Judy Garland was just 16 when she starred in her breakout role, 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. At just 4 feet, 11½ inches, Garland had a cute, girl-next-door charm helped set her apart from her glamorous contemporaries like Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner. But with success would come the need to maintain her youthful looks and thin frame — pressures from Hollywood studio MGM that would fuel the legendary songstress’ drug abuse and eventually lead to her death.
Now, more than four decades after an accidental drug overdose took her life at age 47, a new memoir about the late star pulls back the curtain on Garland’s demons.
Now, more than four decades after an accidental drug overdose took her life at age 47, a new memoir about the late star pulls back the curtain on Garland’s demons.
- 1/27/2017
- by Dave Quinn
- PEOPLE.com
Anne Marie is tracking Judy Garland's career through musical numbers...
With Judy Garland now such an established hit, MGM worked overtime to make the most of its musical star. This meant that while Arthur Freed and the Freed Unit "made" her by crafting her star image (and arguably used her to her best advantage), Judy couldn't work with them exclusively. She was too valuable a commodity for that. So, MGM also put her under the watchful tutelage of another producer well-known for his musical mojo: Joe Pasternak.
The Movie: Presenting Lily Mars (1942)
The Songwriters: Walter Jurmann (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics)
The Players: Judy Garland, Van Heflin, Fay Bainter, Spring Byington, directed by Norman Taurog
The Story: Had Judy's fateful short with Deanna Durbin turned out differently only six years previous, she might have met Joe Pasternak earlier. For most of the 1930s, Pasternak was a top producer at Universal Studios,...
With Judy Garland now such an established hit, MGM worked overtime to make the most of its musical star. This meant that while Arthur Freed and the Freed Unit "made" her by crafting her star image (and arguably used her to her best advantage), Judy couldn't work with them exclusively. She was too valuable a commodity for that. So, MGM also put her under the watchful tutelage of another producer well-known for his musical mojo: Joe Pasternak.
The Movie: Presenting Lily Mars (1942)
The Songwriters: Walter Jurmann (music) and Paul Francis Webster (lyrics)
The Players: Judy Garland, Van Heflin, Fay Bainter, Spring Byington, directed by Norman Taurog
The Story: Had Judy's fateful short with Deanna Durbin turned out differently only six years previous, she might have met Joe Pasternak earlier. For most of the 1930s, Pasternak was a top producer at Universal Studios,...
- 5/4/2016
- by Anne Marie
- FilmExperience
It feels like Oscar's upcoming "In Memorium" segment this year is going to be extra exhaustingly sad. One of the tiny reasons among many larger ones that I wish they hadn't moved the Honorary Oscar to another event is that the eldest artists of the cinema shouldn't only be viewed through the prism of final goodbyes, you know? This past week we lost two more actresses, both of whom might feel right at home when they hear heavenly choirs.
Juanita Moore and Lana Turner and their screen daughters in "Imitation of Life"
When I think of Juanita Moore (1922-2014) and her classic Oscar-nominated performance in the Douglas Sirk melodrama Imitation of Life (1959), I nearly always think of a scene she isn't even in! My mind always rushes to her character's own funeral.
Is there a sung funereal performance more moving than Mahalia Jackson's "Trouble of the World"?
Trouble of...
Juanita Moore and Lana Turner and their screen daughters in "Imitation of Life"
When I think of Juanita Moore (1922-2014) and her classic Oscar-nominated performance in the Douglas Sirk melodrama Imitation of Life (1959), I nearly always think of a scene she isn't even in! My mind always rushes to her character's own funeral.
Is there a sung funereal performance more moving than Mahalia Jackson's "Trouble of the World"?
Trouble of...
- 1/3/2014
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Marta Eggerth: Operetta and film star — a sort of Jeanette MacDonald of Central European cinema — dead at 101 Marta Eggerth, an international star in film and stage operettas who frequently performed opposite husband Jan Kiepura, died on December 26, 2013, at her home in Rye, New York. The Budapest-born Eggerth had turned 101 last April 17. (Photo: Marta Eggerth ca. 1935.) Although best known for her roles in stage musicals such as the Max Reinhardt-directed 1927 Hamburg production of Die Fledermaus, and various incarnations of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow, Marta Eggerth was featured in nearly 40 films. The vast majority of those were produced in Austria and Germany in the 1930s, as the Nazis ascended to power. Marta Eggerth films Marta Eggerth films, which frequently made use of her coloratura soprano voice, include Max Neufeld’s drama Eine Nacht im Grandhotel ("A Night at the Grand Hotel," 1931); the Victor Janson-directed musicals Once There Was a Waltz...
