Judy Garland Quotes

Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.

For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.

In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.

How strange when an illusion dies. It's as though you've lost a child.

I've always taken 'The Wizard of Oz' very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I've spent my entire life trying to get over it.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

Well, we have a whole new year ahead of us. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, a little more loving, and have a little more empathy, and maybe, next year at this time we'd like each other a little more.

Mom brought me some peanut butter cookies and a biography of Judy Garland. She told me she thought my problem was that I was too impatient, my fuse was too short, that I was only interested in instant gratification. I said, “Instant gratification takes too long.” The glib martyr.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of being a second-rate version of someone else.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” – Judy Garland

I suppose that the moral of this story is that trying to copy another woman, even a woman from the Bible, is almost always a bad idea. As Judy Garland liked to say, " Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.

For twas not into my ear you whispered, But into my heart. Twas not my lips you kissed, But my soul.

Twas not my lips you kissed But my soul

We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” —Judy Garland

It took me a while to see that the contrast between the racism directed at Billie and the compassion offered to addicted white stars like Judy Garland was not some weird misfiring of the drug war—it was part of the point.

Lions and tigers, and bears, oh my! - Dorothy in Wizard of Oz (1939)

I decide to hone my joy. I dance around the kitchen to Judy Garland’s Greatest Hits on the turntable. The sun on my chest, I spin in my socks. Bruised, exhausted, and fluttering back to earth.

never be a second-rate version of someone else, be a first-rate version of yourself

always be a first-rate version of your self instead of a second-rate version of someone else.

What never failed to boggle Daisy was how Judy Garland had only just arrived in this glorious colorful place and she immediately wanted to run back to some boring pig farm. The fact that everyone else loved the film...what did that say about people? It says that most people can tolerate being over the rainbow for only about thirty seconds.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else

Always be a first-rate version of yourself instead of a second-rate version of someone else. —JUDY GARLAND

Depending on her mood, Judy Garland can still be more frightening than any demon or devil you might run across.

Besides, she likes Judy Garland and knows that if she sings a Judy Garland song, she’s gonna sing it better than Judy ever could. That gives Aretha great satisfaction.

With apologies to Judy Garland and Cole Porter, all the world does NOT love a clown. John Wayne Gacy might have been the final nail in the coffin in terms of anyone associating clowns with funny (if a bunch of clowns die, do they all fit into one coffin?)

The riot was about the police doing what they constantly did: indiscriminately harassing us. The police represented every institution of America that night: religion, media, medical, legal, and even our families, most of whom had been keeping us in our place. We were tired of it. And as far as we knew, Judy Garland had nothing to do

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. —Judy Garland

By the tits of Judy Garland.

...I bet that Judy Garland would 'ave snapped out of it if she'd 'ad me in 'er ear and not all those poofs telling 'er she was a tragic 'eroine.

Normal” women were rare, unless one considered Judy Garland a normal woman.

For it was not my ear you whispered but into my heart, it was not my lips you kissed but my soul -Judy Garland

For it was not my ear you whispered but into my heart, it was not my lips you kissed but my soul -Judy Garland” Excerpt From: Langston, K. “Because You're Mine.” iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Hollywood High School was flipping from the storied institute of legend to the high school of the barrio. Or, as CNN put it in a series of rave reviews for the “predominantly Latino” school: “Hollywood High Now a Diverse High School.” Hollywood High alumni include Cher, Carol Burnett, Lon Chaney, James Garner, Linda Evans, John Huston, Judy Garland, Ricky Nelson, Sarah Jessica Parker, John Ritter, Mickey Rooney, Lana Turner, and Fay Wray, among many others. By the mid-2000s, Hollywood High was more than 70 percent Hispanic,5 and students were less likely to be getting publicity shots than mug shots. Today the school is mostly famous for its stabbings, shootings, child molestations, thefts, and graffiti.6 Around 1990, a California TV producer trying to enroll a German exchange student in a Los Angeles high school asked the principal at Fairfax High if a foreign exchange student would be better served by Fairfax or Hollywood High. Without looking up, the principal replied, “Well, 90% of my students can speak English, and we haven’t had a shooting here in 5 years.

Să fii intodeauna o versiune de primă mână a propriei persoane, nu una de mâna a doua a altcuiva.

MGM, nor did it lead to her receiving more adult parts. As soon as The Wizard of Oz was completed,

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else.

Twas not my lips you kissed, but my soul

Monroe as well as another troubled superstar. “If it wasn’t Marilyn Monroe crying on his shoulder, then it was Judy Garland,” Rupert recalled. “It was almost like they took turns. Marilyn would call one night and Judy the next. He was always very patient, very understanding with both of them, even though he wasn’t getting much sleep. I think he liked playing the big brother who comes to the rescue.

