Working with JUDY GARLAND...

In 1955, when the six-week San Francisco run of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera production of Kiss Me Kate ended, I couldn’t wait to get home. Lowell Purvis and I, or Mitzi and Maude as we were affectionately known by other dancers, spoke to each other at least three evenings a week, so I knew Paul Godkin had hired him to dance in a concert tour with Judy Garland, which they had started rehearsing a week earlier. Kate closed on a Sunday and the cast took the train back to L.A. the following day. That evening, shortly after I walked in the door, the phone rang and when I picked it up, I wasn’t surprised to hear Lowell’s voice, "Maude, where the fuck have you been? Never mind. I’ve been calling you for over an hour. Guess what happened at rehearsal? Miss Thing, ya’ know, Judy, didn’t show up again so we had to work without her. Paul showed us a new dance combination and the acrobat queen, ya’ know, Bert May, made some smart-ass remark about the combination and it made Paul furious. Long story short, Paul and Bert had words and Bert picked up his things and stormed out."

Lowell and I had become best friends when we were both hired by Donn Arden to dance at the Moulin Rouge, an enormous nightclub on Sunset Boulevard just east of Vine Street in Hollywood that later became the Aquarius Theater. All of our shows were at night so the dancers were free to take television and movie jobs in the daytime. Lowell and I met Paul when he hired us to dance on Shower of Stars, a television special starring Betty Grable.

From the moment Paul saw Lowell and me at the audition he nicknamed us the Gold Dust Twins. Although we were both six feet tall and blond, that’s where the similarities ended. While I was, in all modesty, considered cute, Lowell was far prettier than a 22-year-old young man should be. He had huge, luminescent blue eyes, above which were long lavish eyelashes, and beautifully arched eyebrows. Lowell was also everything I was not: exceedingly aggressive, overly self-confident, and absolutely impossible to embarrass. And when it came to flirting with men, be they gay or straight, he had no shame.

The first day of rehearsal for the TV show, we were talking to some of the other guys who had worked for Paul previously. One of them bragged that he had an affairette with Paul on the last job and told us that Paul was extremely well hung. (I wonder if that should be hyphenated.) Lowell’s ears perked up at that bit of information, and I thought, That’s all Lowell needs to know, here we go again, the chase is on. Sure enough, before the week was over Lowell and Paul were doing it.

"Anyway," Lowell continued, "the good news is Paul told me to ask you if you want to replace Bert. If you do, and why in the world wouldn’t you want to because who in their right mind would turn down a chance to work with Judy Garland, even though she’s as big as a two-car garage and temperamental as hell, you can start tonight. You will, won’t you? You and I can be roommates on the road. Think of all the fun we’ll have, not to mention all the young men we can drag back to our hotel rooms."

"What do you mean tonight?" I asked.

"Judy doesn’t work in the daytime so all the rehearsals are scheduled from 10:00 at night to 3:00 in the morning. I can’t believe I didn’t tell you that. Honest to God, half the time, I don’t think you listen to me."
"Well, Miss Motor-mouth, that is something I would have definitely remembered because it’s so weird," I said. "You know I don’t like the idea of replacing Bert. Everyone knows he’s one of her favorites. What if Judy forces Paul to rehire Bert? Will I be thrown out?"

"Don’t worry. That’ll never happen."

"Well, if you’re sure, call Paul and tell him I’ll do it."

"I don’t have to call him, silly. He’s lying right here."
Why was I not surprised to hear that?
"See ya’ tonight at Nico Charisse’s studio on La Cienega, Paul says, ‘Don’t be late.’"
We were running the opening number when Judy walked in about 11:30. Lowell was right; she was anything but the petite Judy Garland I had seen in movies. Lowell had repeatedly told me how huge she was but I didn’t really believe him because when it came to size he was always prone to exaggeration. It wasn’t long before Judy noticed the new face in the crowd. Mine. She quickly scanned the room looking at the faces of all the other guys. Then like a bullet she snapped her head in Paul’s direction, planted her hands on her hips, and snarled, "Who’s that blond boy and where is Bert?"

Oh-oh! I am in deep shit! Very deep, gooey shit! I thought.

"Take five," Paul said to us, as he took Judy by the arm and walked her over to a corner of the room where the two of them had a powwow. The guys were all betting that Judy would demand that Bert be rehired. They were right. The next night Bert was back. Fortunately, there was another guy in the group Paul wasn’t happy with so instead of firing me, he kept his word and let the other guy go.

It was unusually hot for June and there was either no air-conditioning in the studio or Judy had had it turned off, I’m not sure which. As I remember it, night after night her rehearsal outfits never varied: black low-heel shoes, black pants, and a loose fitting long sleeved full-bodied shirt that buttoned down the front. She always had the sleeves rolled up almost to the elbow, similar to one of the outfits she wore in the film A Star Is Born. And she always wore something underneath the shirt that was also quite loose; kind of like a short-sleeved T-shirt. Judy would get up to dance, start to perspire, take off the over-shirt, and toss it over a chair. The T-shirt, however, was more revealing and made her look even heavier. When she saw herself in the mirror she immediately put the over shirt back on. On and off. On and off. The way she kept changing shirts night after night was really sad. After fighting weight most of her life, she must have been so uncomfortable being that heavy, not to mention the mental damage it must have done.

I read somewhere much later that Judy liked vodka and grapefruit juice but I recall the tumbler she constantly drank from being filled with something darkish, more like scotch or bourbon mixed with soda or water. She never took big swigs of it but she sipped from that tumbler throughout the evening. The odd thing about the tumbler was that it never really mattered how much she drank, it always stayed full! It was like some trick glass that either magically refilled itself or was refilled by some invisible hand. She never seemed to get drunk or even tipsy, so her tumbler was always a mystery to me.

One night, shortly after Judy arrived, Paul said he wasn’t feeling well and left. Rather than send us home, she surprised and delighted us by saying that she was going to take us all out to dinner. We walked down La Cienega Boulevard, as a group, finally ending up in an Italian restaurant. Nobody was able to get a word in edgewise that evening and we didn’t mind a bit. Judy was really on. She talked and talked and talked, telling us one hilarious story after another.

The one we loved best was about the night of the Academy Awards, a few months earlier, when she was nominated as Best Actress for A Star Is Born; she had us all in stitches.
(I’ve read different versions of this story in more than one of her many biographies and I wouldn’t be surprised if she altered and/or embellished it to fit her mood as well as her audience. This is the story as I recall it.)

The Oscar ceremony was held at the Pantages Theater on March 30, 1955. As she told the story to us that night, she was in Cedars Sinai Hospital, having just given birth to Joey, her third child, the day before. Obviously she couldn’t attend the ceremony but because she was the odds-on favorite to win – the Associated Press declared that she was "virtually a lead-pipe cinch" – NBC brought the award ceremony to her.

The crew arrived at dawn to prepare for the live television show. They built scaffolding outside of the hospital which included a platform right outside her third floor window where the cameras would be. The plan was to open on a shot of the closed blinds. Then the moment they announced her name as the winner, the blinds were to fly upward and the camera would zoom in for a close-up of Judy in her hospital bed where she was to make her acceptance speech.

She said the entire day was chaos. Inside her room, the lighting and sound technicians set up all their equipment, the wardrobe people brought in a trunk load of gorgeous nightgowns and negligees from which she could choose, the make-up and hair people fussed over her, set-decorators brought in all kinds of exotic plants and floral arrangements, everyone making sure everything was absolutely perfect. Her captive audience hung on every word.

A huge TV set was rolled into her room on a dolly so she could watch the show and the sound system was such that she could hear the director speaking to her and the crew throughout the day during rehearsals. The live show finally started and as it got closer to the moment when the announcement would be made for the Best Actress, the director instructed the crew to get out of sight so that it would appear that Judy was alone in the room.

The set decorator fluffed up all the pillows and adjusted the bedspread while the make-up lady gave her a final check and they both ducked under Judy’s bed at the last moment. Judy grabbed the mirror from under the sheet, took a last look at herself, and quickly replaced the mirror out of sight. The person who was to open the blinds the moment her name was announced stood ready, and there she sat with a smile on her face awaiting the big moment.

She watched as the nominees were announced, "...Audrey Hepburn for Sabrina, Judy Garland for A Star Is Born, Jane Wyman in Magnificent Obsession, Grace Kelly in A Country Girl, and Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones."
She said to us, "Boys, I was just sitting there thinking, ‘Ready when you are C.B.’""... and the winner is... "Grace Kelly."

"DON’T TOUCH THOSE FUCKING BLINDS!" she said she screamed, and we all roared.
"When they didn’t call my name, everybody looked at me like it was my fault I didn’t win. It was like they had gone through all this crap for nothing. The set decorator and the make-up lady crawled out from under the bed. She held out her hand without saying a word so I reached under the sheet for the mirror and put it in her hand. The set decorator queen curled his lip at me and started removing all the fuckin’ flowers. He even removed some bouquets that had been sent to me by, ya’ know, personal friends. They unplugged the television set and rolled it out of the room. I couldn’t even watch the rest of the show. The worst part of it was they all made me feel guilty. I even looked guilty. I could feel it on my face. Nobody even said, ‘Ga’bye.’ They just left me sitting there. All by myself!"

I read that she was, in fact, "devastated" when she didn’t win which is, of course, understandable. "Another slap in the face," someone quoted her as saying. Supposedly even Grace Kelly’s father was so embarrassed his daughter won instead of Judy he said, "There should have been two awards and Judy Garland should have had one of them." It was one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. Yet there she was, a few months later, turning her loss into an hysterical story.

In 2006 I saw Liza when she was a guest on Inside the Actor’s Studio television show. She said that when she, Lorna and Joey were growing up, Judy infused every tragedy – and there were many – with humor. She said Judy would rewrite the stories so that they were funny, not tragic, and consequently the kids didn’t remember the truth, they only remembered the stories the way she had rewritten them. After that night with Judy I knew precisely what Liza meant.
　
I had forgotten the exact dates I worked with Judy. Even though I never expected to find any information about the short 10-night tour, I went online, typed in "Judy Garland, Long Beach, California" and clicked "search." Imagine my surprise when the complete tour schedule popped up on the screen. I thought, How great! But wait, it says there were two tryout performances in San Diego on July 8^th and 9^th before the official opening in Long Beach on the 11^th. That can’t be true! How can I possibly have no recollection whatsoever of playing San Diego, which is particularly odd because that’s where I’ve lived for the last many years. This information has to be wrong. We opened in Long Beach. I remember that night vividly.
I sent an e-mail to Steve Jarrett, the proprietor of the site, advising him that there was a "possible Garland error," never thinking I’d get a reply. The next day I received a nice answer from Steve telling me that he had forwarded my letter to John Fricke, "the absolute World Authority on all things Judy and a really great guy."

A couple of days later John sent me an e-mail saying that he was absolutely positive we did two tryout performances in San Diego. I mean, who am I to question someone who has a reputation of being the "World Authority on all things Judy?"

That afternoon I went downtown to the main library and sure enough, there it was. I found the newspaper ads that read, "IN PERSON, AMERICA’S No. 1 ENTERTAINER, JUDY GARLAND, with a Star-Studded cast of 40," which included the Wiere Bros., the Hi-Los, Frank Fontaine and Jerry Gray and a 20-piece orchestra. The ticket prices ranged from $2.00 to $5.50 including tax. With concert prices being what they are today, it is unbelievable that anyone could have seen Judy Garland live and in person for only two bucks? I also found two reviews of the show, one in the morning paper and one in the evening paper, neither of which were actually that good. I mean, they were okay but I expected "WOW!"
In the meantime I found out that John is really a big deal, having written an incredible book: Judy Garland, World’s Greatest Entertainer. I e-mailed John telling him what I had found at the library. He responded that he had an audiotape of opening night in Long Beach and said that he’d be happy to send me a copy. I mean, this can’t be real! That performance happened over fifty years ago!
A week later, the package from John arrived.  I excitedly read his note telling me that he had not only sent me the audiotape, he had included a videocassette of a one-minute black and white newsreel clip, without sound. I listened to the first fifteen minutes of the audiotape.  I was disappointed the opening number the guys performed isn’t on the tape but listening to Judy singing live on that unforgettable night was electrifying.

