November 2019 | Sight&Sound | 9
film is set in 1968: Garland, 46, is embarking on a
London residency to raise enough money to take
care of her young children by her third husband,
Sidney Luft. With a little make-up, a swoosh of
dyed-black hair, a delicate squint and a sturdy
pout, Renée Zellweger captures enough of the
star’s likeness to convince us for the duration of
the film that even if she doesn’t look exactly like
Garland, Garland looked something like Zellweger.
Judy, by focusing on the star’s relationship with
her children, smartly recalls one of Garland’s
sweetest moments on screen: the look of quasi-
maternal concern that animates her face as she
sings ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ to
Margaret O’Brien in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).
It also raises the ghost of a part she never played
but perhaps should have done: by the time of the
1954 remake of A Star Is Born, Garland had been
through the mill more than enough to play the
alcoholic, downward-spiralling Norman Maine
rather than the ingénue Vicki Lester. That’s
what Zellweger does here, giving a portrayal of
self-pitying self-destruction that brings to mind
Bradley Cooper’s unflinching take on the Maine
character in his recent re-re-remake of the film.
So it follows that Judy skips meals in favour
of pills and booze, arrives on stage late and
leaves a trail of unpaid hotel bills, professional
chaos and distraught offspring in her wake.
This Garland is no monster, though: the hunch
in her spine and the way her wedding ring hangs
loose on her knuckle emphasise her frailty, and
regular flashbacks to the start of her career at MGM
under the ‘care’ of studio boss Louis B. Mayer
diagnose the cause of her mental and emotional
problems. The film argues that Garland’s life was
blighted by her experience as a child star, and by
Mayer’s heartless regime of uppers and downers,
overwork and undernourishment.
The adult Judy is often on the point of
collapsing under the weight of too many drinks or
too boorish a heckle, but her voice is still a source
of strength, at least for her loyal fans. In fact, it is
almost a boon for the film that Zellweger’s voice
lacks the character and depth of Garland’s –
there’s a sense that these late gigs are something
like an impersonation of the star she used to be.
And she does still have fans – in particular, a
sweetly awestruck gay couple who have bought
a sheaf of tickets for the shows. Stan and Dan lurk
shyly at the stage door, shout encouragement
from the balcony and on one bittersweet occasion
take Judy back to their flat for a midnight supper
of scrambled eggs. They bought so many tickets
this time, they tell her, because when she last
came to London Stan was in prison. Judy fumes
against the persecution of homosexuality,
calling the gay community her allies.
Perhaps Stan and Dan have the answers. The
recent mainstreaming of certain aspects of gay
culture, especially drag culture, has brought new
attention to the stars of Old Hollywood, who
were celebrated in the queer community long
after they left the limelight and stopped being
so ladylike. After all, a diva without troubles is
no gay diva at all. “At the very heart of gay diva
worship,” wrote Daniel Harris in 1996, “is not
the diva but the almost universal homosexual
experience of ostracism and insecurity, which
led to what might be called the aestheticism of
maladjustment.” In that maladjustment lies the
drama, and the charm – Garland flummoxed by
impertinent questions on a British chatshow,
Gloria Grahame taking her boyfriend to see
Alien. The awkwardness cracks the glamorous
façade and it turns out that our heroes are human
after all. Then Zellweger takes to the stage in
Judy, as an electric fortysomething gamine in
black sequins, facing the bitter end but belting
out ‘Come Rain or Shine’ anyway. And we
understand the meaning of the astronomical term
‘supernova’: the spectacular, dazzling display that
accompanies the explosion when a star dies.
Judy is out now in UK cinemas and
was reviewed in our October issue
By Pamela Hutchinson
These days, when Hollywood isn’t overhauling
old films, it is poking about in the ashes of the
studio system. The death of the dream factory is
a recurring nightmare from the Coen brothers’
Hail, Caesar! (2016) to Warren Beatty’s The
Rules Don’t Apply (2015), to Quentin Tarantino’s
recent Once upon a Time in Hollywood and even
James Franco’s forthcoming Zeroville. But what
happens to the stars left stranded when the power
structures fall? Even this subgenre has a sub-
subgenre, which visits the stars of Old Hollywood
at the end of their life, a series of sympathetic
portraits of ageing stars out of their usual place.
Here the gossipy caricatures are set aside for
portrayals of people damaged by fame, addicted
to performance and treading unfamiliar ground.
In Rupert Goold’s new film Judy, in Film Stars
Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017) and in Stan & Ollie
(2018), Judy Garland, Gloria Grahame and Oliver
Hardy, respectively, take a final turn on the stage
before meeting their ends. The 2017 FX series Feud:
Betty and Joan was a long dispatch from the set of
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), one of the
cruellest films ever made about the Hollywood
darling-turned-has-been. In the series, Jessica
Lange and Susan Sarandon gave the stars of that
film, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, a tenderness
and dignity lacking in the horror story of Blanche
and Jane. Tarantino tried to reclaim Sharon Tate
from the mire of tragic narratives and Hollywood
gossip in his latest film, and we may add to our
list Benedict Andrews’s new biopic of Jean Seberg,
in which Kristen Stewart plays the star who
died young after enduring the twin pressures
of Hollywood stardom and FBI surveillance.
Because stars are back in a big way, especially
those who exited the soundstage long ago.
Feminist film history is re-evaluating the impact
and the mistreatment of the many stars and
starlets swallowed up by the studio system.
Karina Longworth’s podcast You Must Remember
This exhumes Hollywood corpses to grant them
the respect of a fair hearing – recent seasons
have included ‘Dead Blondes’, another devoted
to Jane Fonda and Jean Seberg, and another to
debunking Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon
(1965). Since Adele and Amy Winehouse began
singing sad songs decked out in beehives and
heavy eyeliner, since internet users shared
expressions and exclamations trimmed into gifs
from Hollywood classics in lieu of exhausting
their character count, and since RuPaul’s Drag
Race started streaming in thousands of straight
households, the fading star is back in vogue. But
this time it seems, there is sympathy for the diva.
All three films – Judy, Film Stars Don’t Die...
and Stan & Ollie – are markedly sympathetic to
their celebrity protagonists, and provide roles for
older actors that are both satisfyingly nuanced
and a little bit glamorous. Judy is a particularly
rich example: a poignant portrait of a vulnerable,
childlike woman in a prematurely aged body. The
SYMPATHY FOR THE DIVA
RUSHES
Judy is the latest in a wave of films
about stars in decline. Why are
all these compassionate portraits
of ageing divas appearing now?
CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD
The awkwardness cracks
the glamorous façade of the
star and it turns out that our
heroes are human after all
Backstage drama: Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland in Judy
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