I had heard that Presley died on the toilet, but I’d assumed the location was happenstance, as it was with Judy Garland and Lenny Bruce: an embarrassing setting for a standard celebrity overdose. But the straining-at-stool theory made some sense. With all three autopsies—that of J.W., Mr. K., and E., as Presley’s intimates called him—the collapse was abrupt and the autopsy revealed no obvious cause of death. (Though Presley had traces of several prescription drugs in his blood, none was present at a lethal level.) What Elvis’s autopsy did unambiguously reveal was a colon two to three times normal size.

The arguments we hear today for the drug war are that we must protect teenagers from drugs, and prevent addiction in general. We assume, looking back, that these were the reasons this war was launched in the first place. But they were not. They crop up only occasionally, as asides. The main reason given for banning drugs184—the reason obsessing the men who launched this war—was that the blacks, Mexicans, and Chinese were using these chemicals, forgetting their place, and menacing white people. It took me a while to see that the contrast between the racism directed at Billie and the compassion offered to addicted white stars like Judy Garland was not some weird misfiring of the drug war—it was part of the point.

When parents talk about their pasts, the stories start to stick in your head. But the memories that you inherit look different from the now-world, and different from your own memories, too. Like they have a color all their own. I don’t mean sepia-toned or something. My parents aren’t even that old. I just mean that there is something particular about their glow.

To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl Do you realize that if you had started building the Parthenon on the day you were born you would be all done in only one more year? Of course, you couldn’t have done it alone, so never mind, you’re fine just as you are. You are loved simply for being yourself. But did you know that at your age Judy Garland was pulling down $150,000 a picture, Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory, and Blaise Pascal had cleaned up his room? No wait, I mean he had invented the calculator. Of course, there will be time for all that later in your life after you come out of your room and begin to blossom, or at least pick up all your socks. For some reason, I keep remembering that Lady Jane Grey was Queen of England when she was only fifteen, but then she was beheaded, so never mind her as a role model. A few centuries later, when he was your age, Franz Schubert was doing the dishes for his family but that did not keep him from composing two symphonies, four operas, and two complete Masses as a youngster. But of course that was in Austria at the height of romantic lyricism, not here in the suburbs of Cleveland. Frankly, who cares if Annie Oakley was a crack shot at 15 or if Maria Callas debuted as Tosca at 17? We think you are special by just being you, playing with your food and staring into space. By the way, I lied about Schubert doing the dishes, but that doesn’t mean he never helped out around the house.

One day, Harry Anslinger was told that there were also white women, just as famous as Billie, who had drug problems—but he responded to them rather differently. He called Judy Garland, another heroin addict, in to see him. They had a friendly chat, in which he advised her to take longer vacations between pictures, and he wrote to her studio, assuring them she didn’t have a drug problem at all. When he discovered that a Washington society hostess he knew—“a beautiful, gracious lady,” he noted—had an illegal drug addiction, he explained he couldn’t possibly arrest her because “it would destroy . . . the unblemished reputation of one of the nation’s most honored families.” He helped her to wean herself off her addiction slowly, without the law becoming involved.

You don't always keep on the top", she began again. "My life, my career has been like a roller coaster. I've either been an enormous success or just a down-and-out failure, which is silly because everybody always asks me, 'How does it feel to make a comeback?' And I don't know where I've been! I haven't been away." She paused, and Vangkilde waited. "It's lonely and cold on the top...lonely and cold," she said very quietly.

Gay men were at the forefront of that community of misfits, happy to have found in Garland a performer whose tragedy and resilience (like their own) went hand in hand. Those “boys in the tight trousers,” her “ever-present little bluebirds” 10 as Time magazine euphemistically referred to them at the time (William Goldman was not so kind, outright talking about the “flutter of fags” 11 that filled up Garland’s closing night at The Palace in 1967), were drawn to Garland precisely because she spoke their language. As queer theorist David M. Halperin notes in his cheekily titled book How to Be Gay, this had little to do with a synchronous identification: Garland “wasn’t a gay man,” he writes, “but in certain respects she could express gay desire, what gay men want, better than a gay man could. That is, she could actually convey something even gayer than gay identity itself.” 12

The cast in 1938–39: Bob Hope, madcap Jerry Colonna, announcer Bill Goodwin, and bandleader Skinnay Ennis. Blanche Stewart and Elvia Allman as high-society crazies Brenda and Cobina. Judy Garland, resident songstress, 1939; Frances Langford for many years thereafter. Barbara Jo Allen as Vera Vague by 1943. Stan Kenton as maestro, 1943, when Skinnay Ennis went into the Army; Desi Arnaz Orchestra, 1946; Les Brown beginning in 1947. Singers of the late 1940s: Gloria Jean, Doris Day. Trudy Erwin as the Pepsodent Girl, whose weekly lament, “Dear Miriam, poor Miriam, neglected using Irium,” warned women what might happen to teeth without Pepsodent and its super ingredient, Irium.

