Renée Zellweger turns in an Academy Award-winning performance as troubled entertainer Judy Garland, who arrived in London in 1968 for a series of headline shows.

Director: Rupert Goold

Screenwriter: Tom Edge

Based on: The stage-play End of the Rainbow by Peter Quilter

Synopsis:

1968. Singing sensation Judy Garland is in a tailspin. In her mid-40s, she is homeless and reduced to touting her young children around, earning a few dollars from her live shows and staying in hotels she can’t afford. She has a drinking problem and is coping with an addiction to medication that was forced on her while she was a child star at MGM under draconian studio head Louis B Mayer.

Judy gets the opportunity to earn real money by doing a series of headline shows at the Talk of the Town nightclub in London, where she is still treated as Hollywood royalty. While reluctant to leave her children behind, Judy believes the engagement could give her enough money to buy a house and finally enjoy the family life she craves. Before leaving for London, she meets a young businessman, Mickey Deans, at a party.

Judy becomes the toast of the town in London with her sold-out performances. Mickey arrives and marries Judy after a whirlwind romance.

However, Judy struggles with her addiction, while also battling her ex-husband, Sid Luft, over custody of their children, who have settled with their father and don’t want to leave. Mickey’s promised business deal, which is supposed to give Judy the chance to return to the US and pay off her debts, falls through and the marriage quickly falls apart.

Judy’s troubles begin to affect her performances on stage, and she becomes a laughingstock. She breaks her contract and plans to return home.

Before leaving London, she takes to the stage one last time and is a big hit. Breaking down while trying to get through her classic ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, the crowd steps in for an impromptu singalong, letting Judy know how much she’s still loved by the audience that she adores.

Analysis:

The story of Judy Garland’s life is certainly bittersweet. While she was – and remains – loved by millions around the world, her experiences away from the spotlight were far from a Hollywood fairytale. From a troubled early childhood as Frances Gumm, to her years as MGM’s sweetheart, which deprived her of a normal adolescence and embedded problems that would plague her to her death, Judy Garland lived a life of much sadness, loneliness and addiction. She was also a born star, who dazzled audiences on stage and screen, as an actor and singer. She craved the audience’s adoration and they duly obliged. Judy gives us a whistlestop tour of it all, as encapsulated in a few months in London towards the end of her short life.

The set-up quickly lets us know that, when we meet her in 1968, she’s in financial dire straits, scraping a meagre living and self-medicating to the point where no one wants to work with her due to her unreliability. We also learn that she’s a devoted mother to her young children, Lorna and Joey Luft (by this time, Liza Minnelli is grown and successful in her own stage career), who yearns to give them a stability that she simply cannot provide, either practically or emotionally. The Talk of the Town shows promise to be her saving grace. But, even in London, Judy can’t escape the dark clouds.

She also can’t escape the button-down characters who serve to turn proceedings a little grey and overcast. From the flinty PA assigned to keep Judy on the straight and narrow to the (fictitious) bickering gay couple who are devoted fans and can’t believe their luck when she comes round to their flat for an omelette, there is a certain forced Britishness about the film that makes parts of it stereotypical and flat. The arrival of unlikely suiter Mickey does liven things up, but unfortunately, the marriage is over so quickly, it’s never made entirely clear whether he really had feelings for her or simply saw her as a business opportunity (the film takes some liberties, husband-wise, as in real life, Judy didn’t marry Mickey until after her London engagement ended).

That’s not to say there isn’t plenty to enjoy. Zellweger morphs into Judy, giving her stage scenes her all (Zellweger does her own singing – a second career beckons) and showing immense vulnerability. There are moments when you can see inside her soul, which is a powerful thing. Her loneliness is palpable, yet there remains a flicker of hope that she will, once day, enjoy a soft landing. Knowing that would never happen adds extra pathos to the story. While it takes around 40 minutes before we get to see Judy perform, the musical sequences are lively and colourful, with some wonderful musical arrangements.

Also strong are the scenes with Darci Shaw, as a young Judy forced to grow up on the set of films including The Wizard of Oz (1939); forced to swallow pills so she wouldn’t be tempted to eat real food; more pills to sleep and to stay awake for gruelling filming and rehearsal sessions; forced to remain an innocent young girl next door, even when she was becoming a woman; rebuffed by her co-star and first love, Mickey Rooney; treated like a commodity by Mayer and his minions. It’s horrible to watch and it gives us the chance to see just why grown-up Judy made the destructive and desperate choices she did, and just why she craved a stable family life so much.

However, overall, the trouble with Judy is that it doesn’t really show us anything new. A once-imperious career on the wane; a mind addled from years of alcohol and prescription drug abuse; a collection of husbands on whom she became dependent (and several of whom screwed her over); a stage presence and a star quality that never quit, even when her world was falling apart. Judy gives us a glimpse of all of this over its two-hour running time. But you come away with a bit of a shoulder shrug, thinking “okay, and…”.

It’s a story we’ve seen before and have seen repeated over the years with other stars who hit the big time then struggle to conquer their demons. As such, while Judy gives us all the star quality of its titular star, the film falls short of A-list.

A few comments on the adaptation

In discussing the adaptation of his Broadway and West End play, End of the Rainbow, Quilter noted how screenwriter Edge eliminated some of the fantasy elements of the stage show in order to formulate a story that was “much more true and precise”. Indeed, while Judy credits Rainbow as its source material, much of the background came from tapes of Judy herself speaking. As Edge told Vanity Fair: “She was commissioned to write her biography and kind of endlessly missed the deadline, so they ended up bringing her a tape recorder.” The resulting tapes revealed Judy’s “deep-seated anger” at her treatment over the decades. This gave Edge plenty of first-hand source material with which to work. Quilter also discussed how the team agreed the film should be “less theatrical”. It’s relatively rare to find a fact-based film based on a play, so it is a useful example of how to deal with different demands of stage and screen. Interestingly, Quilter called the film a “companion piece” to the play, which is a helpful way to think of any screen adaptation.

While Edge took the story into a more fact-based realm, it is worth noting that changes were made. As noted above, in order to fit in the Mickey Deans sublot, it was necessary to alter the real-life timeline of his relationship with Judy, introducing it early and bringing it to a head in London. The use of the gay characters, too, while fictionalised, serves to recognise her gay fanbase and her support of the community throughout her career, when members of that community faced persecution and even jail. This serves to bring the story up-to-date and offers a parallel between Judy’s struggles and the struggles of the LGBT community.

Go further:

If you like Judy, you might also like:

Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001): Judy Davis stars in this comprehensive two-part TV biopic that tells of Judy Garland’s life, from the 1930s to her death in 1969.

Stan & Ollie (2018): Beloved comedy duo Laurel and Hardy find their partnership tested, in what would turn out to be their swansong tour of the UK.

Behind the Candelabra (2013): Michael Douglas stars as flamboyant pianist Liberace in this tale of his tumultuous relationship with his younger lover, played by Matt Damon.

Take a look at the trailer for Judy: