OZ STAR’S YELLOW BRICK ROAD TO RUIN
Oz, she had changed her name to Judy Garland and was signed by MGM.
Young, talented and glamorous, with the world at her feet, she looked the picture of happiness. The reality was far darker.
On set, Judy was shunned by her jealous co-stars and, as the Mirror reported this week, molested by the hell-raising munchkins. She also had to endure studio boss Louis B Mayer, who groped her in his office.
He told her she “sang from the heart” as he put his hand on her left breast. She later said: “I often thought I was lucky I didn’t sing from another part of my anatomy.”
Judy wasn’t the only child star to be given drugs to control her. Mickey Rooney, who starred with her in nine films, and Elizabeth Taylor were two other high-profile victims.
Judy recalled: “They had us working days and nights on end. They’d give us pills to keep us on our feet long after we were exhausted. Then they’d knock us out with sleeping pills. After four hours they’d wake us up and give us pep pills again so we could work 72 hours in a row.” Sid was appalled when Judy told him about the way she had been treated.
And he had no doubt studio bosses were to blame for her decline. Sid said: “Feeding narcotics to children was a deep, dark secret known only to those at the studio and the government.
“When our relationship eventually developed into a commitment, I could detect Judy’s pill intake by her eyes, the pupils changing like a cat’s in the noonday sun.” Sid’s futile attempts to keep Judy clean was a dominant feature of their 13-year marriage, the longest she managed with any of her five husbands.
But it was impossible for him to stop her as there were endless people happy to supply her with her fix on film sets,
detect her pill intake by her eyes. Her pupils changed
in concert halls and even in her own home by the household staff.
Sid said: “Despite my crackdown on the staff, someone was still supplying Judy with pills. She turned my concern into a game: I was the ‘cop’, the ‘narc’. I’d searched every nook and cranny and found nothing. Infuriated, I blocked off the house. Nobody came in or out without my approval, as if I were a security guard at the White House.”
When Sid found and sacked the staff members supplying the pills, Judy resorted to more imaginative ways of smuggling them in.
Once, a friend sewed sedatives into a dressing gown she had bought from a department store, then got the shop to deliver it.
At night as Judy slept, Sid embarked on hunts for her stash, finding pills in cigarette packets, bottles of bath powder and a clothes hamper. He loved to portray himself as Judy’s rock but he was no angel.
Judy and little Liza, her daughter from her marriage to Vincente Minnelli, once found him asleep on the beach at Cannes with an international playgirl.
And when Judy announced over dinner she was expecting his baby, Sid furiously accused her of jeopardising their upcoming shows.
He said: “Because of my reaction Judy didn’t confide in me where and when she was going to have the abortion, so I didn’t go with her. I didn’t send flowers.”
It’s not surprising that Judy formed a close friendship with tragic superstar Marilyn Monroe. Not long before Marilyn died in 1962 she saw Judy at a party and asked for her help.
Judy later said: “She told me: ‘I’m scared. If we could just talk, I know you’d understand.’ But I never saw that dear, sweet girl again.” There were several SID ON HIS BATTLE TO BEAT STAR’S ADDICTION times Judy slashed herself with a razor blade in a desperate cry for help.
As her marriage to Vincente broke down she cut her throat and lay down on the bed, her strength slipping away. The cook found her in a pool of blood.
Under pressure during her marriage to Sid she slashed her wrists in a hotel bathroom, four days into a five-night concert run in Washington DC.
Sid had to cancel the final show but kept the incident a secret by hiding her stitched wrists beneath bracelets.
By the time of Judy’s death in London in 1969, he was no longer around to protect her and she suffocated after taking an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. Sid, who died in 2005 aged 89, blamed the doctor who prescribed enough pills to kill her.
He said: “You don’t put 30 sleeping pills by her bedside. She would treat that stuff like it was popcorn. Her death was kind of assisted suicide.”
Judy and I, by Sid Luft, is available to order now from Chicago Review Press.