Working Girl

When she is working, 27-year-old Judy Garland, who has been a Hollywood star for 13 years, gets almost twice as much salary as the President of the U.S. Last week Judy was finding her money harder & harder to earn.

Six months ago, she had worked herself to a frazzle, complicated by insomnia and jitters for which she had long been trying to doctor herself. After she had a series of temperamental blowups on the set of Annie Get Your Gun, M-G-M suspended her and tackled the expensive job of starting all over again with a new star, Betty Hutton. Judy apologized for her behavior and then entered a Boston hospital for a rest cure. Among other things, she needed to put on some weight.

Back in Hollywood for a new film, Summer Stock, Judy found that she was too healthy to squeeze into the clothes fashioned to the studio wardrobe's dummy of her normally 115-lb. figure. She promised to cut down on her health by 15 pounds in time for her first rehearsal.

The deadline arrived, but Judy did not. Three times the studio telephoned her home. On the fourth call came the admission that Judy would not be present: she had dropped only seven pounds.

This was the deadly sin, punishable by Hollywood's defender of the faith, Louella O. Parsons. Wrote Louella last week in her Hearst gossip column: "This is the first time I have ever publicly spanked Judy, but I can't understand her attitude after all that has been done for her."

The same day, presumably after reading Louella's stern blast, a penitent Judy Garland appeared at the studio, gave her solemn promise to take off the eight remaining pounds and to be prompt when she is called to work. Louella promptly forgave her: "Her little flurry of temperament is now yesterday's news, and we're all glad to forget it."

At week's end, having made her peace with M-G-M and with L.O.P., Judy had managed to work off another four pounds in song & dance rehearsals, was plugging away at the last four pounds and hoping very hard to keep everybody happy.

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