Icons in Wonderland
Judy Garland, Judi Dench, Marlene Dietrich: You can’t take them away from Gary Smith
COVID-19 can’t stop you going back. So, let’s take a trip to Wonderland and some of the things that remain fresh and vital in spite of the virus’ sting. Here’s to things I’ll never forget.
Judy Garland’s 1961 Carnegie Hall Concert was just about the best pop performance by a singer of songs. And yes, I saw Sinatra, Streisand, Miss Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis Jr. and all the rest. Together though, they didn’t deliver the wallop that Garland did. In a two-hour love affair with her audience she sang songs that stayed sung.
Emotionally, physically and musically this was an unparalleled achievement.
I didn’t see it in New York. I sat fourth row centre in the O’Keefe Centre in Toronto. A cavernous theatre with questionable sightlines, it was a palace that night to a high priestess of song.
Though the performance was sold out, a lobby full of acolytes stayed well into the night, long after Garland had sung the last shreds of “Over the Rainbow.”
They refused to go home. So did the audience inside the theatre. They stomped, cheered, clapped and begged for more. She was at her peak. What were the best numbers? Garland’s low-keyed “Just in Time,” relaxed and gentle at first, then building into a crescendo impossible to contain. Then “By Myself,” a growl from the gut that burned a hole in your soul.
When Garland hurled the microphone into the wings at the last gasp of that upward spiralling song you could feel your breath expel from your body in one long gasp.
When the show was finally over and Mort Lindsey’s huge orchestra played “Over the Rainbow” for the final time everyone rushed for the lip of the stage like drunken lemmings. I remember when she grabbed my hand I thought I would die.
Then it was on to the stage door.
I missed the last train home to Hamilton. Stranded with no money, having spent my last few dollars on a glossy program, I walked to Union Station. I found an open door and went inside to wait in the dark lonely building.
“You can’t sit here,” the night watchman told me.
“So what will I do?” I asked. “Tell you what,” he said “There’s a freight comes through in an hour or so, I’ll get the driver to drop you in Hamilton. How’s that?” Perfect.
I sang all the way home. Thirty years later, there was another Judi, Dame Judi
Dench. She’s not really a singer, but she did play Sally Bowles in “Cabaret” and Desiree Armfeldt in “A Little Night Music,” in London.
In 1992, I saw her in a wonderful play called “The Gift of the Gorgon.” It was hated by most of the London critics. So what?
A couple of weeks later, I saw her in the lobby of London’s Cottisloe Theatre standing by herself reading her program.
I gathered my courage. I walked up. I smiled.
“Don’t think I’m rude,” I said. “But you were terrific in ‘The Gift of the Gorgon.’
She stepped back a pace or two and rumpled up her face, looking to see who I was. Of course, she had no idea.
“That’s not rude,” she said. “It’s lovely.” She looked at her watch and smiled. “We’ve got time for a glass of champagne. And I’m buying.”
More glamorous than either Judy or Judi was the remarkable Marlene Dietrich. I caught her show at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York in 1976. She wasn’t a great singer, but she was a raconteur who sang songs.
She was also a consummate star. When the orchestra finished her overture with it’s cascading musical phrases of “Falling in Love Again,” Dietrich stepped slyly round the downstage left corner curtain. Hanging onto its folds she stood a full five minutes. Then it was a long slow procession to centre stage dragging her white fur wrap behind her. She threw back her beautiful head and laughed a deep throaty laugh that dared you not to smile. When she sang “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” shivers pricked the back of your neck.
Speaking with me for a few moments after the show, she told me her great secret.
“I am Marlene Dietrich,” she said. I am Marlene when I walk out that stage door. I am Marlene when I get into my taxi. I am Marlene when I get out at my hotel. I am Marlene when I get in the lobby elevator. Only when I close the door of my suite do I let everything go. It’s quite a secret …no?
Icons in Wonderland. And what a treat it was to know them, for one or two exquisite moments.
“When Garland hurled the microphone into the wings at the last gasp of that upward spiralling song you could feel your breath expel from your body in one long gasp.”