HAPPY BIRTHDAY to JUDY GARLAND!

Three birthday posts in a row is rather excessive, is it not? :) This time of year is pretty busy--with birthdays, that is. And I'm pretty busy myself, but things should be slowing down over the weekend so I'll try to post something of substance soon. (Not that birthday posts aren't filled to the brim with substance, but you know what I mean.)

I must remember this hairdo--simply lovely!

Meanwhile, back to the subject at hand! I'm a huge Judy Garland fan, she's a top-notch triple threat and it's amazing how incredible her work was, given the extremely difficult personal circumstances she had to work through. Did you know that she was often compared to Al Jolson in terms of star power and sheer "performability"? Such a pity that she was taken from us so soon.

Judy and Bing Crosby perform on radio

As stated before, Judy was an amazing performer; multi-talented and genuine, beautiful and kind and with a passion for performing ingrained in her since the age of two. She is spunky and vivacious and loads of fun to watch--sort of like a brunette Ginger Rogers! lol.

My favorite Judy movie--"For Me and My Gal" (1942) with Gene Kelly

Some Judy quotes....(courtesy IMDB)
"[MGM] had us working days and nights on end. They'd give us pep-up pills to keep us on our feet long after we were exhausted. Then they'd take us to the studio hospital and knock us cold with sleeping pills . . . Then after four hours they'd wake us up and give us the pep-up pills again so we could work another 72 hours in a row. I started to feel like a wind-up toy from FAO Schwarz."

"Well, we have a whole new year ahead of us. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, and a little more loving, have a little more empathy, and maybe - next year at this time - we'd like each other a little more."

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."

Isn't she lovely? The poor thing!