Taking Sides: Judy Garland vs Marilyn Monroe

She has her moments, The Pirate (which otherwise isn't very good) and the pre-tragic stuff in Star Is Born come to mind. There's a hilarious clip of her on an old Jack Paar show re-enacting Marlene Dietrich at a party playing a record of one of MD's live performances -- consisting entirely of applause.

It's too bad they got rid of the Biography clock in Columbus Circle.

The roof of my old building used to stare straight at that Biography clock. It wouldn't even seem like...Columbus Circle, now. I mean, there isn't really much to lose about that area of town now but c'mon. :(

I used to love how it'd interrupt the weather forecast to announce who they were Biography-ing that week. "78 F WITH A CHANCE OF...HANK AZARIA AT 8PM WEDS...SHOWERS"

this one?

OTMest thing ever said, by the way. Probably my new favoriute musical number of all time.

there's no such thing as objective beauty!

(and perhaps i'm being purposefully obtuse in a sense in saying that i don't know what a hwood std of beauty is, but in another sense i'm really not - there's hardly a single mold that "beautiful hollywood stars" fall into these days, and i think that's been true for quite some time)

I don't really find Judy Garland to be personally attractive but I don't really understand the idea that she doesn't meet the general standard, and she's certainly by no means an ugly woman, and I really don't understand perfectly intelligent, well-read, educated people arguing with me on the idea that societal/Hollywood benchmarks of "objective" attractiveness exist, whether or not the individual agrees with them.

Granted Ken L OTM re: retroactive effects of aging badly.

I agree with Allyzay.

If Marilyn is the standard, I don't see how Judy fits it.

I mean for heaven's sake, if this standard didn't exist and wasn't pretty well accepted as a general realm of "acceptable," where on earth do you get off placing yourself in "the minority" on the subject of what is beautiful, and why would supposedly ugly people feel they fell short of--NO!--some arbitrary standard?

I admit that I'm not trying very hard, and am going on 3 hrs sleep, but I don't know what this means.

Dan Callahan marking the dual Judy retro in NY:

http://altscreen.com/07/26/2011/judy-garland-at-film-society-of-lincoln-center-paley-center-thru-aug-9-18/

I'd vote Judy against anybody but I'm watching The Misfits right now and Marilyn's performance is just so good. So good. The loss to film that her early death represents is if anything understated imo.

oh yeah; i think i was either expecting, or started reading her performance as, one of those lazy 'woman descends into madness on account of being a woman' '50s, '60s things (key text: the wrong man), but she really owns it, is electric & on another weird, unsteady orbit from everyone else in it. that film mainly comes back to me because the horse-product change-up metaphor seems really powerful, like 'generationally', but i could totally rescreen for marilyn. probably kinda harrowing to think about how luminous the characters she played were in earlier stuff like all about eve, & why that all changed.

so did any Londoners see the Declining Judy musical? coming to NY.

http://www.endoftherainbowbroadway.com/

I stayed near where they're doing that a few weeks back and was so excited by the marquee that I went inside the theatre to see if maybe they were in rehearsals. too early in the day, but they were setting up, I felt a sort of kid-hanging-around-after-the-circus thrill. I'm in town for my own rehearsals next week, may try to take in a preview

We saw "Don't Bother To Knock" tonight. Would anyone like to explain that movie to me?

― adaml (adaml), Sunday, October 19, 2003 3:06 AM (9 years ago)

My feeling exactly. They wanted Marilyn Monroe in a movie, which required that they make a movie. After that, I'm lost.

I did end up seeing End of the Rainbow in NY, by the way. Amazing performance by the lead, which sort of seemed the point of the whole thing - how much it takes out of a person to be Judy Garland, even just for a few hours. It did a good job of conveying how important her work was to her: not just as career, not just as self-validation, but as something with which she was deeply in love, something to which she was genuinely devoted.

she'd be 91 today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z7C_TWXdGY

Showed my class half of "Over the Rainbow" and all of "The Man That Got Away" this morning.

good job. <3

on the "Man That Got Away" long take

In a way, the entire balance of the movie’s 3-hour running time is consumed by finding the words to describe what Judy Garland’s got.

http://10oclockdot.tumblr.com/post/145660558378/regimes-of-time-great-long-takes-ep-20-the-man

Hollywood knew exactly what to do with MM's talents and she had a place waiting for her in the showcase that she filled to perfection.

After JG outgrew her "oh gosh, oh gee" juvenile roles opposite Mickey Rooney, Hollywood never figured out how to use JG's talents to good purpose. It's not that she wasn't massively talented so much as she didn't fit well into any of the obvious slots and they tossed her aside.

well her well-chronicled problems/unreliability on-set didn't help.

I thought JG was quite good in the early (Hollywood-produced) Cassavetes film A Child Is Waiting (1963). Have no idea about what was going on behind the scenes though. It lost money, so there's that.

Renee Zellweger in a film about JG's 1968 London concerts

http://deadline.com/2018/02/finn-wittrock-jessie-buckley-cast-jud-garland-movie-renee-zellweger-1202287119/

I'm not sure we need movies about her, especially the final years...

FFS, is there any way to kill this genre of starlet biogs? (See also, or rather DO NOT SEE Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool.) Is this honestly the only way to get female-fronted films made these days?

are any of them making money?

(i don't think 46-yo end-of-the-road Judy was a starlet tho... these suffering-female-star bio-mellers have been around since at least the '30s)

For those who think that Marilyn Monroe couldn't act, just realize that she created the "Marilyn Monroe" persona, which seem to have become one of the most enduring characters ever to come out of Hollywood. It's not a deep or nuanced character, but it is primal, something more than just a sexpot, and it belongs to her above anyone else.

Garland, otoh, was a far more impressive and versatile talent and she would win in a walk in the 'who'd you want to share a beer with' voting.