Then I put on the videocassette. It shows the throngs waiting outside the auditorium for the arrival of the busses that Frank Sinatra brought down filled with stars. There are shots of Van Johnson, Debbie Reynolds, and Eddie Fisher getting off the bus. Then it jumps inside the auditorium for a three or four second clip of Judy on stage with three of the dancers, the only one who is truly recognizable is the blond guy right in front next to Judy. Holy shit! That’s me!!! I couldn’t believe I was lucky enough to actually be on the tape, much less recognizable. I have racked my brain trying to come up with some recollection of those two performances in San Diego without success. The irony is, had I remembered them, I would never have received the tapes from John.
　
The eleven guys in Judy’s act, one for each letter in her name, opened the show making our entrance from the back of the auditorium. Dressed in white pants, white shoes and socks, red, white and blue blazers, and straw hats with hat bands that matched our jackets, we came down two side aisles, each of us carrying a long wooden pole, on top of which was a huge placard with one of the letters of Judy’s name on it. On one side of my placard was a huge red "Y" with a blue "Y" on the other side. During the number we twisted our poles as we alternated spelling out a red word, then a blue word. Both sides of the placards were covered with sparkles and spangles, which glittered under the lights.

We could barely contain ourselves knowing that Frank Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Dean
Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., June Allyson, Dick Powell, Van, Debbie, Eddie, and all the others were sitting on the first two rows.

When we reached the stage, we spelled out anagrams with our signs as we sang:

She’s GAY, she’s GAUDY,
she’s a hell of a GAL that’s a hell of a GUY.
She’s GRAND, she’s DANDY,
she’s the first of JANUARY, she’s the fourth of JULY.
She’s ANGULAR, she’s the LAUNDRY,
she’s a LADY, a JAR, a GNU.
This is all bass-ackwards but wait’ll you spell it backwards.
You’ll get the fabulous, glorious, glamorous,
(red) JUDY GARLAND, (blue) JUDY GARLAND, (red) JUDY, (blue) JUDY,


(red) JUDY, (blue) JUDY GARLAAAAAAND.While we held that last note, we shook out poles slowly raising them as high as we could and shaking them.  

At some point during the song I was near the right side of the stage where Judy was waiting to make her entrance and I heard someone screaming at the top of her lungs, "LOUDER, LOUDER, LOUDER!!!" I glanced in the wings and saw that it was Judy, hands cupped up to her mouth, shrieking at us.

The moment the audience got their first glimpse of Judy, dressed in a costume quite similar to something she might have worn in the film Meet Me in St. Louis, they stood up en masse, screaming and applauding. Without waiting for the applause to die down, Judy signaled the orchestra to start and we joined her in a special material song called "This Is a Party." At the end of the number, the guys split leaving her all alone on the stage.

To her adoring fans, she said, "Thank you. Thank you very much. That was the, uh, noisiest and, uh, loudest opening number I, I ever heard and I’m getting too old for that. They told me that I was gonna play some big places but this is ridiculous, I can’t see the end of it. I hope you can see me. I wish I were a little taller, I know I’m wide enough. You think these kind of figures will ever come back?" When the laughter subsided, she continued, "Well, I really did mean it when I, uh, was singing about having a party because I think you’re gonna have fun tonight. When we decided to put this show on, we looked at a lot of acts, I think Sid looked at a lot more than I did, ‘cause I was busy having a baby and not getting an Academy Award."

She opened her first segment with "The Man that Got Away," followed by "Carolina in the Morning," and then she went on to sing all the songs her fans were dying to hear. One of her most incredible talents was her ability to always sing every song like it was the first time she had ever sung it even though, during her lifetime, she surely must have sung many of those songs thousands of times.
　
When I was in high school, I was nuts about Lauren Bacall, who I thought was the sexiest woman in films, and Arlene Dahl, who I thought was the most beautiful woman in the world. I bought all the movie star magazines, cut out every photo and article about them, and put them in two huge scrapbooks, one for each of them. I even sent away for autographed photos of them and was disappointed when I received them to find that they had been mass-produced after the autographs had been written on them. I mean, I thought they would be autographed to me personally. Even so, I pasted a five by seven photo of Lauren – yeah, I know her good friends call her Betty, her real name – in my three-ring binder.

