by Anne Edwards
“Oh, I’m sure that can’t be so,” Grethe assured her. “The Kong Frederik is one of our best hotels and I understand the bathrooms are fully tiled.”
“Mickey left me only fifty dollars and the hotel bill’s unpaid,” Grethe claims Judy complained.
“He’ll be back, and you don’t need any money here,” Grethe Vangkilde says she assured Judy.
“Please get Mickey for me. He’s gone off and left me. He’ll never come back. I can’t live without him.” She began to cry.
Grethe went into the master bedroom and woke up her husband. They decided to try to reach Deans, but he had not informed them which hotel he would be staying at. Vangkilde went down the list of hotels in Stockholm alphabetically, calling each one of them, finally reaching Deans at the Strand. But he was incoherent, possibly drunk, and Vangkilde was not sure he understood how serious Judy’s condition appeared.
When Vangkilde returned to Judy, she asked for sleeping pills.
“We don’t have any,” he states he told her.
“Any pills at all?” she asked him.
“Just for headaches,” he lied.
“I have one terrible headache,” Judy cried. He went to fetch her some aspirin. Grethe was alone with Judy.
“You don’t look like a spy,” she says Judy told her incoherently.
“I’m not. I’m just an ordinary housewife,” Grethe replied.
“Have you kidnapped me?”
“No, we brought you here to wait for Mickey.”
Judy began crying again, saying she wanted to talk to Deans. “I’d like to die,” she sighed, “never wake up. There’s no way out.”
Vangkilde returned with the aspirin and left the two women alone again at his wife’s request. The Danish woman sat down beside Judy. They talked through most of the night. Grethe offered her food, but Judy wouldn’t eat. She fell asleep, curled up, almost disappearing into the big chair by the fire with Eddie at her feet. Grethe went to cover her and she awoke.
“Will you stay here with me?” Judy begged.
“No, but I’11 help you into the guest room. You can take Eddie with you.”
Judy could not walk, and Grethe (Hans now in an exhausted sleep) lifted her in her arms and carried her into the guest bedroom (Grethe claims Judy’s weight was no more than that of one of her own children), helping her into one of the children’s nightdresses. Judy sat on the bed holding on to Grethe, sobbing against her body. Finally the sobs subsided.
“Oh,” Judy sighed deeply, “oh, I just want to go home.”
She rested on the bed but clung to Grethe’s hand. “Please don’t leave me alone.“
“I’ll leave the door open and the light in the hall on,” Grethe compromised.
“Just stay here until I fall asleep,” Judy asked.
Grethe stood by the side of the bed, Judy’s small hand in hers. One moment she seemed to fall asleep, and then when Grethe tried to remove her hand, she awoke.
“You’re sure this isn’t a mental home?” she asked.
“Of course not. I’m Grethe Vangkilde, remember?” She patted Judy’s hand and Judy fell back to sleep. Finally Grethe left her, the door open and a light on as she promised, Eddie remaining behind at his post. Less than an hour later, she heard sounds in the other part of the house and went to investigate. Judy was sitting by the dying fire in her small-girl’s nightdress, her arms tight around Eddie’s neck, pressing her face into his thick fur. “You understand,” she was saying; “you understand.”
“You must try to sleep,” Grethe told her, and wrapped a robe around her bare shoulders.
“You know who I am?” Judy asked.
“Yes, of course. You’re a great star—so great that in a couple of moments you can give ordinary people something they will never forget.”
“Please, say that again,” Judy begged, as a child beseeches a mother to repeat a familiar story over and over again.
Judy and Deans left Copenhagen two days later. It was four o’clock, and the city was gray. It was cold. A limousine waited for them by the front door. They came down in the elevator and Judy said a personal goodbye to everyone there—Telle Saaek, Hans Jorgen Eriksen, and the telephone operators. She was gay. She wore one of her mad, funny hats that she herself had designed, and she held a vodka and pineapple juice in one hand—Deans holding his usual Scotch and Drambuie in one of his—as they got into the back seat of the car. Saaek and Eriksen stood on the curb watching the car pull away. They hoped she might look back, because they had confessed to each other that they were sure they would never see her alive again. She was so tiny, though, that even the back of her head was not visible in the car’s rear window.
