Judy and Stonewall, Together Wherever They Go
by Jeff Weinstein
JUNE 22, 2009 TAGS:
Is Judy Garland “the Elvis of homosexuals”?
That’s what the Advocate, a national gay publication, once claimed, but it doesn’t make sense. Judy was anybody’s Elvis, if Elvis at all. From the moment 2-year-old Frances Gumm took to the stage, fans of every possible persuasion succumbed without reserve or regret to her hungry, thrilling theatrical love.
Also, after years of witless stereotyping and pigeonholing, we finally know that not all same-sexers are cut from the same tulle. “Judy who?” a young gay friend asked after I dared to compare The Wizard of Oz’s idolized Dorothy to Adam Lambert, his recently vanquished American idol.
“Judy, Liza’s mom,” I answered.
“Liza who?”
Judy Garland died June 22 four decades ago of a barbiturate overdose -- accidental or not -- in her London home. She was a mere 47. Although tastes never sit still, those who have seen and heard her sing, dance and act on film, TV, recordings and the concert stage tend to agree that she was the most magnetic and versatile entertainer of the 20th century. She always found more than her role required, and when Judy sang, you gasped at the banquet of pain and desire, elegance and strength that beamed directly from her personal planet to yours, story and character left far behind. She was born to tell us what our hearts already knew, which is what I hope to salute in this memorial mash-note.
But I also want to clear something up, because there’s another anniversary to mark, not of a death, but a birth: of the modern movement for gay liberation.
Some fanciful souls are convinced that Judy Garland was responsible for the Stonewall Rebellion. Gay grief, they say, occasioned by saturation coverage of her overflowing two-day Madison Avenue funeral (June 26 and 27, 1969) set the stage for the history-making riot at a Greenwich Village bar that very weekend.
In case you doubt the universal interest in Garland’s death, here’s the beginning of Bernard Weinraub’s New York Times coverage of the event:
“They arrived before dawn at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home and stood for hours behind police barricades -- thousands of elderly women, weeping young men, teen-aged girls, housewives, nuns, priests, beggars, cripples and hippies.”
Oh, handsome New York mayor John Lindsay was invited, as were Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall, Sammy Davis Jr., Bobby Short and Sid Caesar, to Friday’s private service. More than 20,000 stricken visitors viewed the almost Munchkin-size star in her glass-topped coffin lined in blue or yellow, depending upon which news report you believe.
So at 1:40 a.m. Saturday, when corrupt, arrogant, demeaning police raided the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street -- virtually the only bar in New York where, in the shadows, a vetted clientele could hold each other and dance -- and drag queens and bull dykes and homeless teens and big, strong gay guys from the bar and then the neighborhood exploded, it must have been because their Judy had just been put to rest.
But it’s not true. No serious Stonewall account confirms or even suggests that Judy was the reason. A drag participant, Sylvia (Ray) Rivera, did say in an interview that though the Garland funeral saddened and surprised her, she went out that night to party anyway. Gay Liberation Front founder Bob Kohler -- who died in 2007 at age 81 -- knew many of those who took part in the weekend riots, and he angrily dismissed the Garland hypothesis:
Of course, her life was a mess. Like opera counterpart Maria Callas, young Garland was an ugly-duckling diva left in the lurch by family and men. Employer MGM (and before that, maybe her mom) hooked her on drugs. Later, she was a time-bomb on the set -- when she managed to show up.
But there’s no reward in looking for the cause-and-effect of talent. The “thing” that made Garland a cultural hypnotist was independent of her age, her training, her experience. You simply can’t believe or understand the intensity with which this 14-year-old faces the camera and leaps into her own musical frame (in the 1936 vocal “duel” with warbling Deanna Durbin called Every Sunday. She matches and then trumps manic Mickey Rooney in every juvenile pairing, always inhabiting some grownup emotional world -- a world like ours! -- that has nothing to do with either her real or fictional situation.
All her life she thrived in that place between acting and performing solely as “Judy herself.” The best example of this isn’t Garland’s expert work in her first songless role as a new war bride in The Clock. Rather, it’s when she dives into one of many songs she’s famous for, the camera tight on her creamy face as older sister Esther tries to comfort distraught Tootie, a scene-stealing Margaret O’Brien. It’s in 1944’s Meet Me in St. Louis, and you know the words:
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas/ Let your heart be light/ Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.”
As it happened, Garland, costar Tom Drake and director and husband-to-be Vincente Minnelli had objected to the original lyrics, which they thought would not go down well with the boys overseas or their families back home:
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas/ It may be your last/ Next year we may all be living in the past.”
Still, when she sang the corrected song at the Hollywood Canteen, Garland brought many homesick soldiers to tears, no doubt in the same puzzling, particularly “Judy” way the scene in the movie evokes tears now. Something far beyond sisterly sentiment is on view.
I never could say exactly what that something is, but I’m convinced it’s close kin to the spirit of the brave and furious queens who taunted New York’s boys in blue with a kicking chorus line, to the tune of “It’s Howdy Doody Time”:
"We are the Stonewall girls/ We wear our hair in curls/ We don't wear underwear/ We show our pubic hair.”
They also wore their hearts on their sleeves, whatever those sleeves were attached to. Just like Judy.
Forty long years later, I remain grateful to them all. There’s still plenty of singing, and kicking, left for us to do.
That’s what the Advocate, a national gay publication, once claimed, but it doesn’t make sense. Judy was anybody’s Elvis, if Elvis at all. From the moment 2-year-old Frances Gumm took to the stage, fans of every possible persuasion succumbed without reserve or regret to her hungry, thrilling theatrical love.
