Taking Sides: Judy Garland vs Marilyn Monroe

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.

Douglas Sirk told the story of his visiting an estate sale of an German expat intellectual in L.A. He was wandering around the man's library, and a lovely, shy-seeming young woman came up to him carrying an obscure book by Brecht. "Hi," she asked him, "what do you know about this book--is it any good?" It was Marilyn Monroe.

I'm not sure what Justyn means by "Blindingly impressive skills-in-themselves tend to leave me cold." All I had meant was that Judy was a very gifted singer by any standard. I don't see how one could disapprove of that.

personality wise jg wins.

who was it that said mm had a brain like swiss cheese and breasts like granite.

weren't they friends in reality, i remember somethin about mm talkin to liza minnelli in her bedroom=jg felt sorry for mm when she died

Hahaha.

too much emphasis on mutable signs leads to neurosis, even though mutability does promote sensitivity. duality, two-faced women, never still, intellectual aspirations, similarly entombed by iconicity (sex/symbol:: adolescent optimist-girl), forever unhappy with the one twin that was projected, since the other was ignored. i think marilyn was even more empty, since at least judy experienced motherhood and it changes a woman. judy was the better singer, but marilyn was splendiferous in most of what she did, so i'd pick her

gemini women never fully grow up, and inside they remain little girls, even though a part of them always wants to

and a part of them doesn't

uh...have you ever seen Marilyn get TOSSED (and i mean tossed)by Richard Widmark in Don't Bother to Know after the cat fight?

which is a hell of a lot more physical than that slap Judy got!

i love both, but Judy was a singer, Marilyn never was a 'singer' she never wanted to be, that was never her goal(although she was a good singer, if you don't think so listen to 'Ev'y Baby Needs a Da-Da-Daddy' then listen to 'After you get what you want you don't want it') it was part of the training, she wanted to act, which she did very well....

I agree with you though, Judy was a singer foremost but her great gift was her acting in the songs, she didn't just sing the notes she put across the words which made her a better actress than Monroe.

classic

I just saw "A Star Is Born" for the first time last night, and though Garland has never meant anything to me, I am finding myself totally captivated by the icon that she is. I can't really put my finger on it...

Kind of like how Mary J. Blige always seems to be physically under the burden of a heavy, heavy sadness -- Judy is like that, too.

http://204.50.24.183/bewitched/asherinterv/judy.jpg
http://www.cinematical.com/images/2005/06/JudyGarlandPhoto.jpg
http://www.nobby.de/images/movies/star/cjudy.jpg

And yeah, I agree about Judy trying too hard and vote for Marilyn.

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"

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.