JUDY GARLAND "World's Greatest Entertainer"

Hi Greer,

It went great and was very well received. We will be taping next week and will try to get it edited quickly and a copy to you along with a copy of the program.

Thanks for allowing us to modify your work. We are billing it as a tribute show, not an impersonation show and therefore the audience is forgiving if the actors do not "look" exactly like the true personas. How do you truly duplicate the fabulous originals? The music sells the show. It is amazing to hear the gasps as the audience hears the dialogue on Judy's life. Our Judy is older and amazing. Her voice is comparable as she sings in the same key Judy did. Liza is "jazzed" up for the Cabaret medley and the audience adores her. Frank and Dean are having a blast with the songs and are forgiven for not totally looking the parts. They have favorable mannerisms of the characters. We have a local chair and stool builder/distributor that donated a period bar and built stools to match. Frank and Dean are featured around the bar frequently. I am attaching cast photo's for you to see.

JUDY GARLAND "World's Greatest Entertainer" - tune in the show

These are the signature tunes from Judy, Frank, Liza and Dean in the show. Licensing is available through BESTOFBROADWAYPRODUCTIONS.COM Greer Firestone, Playwright.
JUDY GARLAND “World’s Greatest Entertainer”


ACT I

1Get Happy – Judy
2Zing Went the Strings – Judy
3You Made Me Love You - Judy
4Rock a bye Your Baby – Liza
5You Do Something To Me – Judy & Frank & Dean / Too Marvelous For Words – Frank / Kick In the Head - Dean
6Boy Next Door – Judy & Trolley Song – Judy and Liza
7Where or When – Dean; Lady is a Tramp – Frank; Johnny One Note – Liza & Judy;
8Smile – Judy
9Birth of the Blues - Ensemble

ACT II

1 Friendship – Judy & Frank / Anything You Can Do – Judy & Liza / You’re The Top – Judy & Dean / Together - Ensemble
2 Just in Time – Frank
3 The Man That Got Away - Judy
4 When You’re Smiling - Dean
5 Cabaret Med – Wilkommen, Married, Cabaret
6 It Was A Very Good Year – Judy, Liza, Dean & Frank
7 The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else – Frank & Dean
8 Volare - Dean
9 A Couple of Swells – Judy & Liza
10 Over the Rainbow - Judy

Judy as a Child Star

Hollywood, this “City of Oz” manufactured dreams the way Detroit crafted cars and DuPont synthesized nylon. And yet, Judy, to you, through your travails, Hollywood may have become an evil parody of the land of Oz.
MGM had absolute control over employees. The ‘system’ was something quite different from the ‘glamour’. The system…

Judy: Call it by its right name….indentured servitude. I was personal property with a stamp on my head.

Emcee: Judy, you have talent as substantial as Mt. Rushmore but an ego as fragile as butterfly wings.

Liza: First call was 5AM and Mama was lucky to get home 14 hours later. I never saw her.

Judy: Most of the time we were shooting one movie in the morning and rehearsing for the next one in the afternoon! It was breathtaking in its stress…

Ralph: …tyrannical directors…

Judy: …Busby Berkeley, that bastard! (alt: B-word!)

Liza: …the constant stress of looking like a ‘pin up’.

Judy: (wistfully) I was always too fat. The stage crew guys would always whistle and hoot at Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth. All I got was a “Hi, Judy”. How could I compete with their beauty?

Liza: Mama was given her first amphetamine to ‘pep’ her up - by my grandmother… when she was 9! Do you believe it??

Judy: Mother called them “my vitamins. If someone criticized her, she would quickly put them in their place….. “I’ve got to keep my girl going”.

Emcee: And the irony, Judy, is that throughout your life you did not have to be prodded to perform anymore than you had to be prodded to eat.
In the early 1940’s you, along with Bette Davis, were two of the few stars the studio could take to the bank in the unsettling financial times after the Depression. Your musicals made Leo the Lion purr. In 1943 you starred in a musical set around the World’s Fair in St. Louis, directed by soon-to-be Liza’s dad. In that movie you canonized two songs.