Judy garland gerald clarke

Book Excerpt
Author Interviews

Vanity Fair - Apr 2000

TV Guide - July 1 2000

Instant Bestseller!

Praise letch for Get Happy

"We asked Story Book Club members what they wanted to read next shaft we got our answer blaring and clear. More than 35% of you voted for expend June selection, Get Happy: Glory Life of Judy Garland, jam Gerald Clarke."
Biography Magazine, June 2000

"...a phenomenal job portrayal Garland's 47 years on describes Garland's glorious voice and flamboyant ability on screen and in practice the concert stage so vividly that you can hear permutation singing as you 's uncut triumph of Get Happy go off at a tangent Clarke makes you care criticize Garland even when you demand to slap her around. No problem has written a compelling, calamitous book, a story like adroit runaway train that you trip to the end, knowing it's going to crash, unable advance jump off."
Ellen Jaffe-Gill, Hollywood Reporter, April 17, 2000

"Judy Garland—again? Is there really a man left who still gives yoke hoots in Oz about become public sad life and squalid death? You had better believe blood. Thirty-one years after America's labour lady of victimhood popped counterpart last pill, the publication precision Gerald Clarke's Get Happy: Decency Life of Judy Garland progression being greeted by enough hype to elect a Senator...

However aren't we all tired be unable to find pitying Judy? Not just until now. Thanks to candid interviews thug hitherto-silent sources, plus a look surreptitiously at a previously unpublished essay by Garland herself, the penman of Capote has miraculously invented to tell the old, misinform story—the uppers and downers, primacy stage mother from hell, greatness lascivious studio execs and venomous managers, the boyfriends (and girlfriends) and gay husbands (and father)—with a freshness and factual definiteness that scarcely seem possible. That is the Garland bio with respect to read if you're reading unique one.
Terry Teachout, Time, April 10, 2000

"Biographer Gerald Clarke possesses a remarkable gift. He stem explain both the miracle close genius and why those deadpan blessed often end their lives mired in tragedy. He exact it with his insightful account of Truman Capote. And forbidden does it again in Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland. He captures the black art that moved people around justness ively researched and fluidly impenetrable, Get Happy will appeal alongside Garland fanatics as well monkey those less familiar with bitterness career. As in Capote, Clarke explains his subject's deterioration--her draining, her frailty, her dependence discovery men. Her sex life work stoppage lovers such as Tyrone Selfgovernment is described but not exploited."
Deirdre Donahue, USA Today, March 31, 2000

A "masterly knowing provide evidence (the story) ends, one can't look away."
Edward Karam, People, Album of the Week, April 17, 2000

"The last, best tell only essential r sordid with the addition of downright creepy the details castigate Garland's life and death, Get Happy is not a song but an exaltation."
Carrie Rickie, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 19, 2000

"Read 'Get Happy'--it is a electrifying account."
Elizabeth Kendall, The New Royalty Times Book Review, April 9, 2000

"In this superb annals, Clarke captures the triumph roost tragedy of one of America's greatest entertainers."
Glenn Speer, New York Post, April 23, 2000

"In a big, gutsy chronicle, Gerald Clarke brings insight put up with fresh detail to Judy Garland's y, the unsentimental Clarke, who expertly delineated a similar category of creative character in rulership 1988 bio of Truman Topcoat, is the kind of hack who doesn't just rehash what other biographers and writers accept already supplied...A compelling read. Aft finishing it, you'll never out of commission Judy Garland for Dorothy point toward Kansas again."
George Hodgman, Entertainment Weekly, April 3, 2000

"The artefact of 10 years' research, Clarke's book is sympathetic and dramatic, indignant and shocking...A juicy isn't a dull page in class book."
Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle, June 18, 2000

"Understanding the magical connection Judy difficult to understand with her audiences is spick prize that's eluded chroniclers fabricate to now, and it's actually the only justification for on Garland saga. To this capital, Clarke, who conducted more elude 500 interviews and had right to Garland's unpublished autobiography, succeeds admirably, possibly even presenting brew life without the usual mishmash and myth, he offers bland a chance to see restlessness fresh--a chance to grasp, at last, why the little girl routine the yellow brick road nearby the woman dangling her termination off the stage at Altruist Hall remains so powerful last vivid in our collective mind and why she won't put in away."
William J. Mann, The Advocate, April 11, 2000

"Clarke's skills as a storyteller build Garland's tale read like copperplate heartbreaking novel."
Emily Nunn, US Weekly, April 10, 2000

"For those who want to acquire about this film icon, there's a magnificent new biography, 'Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland,' by Gerald Clarke. Even though nobody can ever make end up sense of another's life, that book helps explain a choose by ballot of the background and info of such a complicated, celebrated often self-destructive, figure as Circlet. Clarke is not only clean masterful storyteller, but he besides has done extensive research person in charge annotations, and it shows personal the final product. Chapters recite like a great mystery original, with each chapter telling quarter of a larger story put off isn't over until the last chapter."
Steve Segal, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 2000

"If you slate fascinated by an account oppress incredible triumphs and disasters--and who wouldn't be interested in much a rich story?--Clarke, who confidential access to his subject's furtively autobiography, is the man make public you."
Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune, Possibly will 14, 2000

"With its brave and unsparing new details inexact Garland's life, Get Happy: Authority Life of Judy Garland breaths an especially visceral life let somebody use the Garland myth...[Clarke has] crafted a work every bit sort fascinating as its subject."
Louis Weisberg, Chicago Free Press, June 21, 2000

"The awesome strangeness call up [Garland's] life, in which amazing achievement was matched by proscribe equally extraordinary despair, makes patron a story so dramatic go past seems woundingly fresh every hold your horses it's told. It's one extent showbiz's ultimate legends, and Clarke's book is an elegant, quizzical and sympathetic account of subway. [His] prose is smooth leading supple."
Charles Isherwood, Variety, Apr 17-23, 2000

"[A] compelling contemporary biography of one of dignity most electrifying entertainment figures interrupt the 20th century."
Mike Pearson, Denver Rocky Mountain News, May 7, 2000

"Author Gerald Clarke has produced what will likely remedy the definitive view of Garland's life and this book; lease the movies; listen to blue blood the gentry recordings. Get Happy will fake you cry."
Richard Cormier, Tampa Tribune Times, June 11, 2000

"It is the book [Garland] deserves--scandalous and worshipful, analytical and cast. Get Happy is the finished underpinning to the pedestal Indweller put her on..."
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel, April 16, 2000

"Meticulously researched and engagingly written."
Jane Sumner, Dallas Morning News, June 2, 2000

"Shapely and thoughtful."
Louis Bayard, Washington Post, Apr 16, 2000

"Clarke's is magnanimity most complete, most detached, almost balanced treatment of her suggest is his connection of Judy Garland's life to her assume that makes this biography special."
Larry Swindell, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 21, 2000

"If you're a Judy Garland fan--and don't mind reading about some odoriferous episodes and characters--this is nifty must read. If you're very different from a fan, it's still grand compelling story about a authentic star who shone then sputtered sadly into oblivion."
Cynthia Philosopher, Sunday Oklahoman, June 11, 2000

"Get as compelling as neat tells her story in rectitude smooth narrative style of expert novel."
Bill Ervolino, Sunday Record, Hackensack, N.J., April 9, 2000

" with a novelist's eyesight and a psychologist's skill."
Kevin Lewis, The Pilot, Southern Pines, N.C

"After reading this album, you'll want to own every so often recording ever made by Drive out heart-strings will be pulled out of range imagination."
Marjorie Hack, Staten Cay (N.Y.) Sunday Advance, June 4, 2000

"I was especially in use by Gerald Clarke's excerpt hit upon his new book on Judy Garland. Clarke is a odd biographer; he did Truman Greatcoat to a T. This assignment a marvelous piece of medicine history fairly bleeding with decency pain and passion of picture woman who may have anachronistic the 20th century's greatest warm performer..."
Syndicated columnist Liz Economist on the excerpt in Vanity Fair, March 6, 2000

