Customer Reviews

Judy

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Gerold Frank has taken a subject of innumerable facets, a larger-than-life personality, and an almost indescribable talent and has put the history of her life to words as no writer before or since has been able to accomplish. Judy Garland, one of the silver screen's most beloved stars, is accurately and honestly conveyed in this biography. Frank's style is unique: when he tells of the tradgedies or failures of the star, he is not incriminating against the subject. Frank's book is one as written by an observer, sometimes voyueristically so. His thorough research bring Garland through in all her glory: as the vaudeville headliner, the little girl on the rise to stardom, the MGM superstar, loving wife and mother, and the sometimes self-destructive woman, taken from this earth too soon by the disease brought on by a lifetime of pills, but most of all, the woman trying to find her place in the world and the love she always craved and needed. Judy Garland is a human being, not a media figure, in this book. Gerold Frank is to be well commended for his excellent portrayal of Judy Garland, and readers will also be delighted or surprised by the informative tidbits along this Yellow Brick Road into the life of the great Judy Garland.

There won't be any point in anyone writing a biography of Judy Garland ever again, because Gerold Frank has outdone them all with "Judy", which is undoubtedly the finest marriage of biographer and subject that I have ever read. Here is Judy Garland, in all her colors and facets, revealed in an outstandingly candid and refreshingly honest story that dispels all the false rumors spread over the years and will be read with surprise, warmth,love, pity but more often joy, as we meet Judy Garland through the pages of "Judy".

Born Frances Ethel Gumm, Judy Garland was a vaudeville headliner at ten years old, was a signed player at MGM at thirteen, and achieved immortality at seventeen in "The Wizard of Oz". From there on, the superstar endured a blockbuster-after-blockbuster decade at MGM, surviving on various prescribed medications that she soon came to depend on just to get out of bed in the morning. For the next twenty years of her life, Garland performed in thousands of live concerts, television shows, and engagements. In the midst of all this, Garland was married five times, had three children, and was hailed as one of Hollywood's greatest tragedies at the time of her death.

But all that changes here: Frank captures Garland's wry wit, her ability to laugh at the world, her bitterness when she was wronged, to be a "tragic clown", to love passionately, and to exhaust endlessly. Frank captures with a poignant honesty the Garland whose exasperating mood swings, brought on by pills and barbiturates, exhausted those closest to her, but never stopped loving her. You will become a person who tries to keep Judy happy but doesn't know to keep her happy, just keep loving her, through Frank's recreating of events and times in her life.

He captures the Judy who loved her children desperately, who loved to be loved, and was sometimes selfish and manipulative, but ultimately, was a warm, funny, glorious treasure, just a beautiful lady with a very mixed-up life. Garland's life was filled with so much emotion, so many ecstatic joys and bitter disappointments, and she vented the emotions in many different ways, depending on her mood and the people around her.

Frank also captures the people who knew Judy best, like her father Frank Gumm, her beloved mentor Roger Edens, her dear friend Kay Thompson, her third husband Sid Luft, and her children Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft and Joey Luft. These were the people to whom Judy meant the most, and they became a part of the whirling maelstrom of love and erratic behaviors, and the harsh realities and unbelievably wonderful times that loving Judy Garland meant. They never stopped loving Judy, or she them, but the inevitable was Garland's lapses of reality, or refusing to believe reality, admonishing it, or laughing at it. They saw all facets of Judy Garland, and they learned to live with her and love her, no matter what.

Frank writes convincingly and digs deep into Garland's depths. For the people who say, If only she had been loved more, she would have lived, if they read this book, they will realize just how easy it was to fall in love with Judy, but they will also find out exactly how exasperating and horribly difficult it was sometimes to hold Judy up. But again, this book is not tragedy: Even the tragedy and gossip hunters will be enthralled with the Garland who could love and laugh as no one could, and celebrated here is also the love and admiration that so many different people held for her. The contents of the book are also overwhelming in their scope: the author held countless interviews with many individuals closest to Garland, includes hundreds of little-known details, and also had access to audio tapes that Garland used to write her never-finished autobiography. These reveal Garland most tellingly, and most poignantly.

