breaks to fill up on pharmaceuticals. Or the kind of drunken rambling one would expect to hear on their answering machine while their friend is going through a nasty divorce. The air around her must have been flammable.
The tapes begin with an impaired Judy Garland blowing into the microphone, testing it to make sure the recorder is on and slurring the words, “Now uh … Well … uh for openers, I don’t know how to work this machine.” She then refers to the reel-to-reel recorder as “an obvious Nazi machine” and “a Red China Manchurian candidate machine.” She then does a quick change of gears and tears into the first round of Sid Luft bashing. “I wonder if Syd Luft’s mother makes these machines … Could be she made all those machines … she made Syd … she spawned him in the … the uh … Red Seas.”
Then she switches gears again: “I have the tenacity of a praying mantis. With a little black Irish witch involved.” It’s impressive that she could manage to use the word “tenacity” while her blood alcohol content bordered that of jet fuel.
The recordings go from rambling to downright bizarre after Judy returns from taking a break from the reel-to-reel. Maybe the pills and alcohol are really starting to kick in, or perhaps she ingested more during her breather. One thing is for certain, the next segment of what was to be her autobiography is every bit as confusing as Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric. “Uh … I can … always uh … truthfully say that nobody asked me. Nobody asked me. I was too little. When I went into vaudeville I was two years old and I just knew “Jingle Bells” and my grandmother threw me onto my father’s stage. He owned a theater in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and I just sang “Jingle Bells” and nobody told me to stop, so nobody ever asked me. Now I’ve never bothered to answer … because the questions have never been quite clear. But I can sit here now at a nifty age of forty-one and honestly say there’s just me and this machine, baby.” More smoker’s cough, laughter. “I don’t know whether anybody’s interested or not but I am.” Okay, so she does make more sense than the Palin/Couric interview.
When my number is up, I want a new one
This autobiographical stream of consciousness transforms into a piece of unintentional comedy that neither Andy Kaufman or Larry David could’ve belted out on their best days. Judy’s rant about airplanes could have been right out of a Mel Brooks movie—had Mel just eaten a cereal bowl of pills and Jameson. “I’ve never met a cast of people I want to die with. You go on an airplane and look around at the people reading the Reader’s Digest or whatever—you don’t want to die with them. First place, you get … I’d get top billing: ‘Judy Garland Dies in Plane Crash! For other … ughhh (long guttural noise) deceased turn to … section … B, page 18.’ And then they state them alphabetically and they are a peculiar bunch.” If the rest of the passengers are peculiar in comparison to Judy Garland, they’re either straight as an arrow or really weird.
“What are we doing flying around in airplanes for one thing? We … we’re not … not even birds go up that high.”
“I have to make friends with the pilot and, uh, give his children my autograph whereupon he tells me that his children are just as important to him as my life. Forget it! His life isn’t nearly as important as my life is to me. Sheer selfishness, I don’t really care about anybody but me.” More smoker’s cough, laughter. “And when my number is up, I want a new one and I have no intention of checking out. Now this machine isn’t going to get me either. One way or another we’re going to overcome it.” Here she places a short, forced, scoffing laugh—the kind one would expect to hear when asking for ketchup at a fine steakhouse.
“I am funny!”
No segue; she goes right into her next rant.
“Inanimate objects just ruin me. I can check into a hotel to do a one-night stand concert … and try to go into the closet to get my dress off a hanger and an absolutely strange, strange mind you … little wire hanger without one thing on it flies off from left field and hits me in the nose … A lot of people have hit me in the nose … I’ve got a kinda nice nose.”
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