Judy Garland
A Portrait in Art and Anecdote
By John Fricke
(Foreword by Lorna Luft)

     She's reviving her career, she's in London with a troubled marriage that's fodder for the tabloids…no, we're not speaking of Liza Minnelli, mega-talented daughter of "Dorothy Gale from Kansas," but of "Baby Gumm," Frances Gumm, who you might have heard of as Judy Garland.

     In a memorable scene from the 2001 miniseries "Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows," a frustrated Garland, played to perfection by Judy Davis, shouts into the phone, "Yes, I've heard how difficult it is to work with Judy Garland. Do you know how difficult it is to be Judy Garland? I've been trying to be Judy Garland all my life!" In the foreword to Judy Garland: A Tribute In Art And Anecdote, Garland's daughter Lorna Luft echoes this sentiment in as loving a tribute to her mother as the miniseries, based on Luft's own published memoir, and as reverent yet observant as John Fricke's stunning, definitive encomium on Garland's life.

       The human, glowing, not-in-the-least-fawning tribute to the petite dynamo might evoke comparisons to another ill-fated icon...Norma Jean Baker, a.k.a. Marilyn Monroe; the loveless childhood, the scandals, the comebacks, the willingness to entertain our service men (eat your heart out, Dixie Chicks), the troubled marriages, the addictions, the intense strain of a performing career, the battles with the studios, the petite statures, the fragility and vulnerability that continue to draw us in a 30-second-sound-byte world. The association with Kennedy, Sinatra and the most remarkable talents of an era, the trusting natures that fell prey to studio greed, and to paraphrase Elton John, the candles that burned out long before their legends ever did.

     Yet Garland, as the book demonstrates through quotes, posters, photographic portrait of entertainment history, drawings, and "home movie" photos of the private Garland, outshines Monroe with her mastery of vaudeville, radio, television, theater, musical performance, and movies. Garland's children, flawed and loving, gave her added complexity as a working mom heroine, as well as an emotional completeness Monroe sadly lacked. To quote the title of one of her movies, "I Could Go On Singing." In Fricke's book, she does just that.