That night I knew there was a good chance I’d get to see Lauren in the flesh and I was hoping I’d be lucky enough to meet her. In the event that happened I planned to give her my scrapbook.
At the end of the show all the stars joined Judy on stage, which was a real treat for the audience, and afterward they all waited in the green room for her to join them. I don’t remember if the guys were actually invited but we all went anyway because we weren’t going to miss an opportunity to see all those movie stars up close.

When I saw Lauren, I took a deep breath, and walked over to her with my big thick scrapbook in hand. My voice shook as I said, "I’ve been a big fan of yours since I was in high school and I thought you might like to have this scrapbook I’ve kept of you." She looked at me rather expressionless and said, "Maybe you oughta keep it," and turned away. That’s all she said. She didn’t look in the scrapbook. She didn’t even touch it. The fact that I had saved all those articles and pictures of her meant absolutely nothing.

I was embarrassed and felt like a fool. I thought, How could I have been so naive to think Lauren Bacall would actually want my scrapbook? A scrapbook? That’s a good name for it because that’s exactly what it is. It’s nothing but scrap. I walked over to a large trash can and tossed the scrapbook in it.
I watched the 1996 Oscar telecast when Lauren, at the age of 72, was supposedly a shoo-in to win the best supporting actress award for her performance as Barbra Streisand’s mother in The Mirror Has Two Faces. When she unexpectedly lost to Juliet Binoche, there was a close-up of her sitting on the front row with egg on her face. I wanted to be happy she didn’t win but the disappointment must have been so heart wrenching for her, I just couldn’t be. It was her first nomination and would probably be her last.
　
Our next stop on the tour was Eugene, Oregon where, after our performance, we were greeted by a huge crowd inside the hotel. Judy was on one side of the lobby signing autographs and as usual, Bert, the guy I had originally replaced, was by her side. All of the other guys did a disappearing act and I found myself standing on the opposite side of the lobby surrounded by a group of young girls asking for my autograph. As I signed their programs I glanced over at Judy and was surprised to see her looking at me with a strange expression of disapproval on her face. I thought, Hey, these young girls think I’m cute and what the hell, nobody told us we weren’t supposed to sign autographs.
I was one of several guys who had an insignificant little solo, maybe six or eight bars long, in one of the numbers. Before the show the next night, the stage manager called the dancers on stage, announced that my solo was cut, and dismissed us. The rest of the guys just looked at me while I stood there with my mouth open because it made no sense whatsoever. As the stage manager was walking away I said, "Wait a minute, what’s going on, why was my solo cut when nothing else in the show was changed?" He replied sheepishly, "I just do what I’m told."

Walking back to the dressing room with Lowell, I said, "I don’t get it! That’s really embarrassing! What just happened?

Lowell replied, "You said Judy saw you signing autographs last night in the lobby. Maybe she didn’t like it. Maybe cutting your solo is her revenge. Maybe she was jealous."

"Judy Garland jealous of me, for God’s sake, that’s ridiculous!"

"That’s the only thing I can figure out, sweetheart." Lowell said.

"She’s offstage during that number changing costumes. How could she have even known that I had a solo?

That bitch! I can’t believe a star of her magnitude would stoop to something so fucking petty!"

"She’s not a well woman," Lowell reasoned, "everybody knows it."

"You can say that again!"

Even though the situation with Judy made me uncomfortable, Lowell and I had a terrific time on the tour.

Every night after the show the two of us would get in a taxi and Lowell would say to the driver, "Take us to the biggest and best homosexual bar in the city." I felt like crawling under the seat. I mean, people just didn’t say things like that in 1955. But it was no big deal to the taxi-drivers; without hesitation, they always knew exactly where to take us.

Each of these bars in the various cities was, of course, packed with guys who had just seen the concert. And inasmuch as it has always been fairly safe to assume, where there are chorus boys there are fairies, all of the guys in these bars anxiously awaited our arrival. Each one of them wanted to see if their favorite fellow would show up. Of course, some were disappointed, because there actually were a couple of straight guys in the show.

Lowell always insisted that we get to the bars first because that way we’d get the most attention. We were always greeted with a round of applause as we walked through the door and mobbed with everyone wanting to buy us drinks. And they always wanted to know what Judy was really like, a subject I tried to avoid, because I never liked using the "c" word, except, of course, when Lowell deserved it. As he often did.