For those who want to know all about Judy Garland, this book does even better: after reading it, the reader feels that they actually knew Judy Garland, and loved her. It is an extraordinary book, a spectacular book. Any reader can take delight, Garland fan or not, in "Judy", the capital biography that the world's greatest entertainer has long deserved.

This is a very well written book. There is a lot of interesting and detailed information that I have not heard about before. This book sets the facts straight through primary sources. Gerold Frank spoke to Judy's children, husbands, friends, fellow cast members, and even to her doctors. He is the only author that Judy's family and friends completely cooperated with. This was very informative; and it is a real page-turner, unlike so many biographies that merely present fact after fact, or promote fictitious legends. This book sorts through all of this. It is, I believe, one of the best biographies yet written about Judy Garland. A definite must have:)

Never mind other books on the subject, including Lorna Luft`s "Me and My Shadows - living with the legacy of Judy Garland"...

THIS IS IT! This is the definitive biography. The detail is amazing and Gerald Frank is by far the only one who has captured Judy the woman and not ONLY the star. John Fricke`s "The World`s Greatest Entertainer" is good, but a tribute to a star, up there somewhere..... It`s written by a fan and good as it is, it sadly lacks perspective.

This must NEVER be out of print and belongs to every library in the world. Indeed, I thought I knew evrything about Judy(I`ve been a fan since 1977), but THIS book is filling in holes I NEVER KNEW EXCISTED!

Thanks a LOT, Gerald Frank:-) This book i s of Pulitzer Prize calibre, although I realise a biography will never be given that honour...

Gerold Frank's biography is probably the single most comprehensive book written concerning Judy Garland: meticulously researched, debunking many myths, and richly detailed, it is certainly a standard for any one seriously interested in Garland. Even so, I have several issues with the book.

My single greatest complaint about the book is that Frank often seems to include detail for the sake of detail, and at times these details don't seem to make any cohesive statement. That aside, while Frank places Garland under a microscope, he never really quite delivers any sense of the world in which she moved; consequently, we never really have any background against which we may judge her. There is no context.

These are serious flaws, and while the book is certainly readable and enjoyable, I do not think it is one to which the average reader would return, nor would I particularly recommend it to any but the toughest of hard-core Garland fans.

There won't be any point in anyone writing a biography of Judy Garland ever again, because Gerold Frank has outdone them all with "Judy", which is undoubtedly the finest marriage of biographer and subject that I have ever read. Here is Judy Garland, in all her colors and facets, revealed in an outstandingly candid and refreshingly honest story that dispels all the false rumors spread over the years and will be read with surprise, warmth,love, pity but more often joy, as we meet Judy Garland through the pages of "Judy".

Born Frances Ethel Gumm, Judy Garland was a vaudeville headliner at ten years old, was a signed player at MGM at thirteen, and achieved immortality at seventeen in "The Wizard of Oz". From there on, the superstar endured a blockbuster-after-blockbuster decade at MGM, surviving on various prescribed medications that she soon came to depend on just to get out of bed in the morning. For the next twenty years of her life, Garland performed in thousands of live concerts, television shows, and engagements. In the midst of all this, Garland was married five times, had three children, and was hailed as one of Hollywood's greatest tragedies at the time of her death.

But all that changes here: Frank captures Garland's wry wit, her ability to laugh at the world, her bitterness when she was wronged, to be a "tragic clown", to love passionately, and to exhaust endlessly. Frank captures with a poignant honesty the Garland whose exasperating mood swings, brought on by pills and barbiturates, exhausted those closest to her, but never stopped loving her. You will become a person who tries to keep Judy happy but doesn't know to keep her happy, just keep loving her, through Frank's recreating of events and times in her life.

