Q & A for BearManor Media: Lawrence Schulman, author of the 2 volumes of Garland
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1. How did your passion for Judy Garland begin?
Surprisingly, there was no single moment. I was too young to attend her 1961 Carnegie Hall concerts, but I do remember buying the double-LP of it when it came out that same year. But, well before that I was captivated enough by her – and this even before I was a teenager – to get up at ungodly hours of the night to watch her old films on T.V. I suppose this was from seeing The Wizard of Oz and A Star Is Born in the 1950s on TV, an experience which whet my appetite to see all of her movies. At that point, I became a collector of all of her recordings. I would also watch her two T.V. specials in the early 1960s and her T.V. series, The Judy Garland Show, which ran for just one season in 1963-1964. After that I saw her live at the Forest Hill Tennis Stadium in 1965 and then again in 1967 for her opening night at The Palace in New York, which was an unforgettable evening. Since her death, I have made it a mission to collect all of her recordings and films, read all the books on her, attend plays on her, and acquire as many photos of her my budget would allow. To this day, I am still learning.
2. Where did the idea for your book come from?
Ever since I wrote the liner notes for my first Garland CD, Child of Hollywood, in 1993 I have always kept a list of all my writings on her, as well as the writings themselves. So, all of these texts have always been readily available to me, and I thought that in 2023, 30 years after I first started writing about her, the moment had come for me to collect them into a book. In 2022, I had a serious falling-out with the head of the website The Judy Room, and as a result he took revenge by deleting all my interviews and an article that had been published at the site. At that moment, I said to myself that I had to make every effort to make these texts available to the public, thence the idea of finding a publisher to publish them. And Ben Ohmart, head of BearManor Media, came forward to propose a contract. So, the idea goes way back, and I am honored that BearManor had enough confidence in me to sign me on.
3. Do you think a singer born over a hundred years ago and dead over a half century ago has any relevance in 2023?
Yes. Mozart and Shakespeare were also born and died a long time ago, but they are as relevant today as they were in their times. What differentiates great composers and authors from less-talented ones is that their respective music and books are eternal. The same is true for Garland. Her art lives on today in the 21st century because she was not just an ordinary actress and singer. As the title of my book says, she was “beyond” entertainment. Anyone who listens to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” knows right away that that voice comes from an artist who spoke to the soul. Hers was not a talent to amuse, but a talent to touch us and teach us about the human condition. Her art was from another dimension.
4. Do you listen to her all day?
I mainly listen to classical music, especially classical music on high-resolution supports (SACD, Blu-ray Audio) and in hi-res downloads, especially when they are in surround, for which I have a passion. Otherwise, I like all kinds of other music: Broadway, Hollywood, rock, jazz, country, world, songbirds, crooners, singer-songwriters, and historic recordings of all kinds. I rarely listen to Garland except if I am working on a CD project or writing a review of one of her records. When I was younger, I used to listen to her recording at Carnegie Hall obsessively, but stopped when I realized that the album had become something of an emotional crutch. I no longer use her as an emotional crutch and listen selectively. She still of course gives me immense pleasure, but one cannot be a pleasure-seeker all day every day.
5. How would you describe Judy Garland fans in the 21st century?
That’s a touchy subject, and one that is complicated to answer. Over the years, I have known many fans who are kind, generous, and intelligent. Some of them have become dear friends: such wonderful people as John H. Haley, Kim Lundgreen, Jerry Waters, and John Meyer, who was Garland’s companion at the end of her life, are among them. On the other hand, a vast number of the fans are angry, hateful, and immature, and I have learned to stay away from them. The head of the website The Judy Room, who calls these angry, hateful, immature fans “Garfreaks,” is one of them himself, as are two other notorious names. I don’t have a clue why such fans would be angry, hateful and immature, except to say that they were perhaps brought up not to be kind. Garland, on a 1963 end-of-year episode of her T.V. series The Judy Garland Show stated that: “Well, we have a whole new year ahead of us. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, a little more loving, and have a little more empathy, and maybe, next year at this time we'd like each other a little more.” These “Garfreaks” seem immune to this wisdom.
6. Judy Garland has a huge gay fan base. Does one need to be gay to appreciate her?
No. There are many Garland fans who are straight. Back in the day, the fans were called the “cult,” and they most certainly were predominant and vociferous at her concerts. In fact, in the 1950s and 1960s, these concerts were safe havens for a good number of gay fans where they could be themselves without fear. You must remember it was a very closeted pre-Stonewall era in those days. There are some who claim that Garland’s death in 1969 even contributed to Stonewall and gay liberation, but I don’t believe that is true. In any case, to this day, most of the fans are gay, as am I, but this cultish following goes back to the 1930s, when Garland sang “Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz. In that moment, she aspired for a happier elsewhere, something gay spectators longed for too. So, there is a historic continuum in this devotion, but that does not exclude straight listeners either. Garland sang for everyone.
7. Garland died at the tender age of 47. Do you consider her a tragic figure?
No. It is true that to die so young is sad, especially when you know she died of an accidental overdose of barbiturates. Garland was an addict, and her addiction started in the 1940s at MGM. She never considered herself an addict and called her little pills “medication.” She never fully came clean, although there were periods of sobriety. You must remember there were no Betty Ford clinics in those days, but her repeated hospital stays over the years to get off the stuff never produced any lasting effects. Those facts are sad. On the other hand, in her short 47 years, her immense talents procured her and those listening and watching her immense joy. This may surprise many, but Garland was a happy person, always making light of her very messy life. One may make the comparison to the life of a mentally handicapped person. In looking at them, we the well are saddened, but they are not. Our sadness is our emotion projected on them, not the way they themselves feel. No, Garland’s life was not tragic. She experienced much joy and gave much joy to others. How can one call that tragic?
8. Did you ever meet Judy?
No. But I met Sid Luft, her husband between 1952 and 1965, twice in the early 1990s in his Los Angeles apartment. At our first meeting, he answered questions I had about her four 1960 Paris shows, which he attended. I was about to release the CD of one of the Olympia performances, and excerpts of our conversation were included in the brochure. He proudly showed me the Barcelona chairs he recovered from the A Star Is Born set, and also took me down to the garage to see his prized old Mercedes in whose trunk he kept all his Garland tapes. Other details of our encounter – one in particular that will surprise many – are mentioned in my book.
9. Can you briefly tell us about yourself?
I was born in the Bronx and went to Stony Brook University. In 1971, I met a Frenchman in New York and left for Paris to live some kind of passion story, which ended of course in flames 15 years later. I studied at the Sorbonne, worked as a translator, teacher, and public radio producer and host, and eventually met another Frenchman in 1985, and we have been together for the past 38 years, married for 10. It was in Paris that I first started working on various Garland CD projects and writing about her for the ARSC Journal. We moved to Mount Desert Island in Maine in 1997 and have lived a happy life there since then. I am bilingual, have done translations for the website OpusHD.net, which specializes in high-resolution releases, for many years, and recently translated Bertrand Tessier’s biography of Garland, Splendor and Downfall of a Legend, published in 2023 by BearManor Media. I have French and American passports, return to Paris once a year, and will be there this coming November.
10. What are your projects?
I am continuing to write book and CD reviews for the ARSC Journal, and my article on Peter Allen will be published there in the Fall of 2023. I just completed work on another CD project for JSP Records, this time a re-release of her closing night at the Palace in New York in February 1952 remastered by the genial John H. Haley based on acetates of the performance, and it will be released in October 2023. There is another CD project in the works with Jay Records, but this is in the planning stage.