- 12/31/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Viennese operetta and film star of the 30s who fled to America after the Anschluss
Between the two world wars, during the so-called "silver age" of Viennese operetta, the coloratura soprano Marta Eggerth, who has died aged 101, reigned supreme on stage and, above all, on screen. In the films of the 1930s, the blonde, wide-eyed beauty's bright bell-like tones and charming personality provided a welcome relief from ruinous inflation, world depression and the approaching sound of Nazi jackboots.
The leading operetta composers of the day, Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Straus, Robert Stolz and Paul Abraham, all wrote songs for her films. However, by 1938, after the Anschluss, with the exception of Lehár, all of them, being Jewish, had fled Vienna for the Us. Eggerth and her husband, Jan Kiepura, the celebrated Polish tenor, who both had Jewish mothers, also left Austria for America, where they continued their singing careers.
Hitler loved Viennese operetta,...
Between the two world wars, during the so-called "silver age" of Viennese operetta, the coloratura soprano Marta Eggerth, who has died aged 101, reigned supreme on stage and, above all, on screen. In the films of the 1930s, the blonde, wide-eyed beauty's bright bell-like tones and charming personality provided a welcome relief from ruinous inflation, world depression and the approaching sound of Nazi jackboots.
The leading operetta composers of the day, Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Straus, Robert Stolz and Paul Abraham, all wrote songs for her films. However, by 1938, after the Anschluss, with the exception of Lehár, all of them, being Jewish, had fled Vienna for the Us. Eggerth and her husband, Jan Kiepura, the celebrated Polish tenor, who both had Jewish mothers, also left Austria for America, where they continued their singing careers.
Hitler loved Viennese operetta,...
- 12/31/2013
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
With the back-to-back departures of Peter O'Toole and Joan Fontaine I've been really bummed about losing great artists from Hollywood's Golden Age. The Golden Age is roughly considered to be from Hollywood's 1930s through the 1950s. I still hadn't recovered from the loss of Eleanor Parker, an underappreciated actress I had honestly planned a retrospective of but never got around to.
This morning in my movie grief I inadvertently killed dozens of people off on twitter by claiming there were only six stars of the Golden Age still living. So consider this list my penance. In the past I've published a semi-annual list of all living Oscar-vets in any capacity. It ws never meant to be a morbid countdown list but a way for us to honor people while they're still theoretically conscious of our appreciation for their indelible contributions. So though I normally publish such a list on Ms.
This morning in my movie grief I inadvertently killed dozens of people off on twitter by claiming there were only six stars of the Golden Age still living. So consider this list my penance. In the past I've published a semi-annual list of all living Oscar-vets in any capacity. It ws never meant to be a morbid countdown list but a way for us to honor people while they're still theoretically conscious of our appreciation for their indelible contributions. So though I normally publish such a list on Ms.
- 12/17/2013
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Little has been written in recent years about Jacques Kapralik, one of the most distinctive artists ever to lend his talent to movie posters, main titles, and promotional work…until now. Many film buffs will recognize his distinctive decoupage caricatures, which were a mainstay of MGM promotions throughout the 1940s (featured in trade ads and the lavish studio publication The Lion’s Roar). They even appeared in the main title sequences of such films as Presenting Lily Mars, Come Live With Me, and Pat and Mike. He was a featured cover artist for the Sunday newspaper supplement Pictorial Review for several years after that, and his work also turned up in a variety of...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]...
- 8/30/2012
- by Leonard Maltin
- Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy
Last October I wrote a post about the illustrator and poster designer Jacques Kapralik. I had stumbled across Kapralik’s name and found a small amount of information about him online. My article generated interest from movie title afficionado Christian Annyas who provided me with some of Kapralik’s title sequence designs for MGM. But I was delighted a few months later to get a message on one of the posts telling me that the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming holds an archive of Jacques Kapralik’s work and papers. Archivist Emily Christopherson told me that the university has the paper dolls that were used in the title sequence for Presenting Lily Mars that I had featured. Since I had previously seen only black and white photos from that sequence it was a treat to see them in color and in so much eye-popping detail (click to...