He captures the Judy who loved her children desperately, who loved to be loved, and was sometimes selfish and manipulative, but ultimately, was a warm, funny, glorious treasure, just a beautiful lady with a very mixed-up life. Garland's life was filled with so much emotion, so many ecstatic joys and bitter disappointments, and she vented the emotions in many different ways, depending on her mood and the people around her.

Frank also captures the people who knew Judy best, like her father Frank Gumm, her beloved mentor Roger Edens, her dear friend Kay Thompson, her third husband Sid Luft, and her children Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft and Joey Luft. These were the people to whom Judy meant the most, and they became a part of the whirling maelstrom of love and erratic behaviors, and the harsh realities and unbelievably wonderful times that loving Judy Garland meant. They never stopped loving Judy, or she them, but the inevitable was Garland's lapses of reality, or refusing to believe reality, admonishing it, or laughing at it. They saw all facets of Judy Garland, and they learned to live with her and love her, no matter what.

Frank writes convincingly and digs deep into Garland's depths. For the people who say, If only she had been loved more, she would have lived, if they read this book, they will realize just how easy it was to fall in love with Judy, but they will also find out exactly how exasperating and horribly difficult it was sometimes to hold Judy up. But again, this book is not tragedy: Even the tragedy and gossip hunters will be enthralled with the Garland who could love and laugh as no one could, and celebrated here is also the love and admiration that so many different people held for her. The contents of the book are also overwhelming in their scope: the author held countless interviews with many individuals closest to Garland, includes hundreds of little-known details, and also had access to audio tapes that Garland used to write her never-finished autobiography. These reveal Garland most tellingly, and most poignantly.

For those who want to know all about Judy Garland, this book does even better: after reading it, the reader feels that they actually knew Judy Garland, and loved her. It is an extraordinary book, a spectacular book. Any reader can take delight, Garland fan or not, in "Judy", the capital biography that the world's greatest entertainer has long deserved.

This is an "early" review since I haven't finished this very long book yet, but I will say that I don't like very long books (I find them daunting and time-consuming) but this one is good and holds your interest despite its detail and depth. However, I know that it leaves out certain parts already about her early life. For example, various sources (such as Marcella Rabwin, who is featured in the book prominently, and a family friend of Garland for many years) said on the E! True Hollywood Story TV program, that Judy and her sisters, mother, and father left Grand Rapids because Judy's father, Frank, had an affair with "a young man" and in those days that was "scandalous" and they "had to" move away. This story is nowhere in the book. This book also supposedly had the cooperation and the blessing of Liza and Lorna (not sure about Joe), Judy's children, so you know that despite the book's detail and depth, it's going to be "safe" with nothing too controversial that the children didn't want published. That's too bad, because for a biography to be truly inspirational (let alone just plain "accurate"), you have to include the skeletons in the closet (sorry for the pun, there, Frank). I haven't read Gerald Clarke's "Get Happy", which might include more scandalous stories. It's funny how there are 2 major Judy biographies that are very very long with authors named "Gerald"; easy to confuse the two, as I did at first. What a remarkable life; what a remarkable book. I still recommend book this highly, for Judy fans and also because I recommend biographies in general as a way for people to put their troubles in perspective, to gain inspiration from people we all "know", and as a parable to learn what to do, and not to do, to be happy in life. This would also be a great "primer" for young people to understand the history of Hollywood, or if you want a case study of a great American if you're patriotic, a great woman if you're a feminist, an unfortunate addict if you have an interest in drug and alcohol abuse issues, and a great musician/actress if you're an artist.

I really enjoyed this book. I think it tells so much about Judy the person. There hasn't been a book written since that can even come close to this book. It's a very well written book.

exellant compilation of judys film work. Great photos accompany each movie. A must have for all, especially Garland fans. This is the one to get.

This was for my 29 year old Daughter who is head over heals for Judy Garland.
She loves the book and has read some facts she didn't know before.
It's refreshing to see someone of the baby boomer generation so facinated by such an Icon of Stardom.