41A driving rain greeted them upon their arrival in London. A limousine met them. Judy always felt protected in the back seat of a large car. Traffic frightened and overwhelmed her. Trucks and skyscrapers loomed over her. Speed terrified her; she would nervously call out to her chauffeurs and taxi drivers to slow down. Even as a young woman in California, where driving is supposedly necessary for survival, she preferred being driven.
The press was appalled at her appearance. Newspapers had called her “thin” and “frail” before the tour in Scandinavia; now with sickening heart they noted that “she was nearly skeletal, looked like a small animal whose bones had been picked almost clean.”
It was night, and they drove directly to their small cottage at 4 Cadogan Lane. Deans was now aware that Judy was a very sick woman. He helped her to bed and then, at her request, sat on the edge of the bed, listening to her shallow breathing, somehow managing to rationalize that what she needed was the sun, deciding to leave immediately with her for a holiday in Spain. It seems irrational that his first move was not to get sound medical advice. But Deans had been married to Judy for only one month. He had a head filled with plans. He was going to franchise a string of Judy Garland miniaturized cinemas, would produce a film of her life, supervise new recordings. Blaming her failing health on money pressures, pills, and concerts, he believed he could make them both rich, stabilize the pills (after all, he was able to take them in moderation), and cut out the concerts if they made her unhappy. In pursuit of his own dreams, possessed by his own fantasies, he refused to face the reality of his situation.
Clearly, what Judy needed was a nurse-companion. Had he persuaded her at that point to secure proper medical attention, to submit to a complete examination, he would have been told that besides being tired, worn out, Judy had chronic and critical liver, kidney, colon, and rectal problems, along with all the side effects the drugs had created. But even more pressing was her mental health. Instead of a holiday in Spain that meant planes, hotels, changes in climate, foreign food, and doctors unfamiliar with her case, he should have considered taking her to a nursing home. So powerful was his own world of fantasy, however, that he was able to convince himself “sunny” Spain would heal all wounds.
By morning, he was forced to delay the trip. The Swedish film had been sent to London for processing, since it required a special method not available in Sweden. The film was then nearly three hours running time and contained nude footage of Judy, shots of her stoned and drunk, and tracks of her singing not only badly, but embarrassingly so. Through his solicitor, George Eldridge, Deans, when notified, immediately slapped an injunction on the film.
The Swedish newspaper Ekstabladet, on April 12, 1969, carried the following article (English translation by its own offices).
JUDY GARLAND’S FILM OF HER
SCANDINAVIAN TOUR IS CONFISCATED
BECAUSE OF ITS NUDE SCENES
The showing of a Swedish documentary film of Judy Garland that would have undoubtedly caused a sensation has been prohibited by a London Court. The film is not to be delivered to its producer—Music Artists of Europef—rom the London laboratory where it was sent for processing. It was Judy Garland’s lawyer who had persuaded the court to issue the decision, which came as something of a shock to the producer.
“That is a f
antastic complaint of which we are being accused,” says Arne Stivell, director of Music Artists of Europe. "One agrees that the film contains pictures of Judy Garland in the nude and that the film shows her in an intoxicated condition, but she knew all along that she was being filmed according to the terms of the contract.
“The film is undeniably revealing,” states Stivell. “It tells the story of a day in her life. It shows how she builds herself up to the time of her appearance on stage. She prepares in the same way that a boxer does before he goes into the ring. When my company organized her Scandinavian tour it received her permission to make the film. The whole thing is in the contract, and we agreed to share the world royalties fifty-fifty.”
The decision as to whether or not the film will be returned to the Swedish producer will be handed down on Wednesday by the London Court.
Even though Deans knew, therefore, that at least he would have to return to London by the following Wednesday, he still was determined to take Judy to Spain, settling on the seaside resort of Torremolinos.