As each evening grew to a close, it was always the same. Every guy in the place wanted to be seen walking out of the bar with one of us. It was like being in a candy store and sometimes it was really tough deciding which piece of candy I wanted. Occasionally Lowell made an absolute pig of himself and selected more than one. In the mornings when we arrived at the train or plane or bus it was fun to see which ones of us were accompanied by a friend from the previous evening.

Our second performance in Seattle was cancelled. We were told that Judy was ill but the scuttlebutt was that she was disappointed by the ticket sales and refused to appear. The local critics raked her over the coals so badly, she supposedly flew them all up to Vancouver for the next performance. That may or may not have been true, but even I had to admit that her performance that night was electrifying and by far her best performance of the tour.

On closing night in Spokane, there was a party and Judy surprised us all by showing up. Some of the dancers Lowell and I had partied with on other shows, knew that we often performed a couple of campy dance routines: "Red Rose Rag" performed by Betty Grable on the Shower of Stars we did with her, and "Sisters" recorded by Rosemary and Betty Clooney. After we all had more than enough to drink, the crowd begged us to perform. After Judy had my solo cut, I did my best to steer clear of her but inasmuch as we had just done our final performance, I figured I had nothing to lose. After the center of the room was cleared, one of the guys introduced, "Mitzi and Maude." It was always fun performing for other entertainers, particularly when everyone was a bit high. After we finished our second number, we all realized Judy was no longer in the room.

From the very beginning of the job, Sid Luft had told us that the 10-day tour would be followed by a longer tour later in the year. That was one call I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for and as most of us expected, the tour never happened.
　
The next time I saw Judy was in 1963 when we were both working at CBS Television City. I was dancing on the Red Skelton Hour when she arrived to star in her first and only TV series. The first time I watched a dress rehearsal of her show, I saw that the woman I worked with no longer existed. In her place was a gaunt, anorexic woman, and although she could still sing and dance, her cheeks were so sharp and her body movements so angular, she looked like a steak-knife dressed in one designer frock after another. I couldn’t imagine how she managed such a dramatic transition.

We passed each other in the hall a couple of times. She actually smiled at me once and I smiled back. What I wanted to do, however, was stick my tongue out at her. If I could have summoned up the nerve to do it, her reaction would have surely been a Kodak moment.

Even though my experience working with her wasn’t a happy one, I was shocked and even saddened to hear of her death in London on June 22, 1969. It’s rather ironic that Fred Astaire joined her on that very same day in 1987.

In one of her biographies, I read that the coroner said her death was due to an "incautious self-overdosage," and found the circumstances of her death were, "...quite clearly accidental." Even so, because of her many suicide attempts, there will always be speculation. Two years earlier, speaking to the death of Marilyn Monroe, she was quoted as saying, "You take a couple of sleeping pills, and you wake up in twenty minutes and forget you’ve taken them. So you take a couple more, and the next thing you know you’ve taken too many."

It was reported that more than 20,000 people, including 12,000 gay men, one of whom was Lowell, came to view Judy’s body on Friday, June 27 at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home. Lowell said that the outpouring of love moved even him to tears. I’m sure, had I been there, I would have felt the same way. There have been many imitators but she truly was an original.

Judy could not possibly have known, no one could have known, what would take place hours after her funeral. One account remembers it this way: "...gay men fought back against police during a routine raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, which set off the gay liberation movement."
Toby Johnson, on his website, writes, "I think – and I don’t claim to be right, only to have an opinion – what happened is that earlier that day, a great many men from the Village flocked to Judy Garland’s funeral at an upper eastside funeral parlor at Madison Avenue and 81^st. What impressed them – and in the early hours of the next day, mobilized them to resist the police raid on the Stonewall Inn – wasn’t Garland’s divahood (after all, it had been her downfall), but rather the number of other gay men they saw at the event. These were Garland’s fans. There were crowds of homosexuals recognizing each other on the street in front of the funeral parlor." Either way, gay New Yorkers continue to commemorate the Stonewall riots and hold their pride celebrations during the month of June. In other parts of the country, however, some of those celebrations have been moved to other times of the year.
Ironically, of all the songs she introduced and made famous, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is the song people most associate with Judy Garland and it’s the one song that will never be forgotten. Is it just a coincidence that rainbows also became synonymous with the gay movement? In Hillcrest, San Diego’s answer to Greenwich Village in New York and the hub of San Diego’s gay scene, rainbow flags fly all through the year: in front of gay bars and other gay-owned businesses, in front of houses, and on terraces of condos. During San Diego’s Pride celebration, when the parade travels down University Boulevard, Hillcrest’s main thoroughfare, even the lampposts are decorated with posters of rainbows. The vendors who work the parade peddle all kinds of rainbow paraphernalia, and all the spectators who line the route, children and adults alike, do their utmost to grab strands of rainbow beads as they are tossed from floats and other vehicles.

