![]() Welcome to The Great Performances, a bi-weekly column exploring the art behind some of cinema’s best roles. Talk of the Town impresario Bernard Delfont (Michael Gambon), bandleader Burt Rhodes (Royce Pierreson), and Garland’s personal assistant Rosalyn Wilder (Jessie Buckley) were also real figures, although the real-life Burt Rhodes was white, and Wilder’s role in particular is considerably fleshed out for the movie, in a move that “ surprised” the real-life Wilder, who was a consultant for the movie.Acting is an art form, and behind every iconic character is an artist expressing themselves. Judy laughed delightedly and applauded her.” According to Edwards, Garland couldn’t quite hit the final note in “Over the Rainbow,” and “a young girl in the audience with a soprano voice finished it for her. This uplifting scene is likely a dramatization of an incident during Garland’s last week at the Talk of the Town. The crowd ends up finishing the song for her, led by her two gay friends (who are fictional characters, presumably meant to reference Garland’s status as a gay icon). She then begins “Over the Rainbow” until she is overcome with emotion and stops, whispering, “I’m sorry,” to the crowd. ![]() She redeems herself during this fictional impromptu performance with a lively rendition of “ Come Rain or Come Shine,” which is met with applause. In Judy, Zellweger’s Garland begs singer Lonnie Donegan (John Dagleish) to allow her onstage for a chance at redemption. Garland’s unofficial finale at the Talk of the Town was also different from what was portrayed in the movie. But it’s worth noting that, in reality, Luft had been much more than just Garland’s ex-husband: He had also been her manager for many years, and according to biographer Edwards, Luft’s decade of “absolute control” and influence over Judy’s life was akin to the control Mayer had over her at MGM. ![]() Except for a few bitter exchanges in which Garland and Luft blame each other for their dire financial straits, the movie only shows the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Luft’s control over Garland. Luft’s visit to Judy in London, where he tells her that the children want to stay where they are (i.e., with him) is one of the two incidents that instigates Garland’s tardy, drunken performance at the London club the Talk of the Town, where she is booed and gets bread rolls thrown at her (more on that performance, and those bread rolls, later). In the movie, Luft is more of a foil than a fully realized character-a plot device that threatens to separate Garland from her children. The two husbands who appear in Judy are Sidney Luft, her third husband and the father of her two younger children (Lorna and Joey), and Mickey Deans, the young nightclub owner who would be her fifth and final husband. He even exerted supreme authority over any medical crisis in her life.” If the diet itself seems rigorous to the point of abuse, it was just one aspect of the studio’s control over Garland’s life, Edwards writes: “For nearly seventeen years she worked, slept, ate, appeared in public, dated, married, and divorced at command. Later, she was on Seconals-the sleeping pills on which she ultimately overdosed-to offset the fact that the diet pills kept her awake, which became the basis of a lifelong dependency, according to Edwards. Garland was on a strict diet to control her weight, a regimen that included not just too much chicken soup and diet pills, as depicted, but also black coffee and cigarettes to curb her appetite. All of the diet details are based in fact, and indeed they only convey a fraction of MGM’s control over her. ![]() Zellweger’s Garland later has an interview in which she talks about her chicken soup diet. ![]() A young Judy is forbidden from eating cake and hamburgers. Throughout the movie there are periodic flashbacks to unhappy scenes from MGM, many of them featuring food deprivation. Mayer with Darci Shaw as Judy Garland in Judy. ![]()
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