The Sunday Memory Drawer - Remembering Judy

The summer fifty years ago was memorable.  A lot happened in a short amount of time and I will be dragging back those memories over the next two months.  

But here's how that summer began.  Fifty years ago yesterday, Judy Garland died.  And there were tears in my house

Here's a trivia tidbit for you all.  Had I been born a girl, this blog would be entitled "Judy Speaks."  Yep, I would have been named after the legendary singer and actress.   That would have been on my mother.  One of Judy's biggest fans.

My mom was a typical housewife in Mount Vernon, New York.  She loved movies and, for a while, went out to either RKO or Loews for a double feature every Monday night with her best girlfriend Ronnie.  On Tuesday morning, there would always be a remnant of her night at the theater.  Either a box of Pom Poms or Milk Duds on the kitchen.  Or, in the freezer, a sleeve of those chocolate covered Bon Bons.  

For me.

When I was older, there would be Friday afternoons at the same movie theater for my mom and me.  She'd pick me up at the Grimes School.  We'd walk to the Fourth Avenue shopping district for an early dinner at the Bee Hive restaurant. I always had a BLT sandwich with a chocolate shake.   Then, we'd head over to either Loews or RKO, depending upon what was playing.  Most of the time, it was one of my mother's favorite genres.  Disney or Biblical epics.  

She was apparently mesmerized by Hollywood and I would be her conduit. Each month, she'd open her pocketbook and fish out a couple of bucks.

"Go to the candy store and buy my magazines."

I knew the ones.  

Photoplay.

Motion Picture.

TV/Radio Mirror.

Mom needed to know all the gossip from Tinseltown.

I don't remember how I learned that my mother's favorite movie star was Judy Garland.  Sure, like all kids, I was sat down on one Sunday each year to watch the traditional showing of "The Wizard of Oz."  But, there were others.  I will never forget the hot summer afternoon where we were all secluded in our air conditioned living room.  My mom pointed me to an ideal diversion from the humidity.

"You have to watch this movie."

It was "A Star is Born."

It was a harrowing, but totally entertaining view of Hollywood.  Most of it was way over this kid's head.  But, on the countless times I have seen it since, the film speaks to me more with each viewing.   And, at the time, I had no clue that the movie had been butchered in the editing and was really three hours long.   When I watch the restored version on my Blu Ray at least once a year, I realize how much of the film my mother didn't get to see on that 21-inch Zenith.  Truth be told, I didn't know what good singing really was.  But I learned when I saw this number.

 
Of course, when Judy Garland scored her own Sunday night variety show on CBS, there was suddenly no issue as to whether the program was on past my bedtime.   There was maternal clearance to watch it with her.

There's one episode of that show where Judy sang the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."  I've since read that she was dedicating it to the late President John F. Kennedy.  I recall my mother sobbing as this played out.  This merited an audience standing ovation on television long before they started that practice nightly on the Ellen show.

Of course, there would be no happy ending for Judy Garland.  She died on June 22, 1969.   I remember the tears in my mom's eyes on that day, too.

"She had a lot of problems."

My mother summed it succinctly and quickly.

Now I knew where Judy Garland's crypt was in Ferncliff Cemetery up in Hartsdale, New York.   I've already got a bunch of relatives in there, including my dad.   But when it came time to put my mother's ashes someplace, I asked the question.

Was there a niche nearby Judy Garland's?   

Well, they weren't exactly neighbors, but it was really only a short walk between the two final resting places.  I thought that was fitting.  Of course, as fate would have it, that did not last.  About two years ago, Liza Minnelli and family opted to move her out to another "final" resting place.  In Hollywood.  I'm sure Mom enjoyed it while it lasted.

Okay, let's flash back to 2015.  Actually, I'm at a Los Angeles Dodgers playoff game and I get a comment notification for my blog.  This is noteworthy because, frankly, I don't get a lot of comments here.  Most people who read me are regulars and friends.  They contribute their daily two cents on my Facebook page.

Oddly enough, this comment came on an entry from two years prior.  To be exact, December 15, 2013.   A Sunday Memory Drawer piece entitled "Christmas As Seen Through My Dad's Camera."  It's a series of old photos I had dug out from my father's Technicolor slides.  Me unwrapping presents under the Christmas tree.  Toys I had forgotten.  Family snapshots of cousins and grandparents.  All were badly in need of restoration, but the point was well taken.  

And here's the comment I received in October of 2015:

 wow...thanks for sharing an awesome piece of your life...so many parallels to my own life, and, i suppose, thousands of others of the era.
i hope people's memories are as golden and warm and magical as my own.

I was happy to have touched somebody with my memories.   And then I looked at the name attached to the comment.

Joe Luft.

Okay, follow me here, gang.  Judy Garland had three children.  Liza Minnelli with famed director Vincente Minnelli.  And, through her marriage to producer Sid Luft, a daughter Lorna and a son Joey.

Hmmm.

I pored over the piece from December 2013.  I wanted to see if there was any mention of Judy Garland in it.  Nope.  I dug around the stat counter for this blog.  I couldn't pinpoint a location.  But I wondered.  

Was this Judy Garland's son reading my blog???

I returned to the comment and clicked on the name.  It took me to a You Tube video page bearing his name.  It's chock full of videos.  Of guess who?

Judy Garland.

Lorna Luft.

Liza Minnelli.

Even one little Joey Luft's appearance on his mom's TV Christmas show.

But here's the kicker.  The caption on each of the videos was a little curious.

"I am not related to the people in this clip."

Okay.

So the mystery deepened.  Was this just some obsessive Garland fan who uses the son's name as a profile name on the internet?  Or...was it really her son?

I'd like to know.  So, too, I am thinking, would my mom.

Perhaps he will read this and comment again.  Or not.  Maybe because it is the fifty year anniversary, he is Googling this weekend.

Dinner last night:  General Tso Chicken at La Mandarette.