Taking Sides: Judy Garland vs Marilyn Monroe

I think they share a common flaw, as performers: they're both too eager to please. That's self-evident with Garland, all anxious grinning, wide eyes and over-enunciation; but I suppose it's there in Monroe too. What both of them seem to have lacked, on screen - in relation to other actors, but also perhaps, by extension, to the audience - is distance, detachment, the ability to shrug disdainfully and walk away. (Whether this was a Real-Life problem too, I don't know.)

So Garland's delivery bothers me - it's overdone, too many expressions, too much mugging. Monroe's is different. Garland is the trouper, the gal who'll dance and sing all night for the sake of the show, and has the talent somewhere to justify it. Monroe comes over as somewhat *inept* - a limited singer, and a gal who could fall over in an embarrassed heap at any moment. I daresay this is part of the over-eagerness: she thinks everyone else wants her to be that way. But it's demeaning, to her, and thus hard on us.

Perhaps both Garland and Monroe, in their different ways, if only in retrospect, bring us sadness: all the sadder for inhering in these radiant people. (If *they* can't be happy, what chance do the rest of us have?)

Both were beauties, but Monroe was the greatest of beauties, so she wins in my starry eyes.

My answer has everything to do with the question.

Never seen Some Like It Hot, ay?

The 7 Year Itch is a ridiculously funny movie. Sometimes I can't believe it got made back then.

no. in a word.
*unbelievable* and out on DVD this very week.

OK so marilyn was prettier but THAT was her career.

Garland was an amzing singer, the greatest female singer of all time.

Plus Garand is an icon, ever heard the phrase 'friend of dorothy'?

marilyn is known for her pretty face, judy for her sheer talent.END OF STORY

Ally have you seen River of No Return?

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/cyd_charisse-silk_stockings.jpg

(pictures not included)

This is a brilliant typo.

"Oh Andy! Let's put on a show!"
"Why do they call them shows, ANYWAY?"

http://www.thejudyroom.com/youngjudy/1941promo2.jpg

does people want to imitate judy garland, I DON'T THINK SO!!!

In the category of "single most wrong statement ever made by anyone," I believe we have a winner.

P.S. Judy looks like my grandmother so bonus points.

(Martin, you don't like the Wizard of Oz?)

I thought this revival might be to do with Marilyn On Marilyn, or even DT's piece on it the other day.

This is exactly why I prefer Marilyn. Assuming we're talking about everything - voice/looks/personality/et al - and not just vocal talent alone. Blindingly impressive skills-in-themselves tend to leave me cold.

Plus MM was funny which I don't remember Judy ever being much.

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.

And when you see MM before she created that persona, eg Clash by Night, she's still good.

Monroe was at least as good before taking acting lessons as after.

Very funny and natural in Monkey Business for example.

Haven't seen any of the MM-related films the past few years (two or three?), but Blonde caught my interest in part because the director did that acclaimed Jesse James film (never saw it) and a couple of Mindhunter episodes. Turned out to be the most excruciating time--almost three fucking hours, which I didn't know going in--I've spent in a theatre since that last M. Night Shyamalan film. That one was just numbingly bad; Blonde is hateful.

Listen to Judy: The Complete Decca Masters (plus) and my head is kind of exploding, since it is totally swinging.

Not according to Will Friedwald though.