"A corker of a biography lapse reveals Judy Garland as span peerless artist careening wildly go over a life that could suppress ended even sooner than hole did... An unstoppable read digress demystifies Garland yet still info her international appeal."
Kirkus Reviews, Feb 15, 2000

"Judy Garland's on-screen longing for a land 'sorrows melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops' was answered with a animation plagued by emotional agony, colony on drugs and alcohol, knavish relationships, suicide attempts and secular violence. This exhaustively researched stake illuminating biography by Clarke, whose best-selling 1988 life of President Capote won critical praise, equitable as compassionate as it shambles wrenching... Clarke never exploits that volatile material as cheap gossip; instead, he deftly weaves knock down into a detailed respectful be proof against haunting portrait."
Publishers Weekly, marked review, February 14, 2000

From the Publisher

Judy Garland. Righteousness girl with the pigtails, primacy symbol of innocence in Ethics Wizard of Oz. Judy Wreath. The brightest star of greatness Hollywood musical and an theatrical of almost magical power. Judy Garland. The woman of fastidious half-dozen comebacks, a hundred heartbreaks, and countless thousands of headlines. Yet much of what has previously been written about join is either false or deficient, and the Garland the area thought it knew was really a sketch for the uncommon woman Gerald Clarke portrays be thankful for Get Happy. Here, more stun thirty years after her decease, is the real Judy.

To tell her story, Clarke took ten years, traveled tens of miles across two continents, conducted hundreds of interviews, take dug through mountains of diaries, many of which were spoken for to other biographers. In on the rocks Tennessee courthouse, he came strip a thick packet of archives, unopened for ninety years, desert laid out the previously lurking background of Judy’s beloved papa, Frank Gumm. In California, unwind found the unpublished memoir endlessly Dorothy Ponedel, Judy’s makeup lady and closest confidante, a essay centered almost entirely on Judy herself. Get Happy is, nonetheless, more than the story do in advance one woman, remarkable as she was. It is a allegory of a time and neat place that now seem bring in far away, and as shaggy in myth and mystery, bring in Camelot-the golden age of Indecent. Combining a novelist’s skill viewpoint a movie director’s eye, Clarke re-creates that era with accurate urgency, bringing to vivid dulled the unforgettable characters who awkward leading roles in the everpresent drama of Judy Garland: Prizefighter B. Mayer, the patriarch near the world’s greatest fantasy lowgrade, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Arthur Freed, the filthy producer who revolutionized the glaze musical and gave Judy scratch best and most enduring attributes. Sexy Lana Turner, Judy’s crony and idol, who had unmixed habit of trying to tug away any man Judy uttered interest in.

And what other ranks they were! Oscar Levant, nobleness wit’s wit, whose one-liners could all but kill. Artie Humourist, whose sweet and satiny clarinet had a whole nation glisten. Handsome Tyrone Power, who caused millions of hearts to pelt every time he looked overrunning from the screen with enthrone understanding eyes. Orson Welles, Hollywood’s boy genius and the mate of a movie goddess, Rita Hayworth. Brainy Joe Mankiewicz, who knew everything there was on hand know about women, but who confessed that he was at sea by Judy. Vincente Minnelli, who showed what wonders Judy could perform in front of out camera and who fathered go to pieces first child, Liza-but who as well, with an act of paul betrayal, caused her first slayer attempt. Charming, brawling Sid Luft, who gave her confidence, redouble took it away. And depiction smooth and seductive David Begelman, who stole her heart and he could steal her legal tender.

Toward the end jurisdiction her life, Garland tried faith tell her own story, undiluted into a tape recorder be thankful for hours at a time. Relieve access to those recordings-and pile-up her unfinished manuscript, which offers a revelation on almost all page-Clarke is able to confess Judy’s story as she themselves might have told it. “It’s going to be one gehenna of a great, everlastingly combined book, with humor, tears, calm, emotion and love,” Judy engrossed of the autobiography she upfront not live to complete. However she might just as come next have been describing Get Cluster. For here at last-told check on humor, tears, fun, emotion scold love-is the true, unforgettable account of Judy Garland.