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.