Eugene, Oregon, found Judy performing in a gymnasium with a bunch of college kids in the audience.

A Star Is Born was remade two more times, with everybody from Judy Garland to Barbra Streisand playing the part based on Colleen Moore.

But did you know that at your age Judy Garland was pulling down $ 150,000 a picture, Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory, and Blaise Pascal had cleaned up his room? No wait, I mean he had invented the calculator. Of course, there will be time for all that later in your life after you come out of your room and begin to blossom, or at least pick up all your socks.

Titled by year, Good News of 1939, 1940 became Maxwell House Coffee Time to begin the 1940–41 season, though the Good News title was still used for a few broadcasts. Maxwell House Coffee. CAST: Hosts: James Stewart, 1937; Robert Taylor, early to mid-1938; Robert Young, beginning in fall 1938; various hosts, 1939–40; Dick Powell, ca. 1940. Frank Morgan, resident comic. Fanny Brice as Baby Snooks beginning Dec. 23, 1937. Hanley Stafford as Daddy. Also many MGM film stars including Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Mickey Rooney, Alice Faye, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable,

...I know it is good for us to get a few knocks on the chin. Which can't be glass, if we are to survive.

I traveled in her orbit only for a while, but it was an exciting while and one during which it seemed that the joys in her life outbalanced the miseries.

Except that Blair wasn’t nearly as fat as Judy Garland. She was a size two!

Ahwahnee has hosted dozens of celebrities, including Queen Elizabeth, Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy (who arrived via helicopter). Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, and Judy Garland stayed here while filming The Long, Long Trailer, as did William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy while filming Star Trek IV. Robert Redford worked at the Ahwahnee before launching his film career, and Steve Jobs was married on the back lawn in a Buddhist ceremony.

Somewhere in the distance he could hear a wireless playing Judy Garland's 'Over the Rainbow.' Wolf had seen the film but, had he been the one swept up to the magical land of Oz, he would have raised an army of flying monkeys, stuck the witches in a concentration camp, razed the Emerald City to the ground and executed the wizard for communist sympathies, being a Jew, a homosexual, intellectually retarded, or all of the above. He did like the tune, though.

Judy, of course, doesn't stand in the ruins; she is the ruin. In this way she enthralled a generation of gay men, singing her way out of suffering while still bearing the inescapable marks of damage.

The star shaped the vehicle. It had to be tailored around their talents and personalities. Betty Grable was Fox. Judy Garland was MGM. And behind them were art directors and cinematographers with specific styles, too. It all added up, but it had to be shaped around the star. The public went to see the star, really.

Hero worship, when properly entered into, has a great deal of poetry in it. It inspires and motivates, renews and revives. It encourages introspection, investigation of desire, personal moral inventory and all manner of fruitful examinations. The cargo of goodwill that spells of extreme admiration create, can provide personal ballast against discouragement and grief. To be in the habit of fixing another with your highest personal regard over time increases your capacity to love. . . . Hero worship can be an emotional Olympics, a way of testing one’s lowest and highest drives. My Judy-love strengthens and inspires what is already good in me and what is bad. It helps me become more completely and entirely myself. And if the poetry of hero worship imparts some measure of heroism on the practitioner, then that is all to the good.

«Over the Rainbow» de Judy Garland

ARTHUR FREED: When I first signed Gene Kelly, nobody in the studio liked him. They said, “You’re not going to put him opposite Judy Garland in For Me and My Gal?” I said, “He’s perfect for it, he’s an Irishman.” Eddie Mannix said, “But he’s the wrong kind of Irishman.” I had lunch with Mayer, and I said, “I want to tell you something: I’m starting the picture next week, and everybody thinks that I’m doing the wrong thing putting Gene Kelly opposite Judy.” He said, “How do you feel?” I said, “I love him.” He said, “Well, then, don’t listen to all those schmucks.

For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul. -Judy Garland

As queer theorist David Caron notes in his essay in the edited collection Gay Shame, Garland’s own “dissolution of the boundary between the private and the public, the personal and the non personal” 7 spoke to gay men because it was rooted in an acknowledgment of shame. Of childhood shame, moreover. The Broadway Melody scene exists at the intersection of queerness and fandom because it depicts a childhood scene of shame that Garland herself would continue to enact and perform throughout her career, a career that in its turn engendered many a childhood scene of shame.