Torremolinos was once a fishing village. Now, the hotels; the concessions; the encroaching army of foreign artists, expatriates, and tourists have enveloped it. The ocean, on a sunny day, is still beautiful; the town curves picturesquely and seductively around the neck of the Costa del Sol, red clay-tile roofs dot the coastline—but it has been prostituted, flagrantly abused. Elsewhere in Spain one can still hear the distinguishing sounds of the country—a howling dog, fishermen singing as they pull in their nets, the squeak of donkeys, rattles of old cars—but not in Torremolinos. When they arrived, there was no sun and the town lay before them like some jaded specter, old and bleached.
From the time of their arrival there were serious problems. Deans had not brought enough pills. The first night was spent in a desperate search for a doctor who would give him a prescription. Then the pills seemed to have a new and adverse effect. Judy found it extremely hard to coordinate. The first morning she took a very bad spill in the bathroom, gashing her lip and knocking herself unconscious. The doctor did not feel she had serious injuries (though he never took her to the hospital for x-rays), but he did not think she should be left alone. A search was then conducted for a nurse who would stay with Judy. The next day, with Judy still in an incoherent state, the doctor changed his mind and recommended the hospital. Deans, conscious now of the press and bad publicity, refused, deciding he would tend her himself.
“I held her in my arms in a chair,” Deans says, “and tried to feed her some cold grapefruit juice, which she loved—her mouth was all parched. I held her and rocked her. She was like a little child, a small baby, and she would turn, eyes like a little kid, and smile, the most innocent God-damned loving smile. And I started to cry. ’I promise I’ll be good,’ she said. Then I put her back in the bed, but I held her and rocked her and kissed her and just rocked her back and forth. She was so frightened, so God-damned scared. She didn’t want the doctor to come. She was afraid she was going crazy.”
Nonetheless, he left her in the care of the nurse in Spain while he went to London for twenty-four hours to arrange the postponement of the Swedish matter. When he returned, he found her considerably worse. Nursing her for many days himself (they were in Spain a total of ten days), he finally became frightened when she began hallucinating. He managed to get her on a plane back to London, cabling Matthew West, the public relations man, to arrange for a car to meet them. As soon as they were back at Cadogan Lane, he put in an emergency call to her doctor, who came right over. The physician wasn’t certain what the problem was, but feared possible brain damage, prescribing tranquilizers to quiet her. By the next morning, miraculously, Judy (again taking Ritalin) had snapped back. The medical diagnosis now was that she had suffered drug withdrawal. A nurse was employed to remain with her.
It was a great shock to both Judy and Deans that when the Swedish matter came up in court, they not only lost the case but had to pay court costs. Deans and Eldridge flew to Sweden in hot pursuit of Stivell and the film. On boarding, Deans says he noted a coffin being loaded into the baggage section. “You know who’s in that coffin, George?” he asked Eldridge, and then quipped, “Arne Stivell, hanging on to the film and saying, ’Mickey can’t find us inside here’!”
In Sweden, with the help of a Swedish attorney, they managed to unearth an old but valid copyright law that made it a criminal offense to show any of the film footage in Sweden. Feeling victorious, they returned, to find Judy a bit improved. Deans took her for the weekend to the country house in Hazel-mare belonging to West and Southcombe.
On April 22, the attorneys, following up the matter of the Swedish film and Arne Stivell, wrote her a letter informing her that her performances were covered by the Swedish law of copyright, and that Stivell could not legally exhibit the film or recording of her Scandinavian tour in Sweden without her consent. There were other legal complications, but it seemed fairly certain the film would not be exhibited.
42Judy’s condition appeared to improve, so by the first of June, Deans agreed that she could accompany him on a two-week trip to New York. Deans was pressing on with the idea of the Judy Garland Cinemas, and the “money people” were in New York, and Judy did not want to be left in London alone. It was a disastrous trip. The minicinema project collapsed—and they were in New York with scant funds, having to stay with friends. It was obvious something had to be done about their financial situation. Deans discussed two potentials with Judy—one, a film documentary to counteract the Scandinavian entry, to be called A Day in the Life of Judy Garland; and two, a concert.
Before the plane that brought them back from New York had landed at Heathrow, Judy had agreed to both plans and had even jotted down ideas for the concert.
The following was written on a scrap of paper by her in a difficult-to-read-scribble, her handwriting having become very childish:
Orch[estra] Arrangements
Georgia Rose
Georgia On My Mind
Second Hand Rose
San Francisco Bay
You Came A Long Way From St. Louis
Before The Parade Passes By (Segue)
Second Hand Rose
Into Orchestra and
I Love A Parade
Good new songs
Open 1. Someone Needs Me
2. Who Am I?
(segue into)
At Last I Have Someone Who Needs Me
(above—definite!)
Newley’s This Dream
Get Lindsey’s Orchestration] of Here’s To Us
Judy was reacting out of habit. Of course, when the chips were down, when her husband turned to her, there was no other recourse but to schedule still another concert—still another test of her endurance.
The next morning she was unable to get out of bed. The following days she was weak but managed to do household chores (which she had never done before). One evening she went to a party given by Jackie Trent and Tony Hatch (known in England as Mr. and Mrs. Music). It was a costume party, and she dressed in a brief cowgirl outfit reminiscent of her appearance with Rooney in Babes on Broadway. It proved to be too much of a strain, and Deans (also in cowboy attire) was forced to take her home early.
She was reading Nicholas and Alexandra and was caught up emotionally with it—concerned for the welfare of Anastasia if, in fact, she had been alive all those years. (“She must have been so alone. My God!” she confided her compassion to Deans). And she also was thinking seriously of becoming a Catholic like Deans and Liza.
Four days after their return from New York was the Reverend Peter Delaney’s birthday. He planned a small dinner celebration. Judy was looking forward to the evening, as she had not strayed far from the cottage except for the evening at the Hatches’. She decided to give him the Royal Copenhagen plate she had bought on the tour. Late in the day the minister called. He was concerned about her, he said, after reading the afternoon newspapers.
“Why?” Judy asked.
He read her the arti
cle stating that Luft had been arrested for passing a worthless check in the amount of approximately $3,000 (the Garden State Arts Center affair). She reacted in a very distraught manner, saying something quite harsh about Luft. Then she disconnected. Her old friend Roddy McDowall had recently given her as a gift a red leather book with gold tooling on the cover declaring it Ye Olde Bitch Book. Inside were blank pages—the idea being that when anything disturbed Judy to a rankling point, she would write it in the book in an attempt to exorcise it. Several hours later she made the entry :
Sid Luft Arrested! Hooray! Passed $3000 in bad checks, Freeport, New Jersey. Peter called to read the newspapers to me. Joe and Lorna!
Later she called Lorna in California. It seemed to make her feel much better.
They went to the dinner, but left very soon after they arrived. Judy wasn’t feeling well. That night she could not sleep even after an extremely heavy dosage of Nembutal. The next day she hardly left her bed.
For the six days since her return to London she had appeared remote, as though listening for distant drummers. Deans’s mind was spinning with plans, his hours filled with conferences with Southcombe and West and with a neighbor, Richard Harris, a businessman who was advising him on film matters. He had formed a close friendship with a young associate of Southcombe & West, Phillip Arberge, who had come over this night to watch television. Deans’s eyes were set on coming glory. Judy had said she would do a film and a concert. He went over and over the scribbled notes indicating the songs she might sing.
Upstairs, in that small bedroom—humbler than most hotel bedrooms she had lived in throughout her life—Judy took her pills and turned restlessly on her pillows, her small frame making very little impression on them at all.
Perhaps, in her drug-induced reveries, she was back in those childhood days of Ethel and herself—perhaps she was reliving the past.
Arberge left the house about midnight, and Deans went up to see how she was. That week in a last creative spurt she had begun a lyric. The verse began:
