by Anne Edwards
When you’ve learned and you’ve grown
Through the years of just living
Then you’ve earned every right to be
Proud of your years
Not too old, not so young
The quietness of age
Well, then the young man comes along
To smile, to take you up with him
And hold you strong along a way to love ...
When he came and sat down on the edge of the bed, Deans claims she was propped up smiling. He had a sore throat. Nodding her head, laughing, she was proud she had one too. Her floppy slippers were askew on the floor; her ratty bathrobe at the end of the bed. She had not been smoking much, had eaten nothing. She asked him to stay with her, to lie down beside her on the bed. Many nights she had asked the same of him.
Even with the lights glaring, the radio blasting, he fell asleep. On the bedside table there was an open bottle of twenty-five Nembutals and an unopened new prescription of one hundred that Deans had just filled for her that day. She took pills from the opened bottle. Sometime during the night she got up, taking a few more, and groped groggily around for her bathrobe and slippers. It was June 22 (she had celebrated her forty-seventh birthday just twelve days before in a stranger’s New York apartment), but London was damp and the house cold. She had to go out of her bedroom and into the hallway to reach the bathroom. She locked the bathroom door. It was habit—one place she felt she must have privacy.
At ten-thirty the next morning Deans awoke with the insistent ringing of the downstairs telephone. Judy was not in the bed. Friends were calling from California.
The house seeming unnaturally quiet to him, he told the callers he’d ring them back, and started by instinct immediately for the upstairs bathroom. The door was locked. He pounded on it; then, fearing the worst, went outside the house, around the rear, and climbed up and onto a section of roof that allowed him to look into the bathroom window.
She was in a sitting position, her head collapsed onto her breast, like a small brown sparrow with a broken neck. She had been dead for several hours and rigor mortis had set in. He climbed into the room and unlocked the door from the inside and went downstairs to call an ambulance.
43The plane with Judy Garland’s body in the cargo section and Mickey Deans above it, in the first-class compartment, touched down at Kennedy Airport just past midnight on the twenty-sixth of June, 1969. Deans was wearing sunglasses and a dark suit. He looked tired and pale. He stood to the side with the Reverend Peter Delaney, who had accompanied him from London, and watched the cargo handlers slide the plain brown coffin, wrapped in burlap and tied with heavy cord, onto a cargo lift and into a waiting gray hearse.
Deans turned away and the two men strode across the field, making their way through the thirty or forty newsmen who had stood vigil during the humid New York summer night. Liza greeted them, wearing a floppy dark hat, much like the hats her mother had designed and worn, looking incredibly like her in it. She was accompanied by Kay Thompson.
“I think,” Liza told the army of newsmen, "she [her mother] was just tired like a flower that blooms and gives joy to the world, then wilts away."
Plans for the funeral were immediately set in motion. Calls went out to Gene Hills, Judy’s old makeup man from MGM days, and to the young man from Kenneth’s who did her hair whenever she was in New York. But Gene Hills was currently doing Eva Gabor’s makeup for the television show Green Acres, and Eva said she could not spare his services; and the stylist from Kenneth’s refused the assignment. A white coffin had been ordered, but the funeral home said it didn’t have one.
“Well,” Kay Thompson told the funeral director, “MGM would grab a can of white paint and paint it.” The man looked at her with a bit of shock, but he agreed, and a mahogany coffin was brought in and spray-painted white.
Campbell’s Funeral Home, on Madison Avenue at Eighty-first Street, had been selected and a private one P.M. service for personal friends already arranged. The gathering would be stellar: Mickey Rooney, Ray Bolger, Lauren Bacall, Jack Benny, Sammy Davis, Jr., Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Lana Turner, Freddie Bartholomew, Alan King, Otto Preminger, Mayor Lindsay, and Spyros Skouras, among others.
The funeral accouterments were to be in yellow and white, so that everything would be as cheerful as possible, and Liza had requested that those invited for the private service not wear black. A blanket of yellow roses was ordered to drape the coffin, and there was to be a backdrop of yellow and white mums.
By the time the first mourners were allowed in, Judy was dressed in the dark gray crepe gown she had worn just six months before, at her first and secret wedding ceremony to Deans in January. Her small hands were sheathed in immaculate white gloves and rested on a white Bible. She wore silver slippers and a silver brocaded belt decorated with pearls. She rested on light blue velvet, and the sprayed-white coffin now had a glass top.
More than twenty-two thousand persons filed past her coffin. Outside, thousands more stood behind barriers, cheering each star who arrived. The fans were grouped together around portable tape recorders and phonographs. “Over the Rainbow” segued from one group to the next. As Alan King arrived, he saw an emotionally distracted Mickey Rooney running up the street, away from the funeral home. The guests had been told to be there promptly by one. At one sharp the doors closed. King leaned forward to say something to Liza, who sat two rows in front of him, wearing a blue wool suit and a black velvet cardinal’s hat in spite of the broiling heat.
“This is the first time that your mom was ever on time for a performance,” he quipped.
Liza managed a broken smile.
Loudspeakers had been set up outside the chapel, and the easily recognizable, deep-timbred voice of James Mason, who had flown in from Geneva for the funeral, filled the area from Eightieth to Eighty-second Street and from Fifth Avenue to Park Avenue.
“The thing about Judy Garland was that she was so alive. You close your eyes and you see a small vivid woman, sometimes fat, sometimes thin, but vivid. Vitality . . . that’s what our Judy had.”
And then he quoted Liza: “It was her love of life that carried her through everything. The middle of the road was never for her. It bored her. She wanted the pinnacle of excitement. If she was happy, she wasn’t just happy. She was ecstatic. And when she was sad she was sadder than anyone.”
The Reverend Peter Delaney read from I Corinthians, Chapter 13, Verses 1-13, which began:
“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and I know all mystery and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love . . .” It was, according to Deans, Judy’s favorite verse.
Then one of her former accompanists played “Here’s to Us” —an innocuous Cy Coleman-Carolyn Leigh song that Deans said had been their song.
Luft—none of the other ex-husbands attended—sat flanked by Lorna and Joey, all three joining the singing as the congregation concluded the service with a rising chorus of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
A hush fell over the thousands of fans outside as the coffin was carried to the waiting maroon hearse. A flower truck filled with more than one hundred floral remembrances idled behind it.
Judy was on her way to Ferncliff Cemetery, in Westchester County, for burial.
The previous day, Deans had gone out to Ferncliff. He had been the pivotal force in selecting a New York site. (Luft had wanted her buried on the West Coast, where he and the younger children lived.) Deans had had no sleep that night and was looking distraught. Frank Angerole, FernclifFs director, was impressed by the grief he displayed.
All of Ferncliff is dominated by a massive white building—the Mausoleum, which also houses the main offices. Entering the building is like entering a giant crypt. It has an Egyptian-tomb quality. Over the massive doors is one ugly, neorealistic pastoral scene in stained g
lass. The walls are white imported marble; the crypts, constructed like drawers in a police morgue, labeled like files for the dead.
The director’s office has no windows. It is wood-paneled, and the desk is very impressive. On the walls, hunting dogs are poised in stark frames and a tape of funereal music, in a constant major key, is repeated over and over again.
“Your wife,” Angerole assured Deans, “will be the star of Ferncliff. Jerome Kern rests here, and Moss Hart, Basil Rath-bone, and Elsa Maxwell; but your wife will be our only star.”
Angerole had shown Deans a special prototype niche, the most expensive accommodation at Ferncliff. Crypts were $2,500, the niche $37,500. Deans agreed to the latter. It seemed to him the only possible reservation one could make for a star.
A niche would not be ready until the new wing was completed in six months’ time. That gave Deans time to raise the money. Personally insolvent, he felt friends, family, and fans would rally to such a “cause.” In the meantime, it was agreed that Judy would be held in a temporary crypt until final arrangements—the payment of $37,500 to Ferncliff—were concluded.
Only a small group and the flower truck accompanied Judy there. They were taken directly to the Chapel of the Lilies. The room is simple and stark. A grape-carved altar in sweet-smelling wood dominates the room. There are no windows in this room either.
Judy was placed in the temporary crypt—a file drawer, really—its label not yet in place. She remained there over a year, from June 28, 1969, until November 4, 1970, when she was moved to her final resting place. The money had not been raised, nor the need for it publicized. Liza, taking over the arrangements from Deans, had seen to it that her mother was buried in dignity and without seeking aid from strangers.
The crypt selected was in the new wing, the one truly lovely section of the mausoleum building dominated by a huge glass window with trees beyond. It almost turns your heart when you come upon it, for it is like leaving a dead theater and entering a world of the light and the living.
Appendices
Judy Garland’s Book of Poems
The first page of the book is inscribed:
to Barron
In appreciation
of his many
kindnesses
to me
Letter accompanying book:
Barron darling,
My present is so late, that it can hardly be called a birthday gift, so lets [sic] say that it’s a symbol of fine friendship that proves itself every day of the year, not just the day your mother did me the favor of bringing you into the world.
Love and kisses
Judy
THE POEMS
THE WISH
Would that my pen were tipped
with a magic wand
That I could but tell of my
love for you
That I could but write with
the surge I feel
When I gaze upon your sweet
face—
Would that my throat were
blessed by the nightingale
That I could but sing of
my heart’s great love
In some lonely tree flooded
with silver
Sing till I burst my breast
with such passion
Sing, then fall dead to lay
at your feet.
THE FIRST CIGARETTE
I was a woman
Glamorous, sparkling,
With eyes that shone, guarding secrets untold,
Lips that were petulant, pouting and bold
With a body moulded to gentlemen’s delight
And pedicured toe-nails shining and bright.
I patronized night clubs,
Danced until three.
And hundreds of men
Were mad about me.
Then, in a panic
My dream began to cool,
I mashed out the cigarette
And was late for school.
AN ILLUSION
How strange when an illusion dies
It’s as though you’ve lost a child
Whom you’ve cherished and protected
Against the wilds of the storms and hurts
In this frightening world.
Your child is dead.
An hysterical frenzy possesses you
Your precious, virtuous dream has been taken,
Torn from your defensive, guarding breast.
Next a morose loneliness descends
You’re a pitiful stumbling creature
Lost in the woods of despair.
Suddenly you see a light.
You straighten, and walk with steady footsteps into the sun
Time has done her work.
Your dream is gone—yes—
And you light a candle in your heart
In a remembrance of something never to be recovered,
But deep in your soul, in its embryonic state,
another illusion is maturing
Waiting to grow strong and radiant
Only to be crushed and join the other.
IMAGINATION
What is Imagination, that it should make me so wasteful?
We cast away priceless time in dreams,
Born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put
to death by reality.
How many lives this illusive creature has.
We create him through ecstatic joy, morbid loneliness,
through mere pensive thought.
We nourish him, we glorify him, we build him,
we add to him to make him strong.
We place him on a pedestal with a heavenly light
upon his innocent head.
Then we crush him with a change of thought,
But he will be born again.
MY LOVE IS LOST
My love is lost.
I held it as a handful of sand, clenching my fist
to hold it there.
Yet, bit by bit, it slipped through my straining fingers.
Now, nothing but memories of every smile, every kiss,
and, above all, every word.
For ’twas not into my ear you whispered buta into
my heart.
’Twas not my lips you kissed, but my soul.
And when I opened my tired hand and found my
love was gone
I trembled and died.
I struggle to hide my deadness.
To conceal the emptiness in my eyes,
that sparkle with tears always so close
but never come.
My mind quivers and screams, fight, fight to live
But why?
My handful of existence has vanished.
My love is lost.
My love is lost.
LOVER’S GOODBYE TO A DEPARTING SOLDIER
How pitiful we are, my love.
How helpless against a world gone mad,
with strife, struggle, selfishness and hate.
How weak we are, my love.
Trampled beneath powers unknown to our hearts and minds.
How useless be our toil, my love.
Fighting to hold back such powers with our small
hands and hopes.
Let us cease our struggle, my love.
’Tis to no avail.
For we have been dragged to the feet of fate.
Ordered into the bloody fray.
Commanded to hush the hideous drums that
rock the earth’s foundation.
Go from me, my love,
Go from the scene of your happy childhood.
Your happy, madcap, carefree childhood.
Ah, yes, remember such freedom.
Go from the cities you have learned to love.
Such tranquillity in their hubbub,
Such peace in their turmoil.
Ah yes, remember such peace.
Say au revoir, not goodbye, as the lady of our
hearts fades from your view.
She will be wa
iting,
As I shall be waiting to clasp you when you return.
Leave me, my love.
Leave sun and moon and wind and rain
and hope and life behind.
Tread into darkness, oblivion, blindly,
Walk with tragedy by your side.
Fight, my love.
Kill and laugh as thou kill more and more,
Lest thou be killed first.
Hear not screams of pain and agony.
See not ground run red with gore.
Feel no remorse as thou destroy,
For this is a game of destruction and slaughter.
But keep me not in your heart and mind.
Fill them with justice and liberty.
Leave no room for me.
Destroy thou must,
But though shalt be a saviour.
Lift up the bowed head of the tired soldier
to point out the sun of freedom,
shining into his frightened eyes through
the clearing battle smoke.
Give back, with hysterical gaiety what has been
stolen so treacherously.
Make the winds of liberty blow strongly
O’er green field and heather.
Make all men free, as we are free.
But leave no room in your heart for me.
Fill it with justice and liberty,
And leave me here to wait for thee.
But come back to me, my love.
Not as you stand before me now.
But half gone, half dead, half departed.
If body sound, thought and mind contorted.
Return my love.
I ask not all of you, for that shall not be mine again.
Come back changed, unrecognizable,
But, oh my love,
Come back.
DENY ME NOT
Cry not to me, “thou hast wronged”
Say not, of my footsteps, “that they be unheeding”
With steps so steady and sure as time,
I tread unto a sea of fire,
Of heartbreak, and of joy supreme.
Yet terrifying for its unending depth, of fatality,
humility, tragedy, and through these, ghostly reality.
God above, call not your wrath upon me.
Demand me not to hate my love.
Order me not to cast out my heart.
