The Life of Judy Garland
by Gerald Clarke
Book of the week
Clarke's masterly biography draws on extensive interviews and Garland's unpublished memoirs to recount a life as woeful as Job's. With an overbearing mother who hooked young Judy on pills, and a studio (MGM) that mercilessly assaulted her self-image and privacy—even as she captured the public's adoration as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz—Garland never developed personal responsibility or sound judgment. That led to sexual libertinism, hopeless affairs with married men (Tyrone Power, Orson Welles) and bad marriages (two of her five spouses were gay, including director Vincente Minnelli; her fourth, Mark Herron, had an affair with Peter Allen, daughter Liza's first husband). Clarke unflinchingly details Garland's mood swings, from desperately needy to monstrously selfish. Yet her resilience was astonishing: triumphant comebacks in A Star Is Born (quickly ruined by bad editing) and in concerts during the '50s and '60s at the London Palladium and Carnegie Hall. Her final years—estranged from her children, financially strapped, overdosing on pills—approach great tragedy. Even knowing how it ends, one can't look away. (Random House, $29.95)
Bottom Line: So many thunderclaps, so little rainbow
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