My Judy Garland Life, by Susie Boyt
The story of Judy Garland is a magnificent example of the truth that life imitates art. Things would surely have been different had she stuck to being Frances Ethel Gumm of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. As it was, the trajectory of her life under the stage name she assumed at the age of 12, as part of a travelling vaudeville act, had a blighted glamour more appropriate to verismo opera than to the cinema screen. Complete with an abusive father and drunken mother, five marriages, abortion and attempted suicide, the entire scenario transcended the wildest aspirations of melodrama. The irony of a drug overdose carrying off The Wizard of Oz’s cute little Dorothy, mascot of can-do America, offered a final ghastly flourish to the story.
Death brought Garland a more dependable and continuous acclaim than she had enjoyed as a living celebrity. Her self-destructive loneliness had already gained her a large following among homosexuals, who elevated her posthumously to gay-icon status. Other fans, such as Susie Boyt, who was just five months old when Judy died, embarked on a lifelong intimacy with the star, relying on her capacity to inspire as muse, patroness or alter ego, and defining existence by their empathy with her splendours and miseries.
My Judy Garland Life chronicles this kind of bizarre but wholly authentic-seeming relationship. Boyt is at pains to establish herself as being emphatically unlike Judy in almost every way. That her father is Lucian Freud seems to have prompted a reactive craving for ordinariness. She is fond of washing up, once worked in a shop, tried to please her teachers, won deportment badges at school and is evidently (without making too much of a fuss about it) an excellent wife and mother.
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