- 8/24/2012
- MUBI
Last week’s post on the 3-dimensional collage designs of Jacques Kapralik caught the attention of Christian Annyas. If you don’t know who Christian is and have never visited his website before you have been missing one of the great curatorial endeavors on the internet.
His Movie Title Stills Collection is an astonishing act of curation, assembling the main title and end cards from thousands of movies from 1902 to 2011. The cards are arranged chronologically and there are glorious subsections for Film Noir and Westerns. And Annyas has not only found and collected all of these, he also presents them on one of the most elegant and user friendly websites I’ve ever seen (he is a brilliant web designer as well as a devoted cinephile—he makes it a rule only to include films he’s actually seen, and he’s seen plenty). He also writes blog posts on...
His Movie Title Stills Collection is an astonishing act of curation, assembling the main title and end cards from thousands of movies from 1902 to 2011. The cards are arranged chronologically and there are glorious subsections for Film Noir and Westerns. And Annyas has not only found and collected all of these, he also presents them on one of the most elegant and user friendly websites I’ve ever seen (he is a brilliant web designer as well as a devoted cinephile—he makes it a rule only to include films he’s actually seen, and he’s seen plenty). He also writes blog posts on...
- 10/21/2011
- MUBI
To tie in with the essential Complete Vincente Minnelli series running all this month at Bam, I started looking at Minnelli posters with the hope of finding something interesting. Surely the most stylish of Hollywood auteurs would have bounteous posters to match his visual élan and dazzling color palette. However, with the exception of the iconic Gigi poster, an oddity like The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or the two striking 1970 designs for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, most of his posters are fairly conventional illustrations on the order of The Pirate.
One poster that caught my eye though was this alternative poster for Designing Woman (1957) (the better known version is this). A photographed 3-dimensional montage made out of cut up paper, cloth and other objects, the collage is the work of Romanian emigré Jacques Kapralik (1906-1960). A talented caricaturist who drew cartoons for newspapers in Bucharest while still a teenager,...
One poster that caught my eye though was this alternative poster for Designing Woman (1957) (the better known version is this). A photographed 3-dimensional montage made out of cut up paper, cloth and other objects, the collage is the work of Romanian emigré Jacques Kapralik (1906-1960). A talented caricaturist who drew cartoons for newspapers in Bucharest while still a teenager,...
- 10/14/2011
- MUBI
Silly me. I had the greatest time at the Judy Garland festival at Lincoln Center this week and the movie I didn't write about Presenting Lily Mars was probably my favorite viewing experience. Rent it! Judy was just so funny in it, it was really charming and I liked her chemistry with Van Heflin (I confess I had to look him up since Shane had slipped my mind and I'd never seen his Best Supporting Actor Oscar performance for Johnny Eager (1941). Have any of you seen that one? Is it worth checking out?
But enough about Lily Mars... on to Judy in another incarnation. The Lincoln Center portion of the festival ends tomorrow though the celebration continues at the Paley Center for Television (since Judy did a lot of variety work on TV in the 50s). The last two films I caught were period musicals and here's the first of them.
But enough about Lily Mars... on to Judy in another incarnation. The Lincoln Center portion of the festival ends tomorrow though the celebration continues at the Paley Center for Television (since Judy did a lot of variety work on TV in the 50s). The last two films I caught were period musicals and here's the first of them.
- 8/8/2011
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Ultra Culture "the stills photographer is here? fetch me my viewfinder at once!" Hee
Movie|Line on the weirdly surprising colors of the new EW issue featuring The Help. (More on this film right here very soon.)
Wet Asphalt "how to write a book in three days" regarding Michael Moorcock (of Elric of Melnibone fame. Weird that Hollywood's never managed to make that into a franchise)
Scott Feinberg thinks The Artist will be a good case study for Oscar. Will a silent film catch on in today's marketplace?
lemonwade doesn't mind the lack of Supes' spit curl but don't get him started on those cape pleats.
Show Blitz Game of Thrones director Brian Kirk in discussions to helm Thor 2. er... i worry about this. Thor's saving grace was its humor and Game of Thrones biggest problem as a series is its humorlessness (believe me the book has humor... admittedly of the gallows kind.
Movie|Line on the weirdly surprising colors of the new EW issue featuring The Help. (More on this film right here very soon.)