To say that Judy Garland will never be forgotten, is, in my opinion, an understatement. In 2006 alone, almost 40 years after her death, there was an off-Broadway production called The Property Known as Garland starring Adrienne Barbeau, and two new Garland biographies were published: Under the Rainbow by John Carlyle, and Heartbreaker: a memoire of Judy Garland by John Meyer, who wrote "I’m Gonna Hate Myself in the Morning." Inside the book there is even a CD of her singing his song.

Also that year, a young gay singer named Rufus Wainwright, appeared at Carnegie Hall for two sold out performances, in a song-by-song recreation of Judy’s legendary concert there in 1961. He even used her original poster with his image on it instead of Judy’s. The New York Times said of his performance: "... he like Garland, is a natural clown and showman. One of his many amusing anecdotes described his childhood identification with the Wizard of Oz. On good days, he was Dorothy and on bad ones, the Wicked Witch of the West. For those who came to worship, Mr. Wainwright could do no wrong. His courage to stand as a surrogate for every audience member who ever gazed into the mirror and fantasized slipping into Dorothy’s ruby slippers spoke for itself."

Speaking of Dorothy, members of the gay community often ask discreetly, "Are you a friend of Dorothy?" when they choose not to be "out and proud" and want to find out if someone else is gay. Gay historians say that the term came into popular use as far back as the 1950s.

In fact, many cruise companies – those which do not necessarily cater to gay people – now offer "Friend of Dorothy" meetings, which they publish in their daily calender of events, along with all the other special interest groups that meet, as "FOD meetings." That way, gay people traveling on primarily straight cruises can connect with each other and have get-togethers, without identifying their sexuality to the straight passengers, if they so choose.


In 2002 my partner David and I went on an exclusively gay cruise – two thousand gay men and lesbians on one ship. The straight cruises I had taken always had a passenger talent night and I had never considered performing. This time, however, even though I hadn’t been on a stage in more than fifteen years, I thought it might be fun to get up and do something. In the event I mustered up the nerve, I took along a CD of a full orchestration of a song I wrote. Once on the ship, I racked my brain trying to come up with something that would go over well as a lead-in with that particular audience. The moment I thought of Judy, the whole thing came together.

Sure enough, after one of the big production shows, Larry, the Cruise Director, announced that there would be a passenger talent show and that anyone who was interested in performing should meet him there at two o’clock the next afternoon for rehearsal.

The group who showed up was quite eclectic. No one was surprised to see some drag queens there who were going to lip-sync to a hit female recording like Miss Gay Oregon who performed Shania Twain’s "I Feel Like a Woman." And of the other performers assembled, many were quite talented.
After rehearsal we were asked to meet backstage, where a rundown of the show would be posted. Larry instructed us to make our entrance from the wings on stage right when our name was announced. I didn’t want to do that for two reasons: (1) I had not been in front of a large audience like that for a long time and I knew I might get nervous waiting backstage for my turn to perform; (2) I always prefer to do something different, something to stand out. I had noticed a small staircase leading from the audience to center stage. I told Larry what I had in mind and he said it wouldn’t be a problem.

That night we talked and laughed with a lot of the people we had met on the ship until the lights dimmed indicating the show was about to start. None of them, of course, had any idea that I was going to perform which is just the way I wanted it. David and I sat about six rows from the stage.

I dressed very casually in black slacks, with a gray sport jacket over my white opened-collared dress shirt. I sat in the audience completely at ease watching the performers who preceded me which took my mind off the fact that I was going to perform. When I heard my introduction, I stood up, leaned over and kissed David, walked up the stairs, and took the microphone off the stand. I had even prepared a couple of jokes that I actually had nerve enough to tell. I had never done anything like that before and my feeble attempt at being a stand-up comic was greeted with polite laughter.

