing had to come up on stage. As Bing and Judy sang together, I knew I was watching the greatest — there isn't enough money in Ft. Knox to pay for these two entertainers in one personal appearance. One Sunday matinee I was charting with Judy before the curtain went up and she told me she was very nervous that day : her three children were in the audience and they were the toughest critics she had. When she reached the point in her act where she sang "Happiness Is Just A Thing Called Joe" she got her little son Joe out of the audience and held him as she sang it. There wasn't a dry eye in the house when she finished. Next, she brought little Lorna out of the audience and sang "Rock-a-bye My Baby" to her. Then, Liza, the eldest, came up on stage. This time, Judy stepped aside and asked Liza to sing. Liza sang "Swanee" and on the end of the second chorus, Judy joined in the singing and Liza started dancing. Then Liza took her bows — just as Judy does — while Judy stood at the side of the stage beaming with pride. Of course, the run wasn't all sweetness and light. Judy missed several performances because of laryngitis. Judy hates to perform when she can't give an audience what they've always heard in the movies, so she usually cancelled a performance when the strain would start showing. But one night she didn't realize how bad her throat was. As the show progressed, Judy's voice got weaker. At the end of her last song, "Over The Rainbow," Judy had to hit two high, sustained notes. When she got to it, she realized she just couldn't hit them. She paused for a few seconds, and the audience burst into applause to help her. Then, she kind of croaked the two notes. Every other night she walked slowly off stage after that number, since it was her finish, but that night she ran off, and threw her arms around a stage hand and sobbed bitterly. Then she dried her eyes and went back on stage to take her curtain calls. The week before Christmas, the whole show took a vacation. When we came back, Judy decided to put another opening number in the show. We sang this number off stage into a mike, but even though we weren't on stage, Judy wanted us to smile while we sang so it would be a happy sound to the audience. It sounds silly, but it's true — if you smile while you're singing, it sounds like you're happy. But it's difficult to smile to no one, so until it was her cue to go on stage Judy used to stand in front of us and make faces ! And the faces she made really broke us up. We'd laugh at Judy — and she had the effect she wanted. That was what playing the Palace with Judy was like, right through closing night— when the whole audience stood up as one and sang "Auld Lang Syne" 76 to Judy Garland, in thanks for the magic she gave in her voice. Red Hilton Brothers and penny-watching was still pretty necessary. Every time she went to New York, she got in touch with a girl friend who was a secretary at one of the big buying offices. Through her, Doris could get into most of the wholesale firms in the garment district. But quite naturally she was always rushed through by the salespeople who wanted to get over to the buyers who would pick up fifty or a hundred garments instead of the one, two, or three that Doris chose. So while she might save herself up to fifty percent of the retail price, in the end it wasn't worth it since she could not exchange her purchases. And rushed through to a super-fast yes or no — it isn't surprising that Doris invariably regretted one out of three dresses bought. "And some of the alterations! " she smiles ruefully. "I'll never forget one little number. It looked like it would fit. but holding a dress up in front of you is hardly the best way to judge! The alteration bill! — to widen the shoulders and drop the waist and take in the darts and narrow the skirt, make the neckline fit and on and on." Doris stuck to retail stores ever since. "There's no doubt about it — it was too expensive to buy wholesale — believe it or not!" 'Bargains' cost too much Continuing on the theme of what to pay for something, Doris explains that "It's wiser to buy fewer things for more money, than more for bargain prices. That's especially true for summer cottons." That was another of Doris' expensive 'learnby-experience' lessons. Soon after she first settled in California she bought two cheap dresses at a chain store near La Brea. One of the dresses shrank to where she couldn't wear it again; the other was equally unwearable . . . the colors ran after the first washing. Most important, says Doris, is to compare merchandise as extensively as possible. "I never buy the first dress I try on anymore no matter how much I like it. How could I know it's the best I can find— and the most flattering?" That she meant what she said was quite apparent to Donna Reed when Donna went shopping with Doris for a garden-party number. They went to seven department stores and four specialty shoppes before Doris made her choice — the first dress she'd tried on that morning! "I've never seen anyone more surprised than the salesgirl when we came back for the dress six hours after Doris had first tried it on!" Donna recalls. But Doris explains, "How would I know I liked it best if I hadn't seen the others?" Crisp, clean and sparkling And that's just about it — what makes Doris Day one of Hollywood's best-dressed women. Except for one more thing — and it's probably the most important. Now Doris can afford to spend far more on her summer wardrobe than the average working girl. But according to Edith Head, the true secret of her success with clothes has little to do with the amount of money she spends. As Miss Head puts it, "It's in the way she takes care of what she has. whether it's a $750.00 Dior creation or a $15.00 cotton dress. I've never seen Doris with a run in her stocking, a wrinkled skirt, a dirty glove. She always looks crisp, clean, sparkling, like she had just taken a shower and the garment was delivered from the cleaners no more than fifteen minutes ago . . . ." END Doris will soon be seen in Warner Bros, musical The Pajama Game. RKO's Curtain Going Up and Paramount s Teacher's Pet.