Wet Asphalt "how to write a book in three days" regarding Michael Moorcock (of Elric of Melnibone fame. Weird that Hollywood's never managed to make that into a franchise)
Scott Feinberg thinks The Artist will be a good case study for Oscar. Will a silent film catch on in today's marketplace?
lemonwade doesn't mind the lack of Supes' spit curl but don't get him started on those cape pleats.
Show Blitz Game of Thrones director Brian Kirk in discussions to helm Thor 2. er... i worry about this. Thor's saving grace was its humor and Game of Thrones biggest problem as a series is its humorlessness (believe me the book has humor... admittedly of the gallows kind.
- 8/6/2011
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Bless the Walter Reade theater and The Film Society of Lincoln Center. This summer has been so trying in so many ways, but the Judy Garland retrospective is bliss. It helps that the Walter Reade is such a great place to see older films what with great air conditioning, comfortable seats and a big screen. The same can't (unfortunately) be said for the other prime NYC HQ for cinephiles (Film Forum). Anyway, people often think of Judy as an icon of tragic catharsis: heartbreak voice, trembling gesture, short life... but then you see the movies and she's just got charm for miles, a full range from light touch to direct hit, and she's funny and dazzling. Watching her proves far more joyous than tearful though sometimes the two come together.
I caught two consecutive features earlier this week from the brief moment between her ascendance (Dorothy Gale + all those Mickey Rooney...
I caught two consecutive features earlier this week from the brief moment between her ascendance (Dorothy Gale + all those Mickey Rooney...
- 8/4/2011
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
The Lincoln Center and the Paley Center here in NYC have joined forces to celebrate the all-singing all-dancing legend that is Judy Garland!
Shout 'Hallelujah', c'mon get happy!"
Once upon a time she was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer." Few celebrities have ever earned their PR self-mythologizing titles the way Judy G did. There's just no beating her for musical pleasure and cathartic heartbreak. And as if her sensational singing and dancing weren't enough, she was a fine actress, too!
I missed the first week of the celebration being in Michigan but I'll see what I can catch for the remainder of the summer program which ends August 9th. If you're not in New York City, you can always follow along at home as best you can with an impromptu DVD festival.
Still to come in the festival are...
Young Judy:
Everybody Sing (1938), For Me and My Gal (1942), Presenting Lily Mars...
Shout 'Hallelujah', c'mon get happy!"
Once upon a time she was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer." Few celebrities have ever earned their PR self-mythologizing titles the way Judy G did. There's just no beating her for musical pleasure and cathartic heartbreak. And as if her sensational singing and dancing weren't enough, she was a fine actress, too!
I missed the first week of the celebration being in Michigan but I'll see what I can catch for the remainder of the summer program which ends August 9th. If you're not in New York City, you can always follow along at home as best you can with an impromptu DVD festival.
Still to come in the festival are...
Young Judy:
Everybody Sing (1938), For Me and My Gal (1942), Presenting Lily Mars...
- 7/31/2011
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Impressive retrospective of Judy Garland.s films will feature 31 titles including a presentation of seldom seen short films and rarities as well as a special .sing-along. screening of The Wizard Of Oz.
On the occasion of what would have been Judy Garland.s 89th birthday, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Paley Center have announced the details today for Fslc.s comprehensive retrospective of the peerless film icon.s work, All Singin., All Dancin., All Judy! which will screen at the Walter Reade Theater July 26 . August 9 and The Paley Center.s comprehensive retrospective of Garland.s television work,Judy Garland: The Television Years which will be presented July 20 . August 18.
With autumn marking the 75th anniversary of Judy Garland’s feature film debut (Pigskin Parade, 1936), the Film Society of Lincoln Center will screen 31 titles from July 26 . August 9, including each of her big-screen acting performances, to pay tribute to...
On the occasion of what would have been Judy Garland.s 89th birthday, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Paley Center have announced the details today for Fslc.s comprehensive retrospective of the peerless film icon.s work, All Singin., All Dancin., All Judy! which will screen at the Walter Reade Theater July 26 . August 9 and The Paley Center.s comprehensive retrospective of Garland.s television work,Judy Garland: The Television Years which will be presented July 20 . August 18.
With autumn marking the 75th anniversary of Judy Garland’s feature film debut (Pigskin Parade, 1936), the Film Society of Lincoln Center will screen 31 titles from July 26 . August 9, including each of her big-screen acting performances, to pay tribute to...
- 6/10/2011
- by Melissa Howland
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.