After the jokes, I said, "I used to be a dancer and I worked with some of the biggest names in show business including Marilyn Monroe, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Ethel Merman. I also had the distinction of working with someone you all know and love... the legendary Judy Garland." The crowd went ballistic!

I talked about opening night in Long Beach, the busses Sinatra brought down filled with stars, what the guys were wearing, and I explained the opening number with the placards and anagrams. I said, "I’m sure I am the only person alive who remembers the words and the music to that number and it goes like this."
I put the microphone back on the stand and sang the opening number a cappella, flipping my hands like we had flipped the placards. In front of an audience of gay men and lesbians how could I miss when the first two words of the song are "She’s gay... " Needless to say they yahooed their enthusiasm and it went over great.

The moment the applause subsided, from out of nowhere, we heard the sound of someone playing – of all things – a bagpipe. Being a fairly quick thinker, particularly when I’m on stage, I looked up in the air to the left and to the right quite puzzled and said, "Judy? Judy? Is that you? Are you here?" Everyone roared! It didn’t make much sense but it worked.

I closed my segment with "I’ll Lavish You With Love," a song I wrote in early December of 1998. I was living in Phoenix at the time and had just broken up with a guy I had dated for several months. The morning after the breakup, I decided to drive to my apartment in San Diego and stay there through the holidays. I had already bought him a Christmas present so I stopped by his place of business and gave it to him.
Once on the freeway, I began thinking about the breakup. I was actually quite proud of myself because I was the one who had ended the relationship, something I had rarely done before. I usually stuck around till Mr. Wrong left me. Within a few short months Mr. Niceguy on the first couple of dates had turned into someone who, after a few drinks, got irritable and angry and said hurtful things to me. I didn’t believe he meant them and he usually apologized for them the next morning, but that wasn’t the kind of relationship I wanted. I was no longer desperate. Even more important, I was finally healthy enough mentally to know that I would rather live alone than live with someone who said they loved me but didn’t show me that they did. About 30 minutes out of Phoenix, I asked myself the question, What do you expect from a relationship?

By the time I arrived in San Diego, I had written my answer:

You tell me that you love me and I believe you do.
Well, if you really love me, here’s all I ask of you:
Pleasure me with kindness, pamper me with "please,"
thoughtful we with "thank yous," and bless me when I sneeze.
Treat me like a lover and love me like a friend.
Show me understanding and our love won’t ever end.
Never say in anger, words we’ll both regret.
Words said out of anger aren’t easy to forget.
Know I’d never hurt you but should you feel I do,
please share with me your feelings, and I’ll warm and tender you.
Christmas me with kisses, birthday me with smiles,
Valentine me every day for just a little while.
Wrap me up in rainbows, that’s all I’m dreaming of.
If you do, I promise you... I‘ll lavish you with love.
If you soft and gentle me, and sentimental me...
I’ll lavish you with love.

I don’t consider myself to be a great singer but people are often forgiving when
a songwriter sings his own songs. That night was no exception. Many of the passengers
congratulated me on my performance, gave me their addresses, and requested copies of my song.

I gave up the idea of doing anything more professionally with my music a long time ago. Now I just enjoy the process of writing which eliminates all the frustration and disappointment. And when I do write something I am truly satisfied with, I take it to Justin Gray, a phenomenal musician who can electronically produce a full orchestration for me in one hour. He is truly amazing. Someone with better ears than mine would probably know that it was electronically produced but to me, it sounds like it was created in a recording studio.

After such a long absence of being in front of an audience, I was amazed how comfortable I felt on stage. I had no idea I would have such a terrific time. If I hadn’t had the "hook" of opening with a story about having worked with Judy, I seriously doubt that I would have had nerve enough to get up on that huge stage and perform. So if it hadn’t been for her, I would have missed that wonderful experience. I’ve even repeated it since then. In 2006 I took Judy with me to China and I retold my story while cruising down the Yangtze River. Who knows where I will take her next. If one is lucky enough to live long enough, I have found, a negative often becomes a positive. When I get to heaven, I must remember to thank her.