Why I Heart: Judy Garland (Or In

Praise Of Difficult Women)

Every day in March, a different writer will be talking about a woman
they admire, all in honour of International Womenʼs Day. Today,
performance artist FK Alexander talks about her love of infamous
actress, singer and child star Judy Garland.
Judy Garland: singer, actress, child star, Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

Judy Garland: drunk, drug addict, car crash, poster girl for the
heartbroken.

Judy Garland was a supernatural force beyond nature, an all time ultimate
showbiz legend: 29 films in 10 years, all by the age of 24; a record 19
week run of live performances at The Palace in New York; five husbands
and three children. She died in a bathroom at 47 of a drug overdose.

As a child she was a slave to the old fashioned studio motion picture
system. They changed her name from Francis Ethel Gumm to the more
Hollywood friendly ‘Judy Garlandʼ. Contractually forced to churn out film
after film, drugged to stay awake, pigtails and dimples in cutesy musicals,
drugged to go to sleep, stay slim and play younger than her real age. She
was the all-singing all-dancing all-smiling face of the American Dream
which masked the systematic physical and psychological abuse of a child,
all at the immense profit of men.

As she became an adult she began to gain a reputation for being ‘difficultʼ
– the sanitary euphemism for the hysterical female. And who couldnʼt be
hysterical when the job one must perform is that of the exhausted circus
animal – make the crowd happy! Make them smile! Dance! Dance! The
sad elephant with a party hat; the caged tiger on the glittering stage. Her
dependence on medications and alcohol grew, breakdowns became
headlines and her marriages became divorces. She was written off slightly
less often than she made miraculous come backs.

Later in life, Judy let her anger out. She rebelled. She would not apologise,
she would not play cute, would not play nice. She left the studios. She
gave interviews and made recordings claiming her outrage. Outrage at all
the men in Hollywood who forced her to work year after year, at all the
men who wrote lies, scandal and gossip about how unstable and difficult
she was, how she ruined her marriages, neglected her children, had
become nothing more than a drunk, crazy, inconsolable, unmanageable,

She ended her life not in films, pretending to be someone else, but on the
stage. Herself, a microphone and her loyal audience. She often said that
after her children her greatest love was the audience, who adored her
with a frenzy, and that her message of love was to them, always for them.
A 4 foot 11 inch powerhouse of vulnerability and survival. A voice than
came from somewhere ‘otherʼ. Judy often spoke of her anxiety that she
could never fully trust her voice to always be there, and in the recording of
her last live performance of Somewhere Over The Rainbow the fragility
and force of that voice is tangible and shocking. The final huge note of
that song feels for a moment unreachable. She hits that note – strong,
ravaged and holy. She was 15 weeks from death.

That recording gives me chills every single time I hear it, every time I sing
it publicly, which is now in to the hundreds of times.

Love for her and from her drove her to keep singing in her last days and all
through her life. She only ever wanted people to ‘get happyʼ, but she knew
life was a constant struggle for most folks, herself included. And so she
sang this struggle, danced it, lived it, showed it. She did not stop voicing
the struggle – for freedom, for love, for survival – to be as the bluebirds
and fly over the rainbow.

One day some ten years ago, I bought a large biography on Judy. I can not
explain why, only that her eyes, her presence drew me to her. I read it
fast. After that I read 11 more. I have not read more books on one single
subject than Judy. I was for a time obsessed. I fell in a kind of love – the
kind of love that comes from myth, that transcends time and reason. She
became a strange form of maternal figure, a icon of womanhood. She
became a voice in my head, urging me to go on when I feared I could not.
She told me broken hearts, broken bones, broken reputations, broken
spirits, and broken dreams were all part of what strong, resilient, loving,
triumphant, damaged, difficult woman were made of. I felt I knew her. I
was of her kind.

I donʼt read so much about her any more. But she is in a frame next to my
bed. I carry her around in my heart and in my voice. I think about her
especially every time Iʼm waiting to go onstage. She reminds me that, no
matter what, the show must go on. It must.

[FK Alexander]
FK Alexander is a prolific performance artist based in Glasgow whoʼs
action based work centres on wound, recovery and noise music. FK
performs as part of the //BUZZCUT// Festival. TYCIʼs next live event is in
collaboration with //BUZZCUT//, find out more HERE. And read more in
our special International Womenʼs Day Why I Heart series HERE.