Dear Ms. Garland, I am writing this to you And I’m hoping you can read this from up above Your passing made me sadder Cause your singing made me gladder And I thought I’d write this to tell you so Judy you made me love you I didn’t want to do it I didn’t want to do it Judy you made me love you And I wish you knew it I really want you to see this I know that you’ve ascended to heaven up above And when I get there too I can tell you you’re the one I love Judy, you know you’ve made me love you. 13

Because of the picture's constant theatrical circulation all during the forties, two presentations on the Lux Radio Theatre, and finally as a staple of early television, the tale was familiar to almost two generations of moviegoers. Hart's task was to preserve the potent appeal of this Hollywood myth while making it viable for a modern-day audience. The problem was complicated by the necessity of rewriting the part of Esther/Vicki to suit Judy Garland. The original film had walked a delicate dramatic path in interweaving the lives and careers of Vicki and Norman Maine. In emphasizing the "star power" of Lester/Garland, more screen time would have to be devoted to her, thus altering the careful balance of the original. Hart later recalled: "It was a difficult story to do because the original was so famous and when you tamper with the original, you're inviting all sorts of unfavorable criticism. It had to be changed because I had to say new things about Hollywood-which is quite a feat in itself as the subject has been worn pretty thin. The attitude of the original was more naive because it was made in the days when there was a more wide-eyed feeling about the movies ... (and) the emphasis had to be shifted to the woman, rather than the original emphasis on the Fredric March character. Add to that the necessity of making this a musical drama, and you'll understand the immediate problems." To make sure that his retelling accurately reflected the Garland persona, Hart had a series of informal conversations with her and Luft regarding experiences of hers that he might be able to incorporate into the script. Luft recalls: "We were having dinner with Moss and Kitty [Carlisle], and Judy was throwing ideas at Moss, cautiously, and so was I. I remember Judy telling the story of when she was a kid, she was on tour with a band and they were in Kansas City at the Mulebach Hotel-all the singers and performers stayed there. And I think her mother ran into a big producer who was traveling through and she invited him to come and see the act, and supposedly afterward he was very interested in Judy's career. Nothing happened, though. Judy thought it would be a kind of a cute idea to lay onto Moss-that maybe it might be something he could use in his writing.

It struck me today that the people that have had an impact on me are the people who didn't make it. Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Lenny Bruce, Janis Joplin, John Belushi. It's not Making It to be Marilyn Monroe, but it is to me. In our culture these people are heroes. There's something inside of that- a message that killing yourself like that isn't so bad. All the interesting people do it, the extraordinary ones. A weird, weird message. Most of the people I've admired in show business-comedians, writers, actors-are alcoholics or drug addicts or suicides. It's bizarre. And I get to be in that club now. It's the one thing I cling to in here: Wow, I'm hip now, like the dead people. Romancing the stoned.

The height of humiliation is to be booted out of a Chinese restaurant in full Judy Garland drag.

A little clunky in places—which only added to its charm—“The London Boys” was an anthem for a new generation of kids, an obvious ancestor of Bowie epics like “Lady Stardust” and “All the Young Dudes”: a celebration of otherness, right down to the clothing, the hint of homoeroticism, and the evocation of Judy Garland in its “too late now, ’cos you’re on the run” climax. Its combination of world-weariness and naïveté embodies the persona that David would inhabit for a decade or more: a man-child—a strangely calm and mature youth, and a waiflike, childishly earnest adult.

A little clunky in places—which only added to its charm—“The London Boys” was an anthem for a new generation of kids, an obvious ancestor of Bowie epics like “Lady Stardust” and “All the Young Dudes”: a celebration of otherness, right down to the clothing, the hint of homoeroticism, and the evocation of Judy Garland in its “too late now, ’cos you’re on the run” climax. Its combination of world-weariness and naïveté embodies the persona that David would inhabit for a decade or more: a man-child—a strangely calm and mature youth, and a waiflike, childishly earnest adult. In future years, David Bowie’s androgyny would be widely—and justifiably—celebrated, but this man-child aura was an important part of his personal, often devastating charm.

sing till i burst my breast with such passion. sing, then fall dead to lay at your feet

i was a woman. glamorous, sparkling, with eyes that shone, guarding secrets untold, lips that were petulant, pouting and bold with a body moulded to gentlemen's delight and pedicured toe-nails shining and bright. i patronized night clubs, danced until three, and hundreds of men were mad at me. then, in a panic my dream began to cool, i mashed out the cigarette and was late to school.