Also, after years of witless stereotyping and pigeonholing, we finally know that not all same-sexers are cut from the same tulle. “Judy who?” a young gay friend asked after I dared to compare The Wizard of Oz’s idolized Dorothy to Adam Lambert, his recently vanquished American idol.“Judy, Liza’s mom,” I answered.
“Liza who?”
Judy Garland died June 22 four decades ago of a barbiturate overdose -- accidental or not -- in her London home. She was a mere 47. Although tastes never sit still, those who have seen and heard her sing, dance and act on film, TV, recordings and the concert stage tend to agree that she was the most magnetic and versatile entertainer of the 20th century. She always found more than her role required, and when Judy sang, you gasped at the banquet of pain and desire, elegance and strength that beamed directly from her personal planet to yours, story and character left far behind. She was born to tell us what our hearts already knew, which is what I hope to salute in this memorial mash-note.
But I also want to clear something up, because there’s another anniversary to mark, not of a death, but a birth: of the modern movement for gay liberation.
Some fanciful souls are convinced that Judy Garland was responsible for the Stonewall Rebellion. Gay grief, they say, occasioned by saturation coverage of her overflowing two-day Madison Avenue funeral (June 26 and 27, 1969) set the stage for the history-making riot at a Greenwich Village bar that very weekend.
In case you doubt the universal interest in Garland’s death, here’s the beginning of Bernard Weinraub’s New York Times coverage of the event:
“They arrived before dawn at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home and stood for hours behind police barricades -- thousands of elderly women, weeping young men, teen-aged girls, housewives, nuns, priests, beggars, cripples and hippies.”
Oh, handsome New York mayor John Lindsay was invited, as were Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall, Sammy Davis Jr., Bobby Short and Sid Caesar, to Friday’s private service. More than 20,000 stricken visitors viewed the almost Munchkin-size star in her glass-topped coffin lined in blue or yellow, depending upon which news report you believe. So at 1:40 a.m. Saturday, when corrupt, arrogant, demeaning police raided the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street -- virtually the only bar in New York where, in the shadows, a vetted clientele could hold each other and dance -- and drag queens and bull dykes and homeless teens and big, strong gay guys from the bar and then the neighborhood exploded, it must have been because their Judy had just been put to rest.
But it’s not true. No serious Stonewall account confirms or even suggests that Judy was the reason. A drag participant, Sylvia (Ray) Rivera, did say in an interview that though the Garland funeral saddened and surprised her, she went out that night to party anyway. Gay Liberation Front founder Bob Kohler -- who died in 2007 at age 81 -- knew many of those who took part in the weekend riots, and he angrily dismissed the Garland hypothesis:
"The street kids faced death every day. They had nothing to lose. And they couldn't have cared less about Judy. We're talking about kids who were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Judy Garland was the middle-aged darling of the middle-class gays. I get upset about this because it trivializes the whole thing."Yet some part of liberation imagination seems credible, wishing to believe that Judy Garland’s genius also cried out for the justice that love requires. Yes, Garland was responsible for Stonewall, the way flowers are responsible for spring.
-- from The Question of Equality: Lesbian and Gay Politics in America Since Stonewall, Scribner, 1995
Of course, her life was a mess. Like opera counterpart Maria Callas, young Garland was an ugly-duckling diva left in the lurch by family and men. Employer MGM (and before that, maybe her mom) hooked her on drugs. Later, she was a time-bomb on the set -- when she managed to show up.
But there’s no reward in looking for the cause-and-effect of talent. The “thing” that made Garland a cultural hypnotist was independent of her age, her training, her experience. You simply can’t believe or understand the intensity with which this 14-year-old faces the camera and leaps into her own musical frame (in the 1936 vocal “duel” with warbling Deanna Durbin called Every Sunday. She matches and then trumps manic Mickey Rooney in every juvenile pairing, always inhabiting some grownup emotional world -- a world like ours! -- that has nothing to do with either her real or fictional situation.
All her life she thrived in that place between acting and performing solely as “Judy herself.” The best example of this isn’t Garland’s expert work in her first songless role as a new war bride in The Clock. Rather, it’s when she dives into one of many songs she’s famous for, the camera tight on her creamy face as older sister Esther tries to comfort distraught Tootie, a scene-stealing Margaret O’Brien. It’s in 1944’s Meet Me in St. Louis, and you know the words:
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas/ Let your heart be light/ Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.”
As it happened, Garland, costar Tom Drake and director and husband-to-be Vincente Minnelli had objected to the original lyrics, which they thought would not go down well with the boys overseas or their families back home:
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas/ It may be your last/ Next year we may all be living in the past.”
Still, when she sang the corrected song at the Hollywood Canteen, Garland brought many homesick soldiers to tears, no doubt in the same puzzling, particularly “Judy” way the scene in the movie evokes tears now. Something far beyond sisterly sentiment is on view.
I never could say exactly what that something is, but I’m convinced it’s close kin to the spirit of the brave and furious queens who taunted New York’s boys in blue with a kicking chorus line, to the tune of “It’s Howdy Doody Time”:"We are the Stonewall girls/ We wear our hair in curls/ We don't wear underwear/ We show our pubic hair.”
They also wore their hearts on their sleeves, whatever those sleeves were attached to. Just like Judy.
Forty long years later, I remain grateful to them all. There’s still plenty of singing, and kicking, left for us to do.
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