I would always need a northern bite in my blood if I were to survive the writer's recurrent ailment: exhaustion. A jumbo Judy Garland at five in the morning would not ultimately nourish me as much as a plate of jellied eels in Margate. I felt a stabbing wave of homesickness.

The November Road Playlist “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”—Bob Dylan “’Round Midnight”—Billy Taylor Trio “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”—The Shirelles “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” from The Wizard of Oz—Judy Garland “How Can You Lose”—Art Pepper “Night and Day”—Ella Fitzgerald “I Saw Her Standing There”—The Beatles “Jack O’Diamonds”—Ruth Brown “Ring of Fire”—Johnny Cash “Somebody Have Mercy”—Sam Cooke “Something Cool”—June Christy “Prisoner of Love”—James Brown “It’s My Party”—Lesley Gore “Blowin’ in the Wind”—Peter, Paul and Mary “I’m Walkin’”—Fats Domino “You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me”—Frank Sinatra “’Round Midnight”—Thelonious Monk

On Feb. 5, 1945, an all-star cast spoofed America’s most popular comic strip in an hour-long play, Dick Tracy in B-Flat; or, For Goodness Sake, Isn’t He Ever Going to Marry Tess Trueheart? The stars were Bing Crosby as Dick Tracy; Dinah Shore as Tess Trueheart; Harry Von Zell as Old Judge Hooper; Jerry Colonna as the Chief of Police; Bob Hope as Flat Top; Frank Morgan as Vitamin Flintheart; Jimmy Durante as the Mole; Judy Garland as Snowflake; the Andrews Sisters as the Summer Sisters; Frank Sinatra as Shaky; and Cass Daley as Gravel Gertie.

...they had us working days and nights on end" Judy complained in McCall's. "They'd give us pep-up pills to keep us on our feet long after we were exhausted. Then they'd take us to the studio hospital and knock us cold with sleeping pills- Mickey sprawled out on one bed and me on another. Then after four hours they'd wake us up and give us the pep-up pills again so we could work another seventy-two hours in a row. Half of the time we were hanging from the ceiling, but it became a way of life for us.

I've worked very hard, you know," she confided to him, "and I've planted some kind of-I've been lucky enough, I guess, to plant a star-and then people wanted to either get in the act or else they wanted to rob me emotionally or financially, whatever. And then walk away and it's always lonely

Fleming could not keep a tight rein on most of his actors because the queerness of their characters defied a realistic approach. He could, and did, keep a tight rein on Judy Garland. And it is Garland’s obvious belief in what is happening to her that keeps the film credible. “You believed that she really wanted to get back to Kansas,” says Jack Haley. “She carried the picture with her sincerity.” The first confrontation between Fleming and Judy Garland came late in November when she first met the Cowardly Lion on the Yellow Brick Road. John Lee Mahin was on the set that day, and the moment stuck fast in his memory. “She slapped the Lion and he broke into tears. And she was to continue bawling him out. But Lahr was so funny that she burst into screams of laughter instead. Vic was patient at first. She went behind a tree. I could hear her saying, ‘I will not laugh. I will not laugh.’ Then she’d come out and start laughing again. They must have done the scene ten times, and eventually she was giggling so much she got hysterical. She couldn’t stop laughing. And Vic finally slapped her on the face. ‘All right now,’ he said, ‘go back to your dressing room.’ She went. And when she came back, she said, ‘O.K.’ And they did the scene.

It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.

When a studio puts you under contract, its publicity department starts turning out news copy about you that you read with astonishment. You think, can this be me they’re talking about? They don’t really manufacture untruths, but they play up whatever makes interesting reading, and then a columnist adds his own little embellishments and another adds to that until there’s a whole body of so called ‘facts’ floating around—almost like another you—that simply isn’t real. It isn’t a lie, but it isn’t real, either.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. —Judy Garland (1922–1969) American actress and legendary entertainer

Like Andy Rooney and Judy Garland screaming “Let’s put on a play!” the

The first news they heard on returning was about Judy Garland’s funeral that very day, how twenty thousand people had waited up to four hours in the blistering heat to view her body at Frank E. Campbell’s funeral home on Madison Avenue and Eighty-first Street. The news sent a melodramatic shiver up Sylvia’s spine, and she decided to become “completely hysterical.” “It’s the end of an era,” she tearfully announced. “The greatest singer, the greatest actress of my childhood is no more. Never again ‘Over the Rainbow’”—here Sylvia sobbed loudly—“no one left to look up to.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself and not a second-rate version of someone else.