March 20, 2018

Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland.



It's impressive until you realize the problem that Tom and Lorenzo identify:
[I]t’s admirable Judy Drag, [but] it’s Judy circa 1962 drag; not Judy at the end of her life. To put it bluntly, she was a physical wreck of a person in her last months; devastated and depleted by a lifetime of abuse and addiction, looking decades older than her 47 years... This is just a promo shot and we have no doubt they’ll rough her up for the final scenes of the film, but we’re not quite as impressed as others seem to be....
Here's a picture of Judy in the relevant time period.

47 comments:

buwaya said...

Nice dress anyway.

The Godfather said...

She's a good actress. I hope they make good use of her. I wonder what kind of audience there is for a biopic of an actress who died almost half a century ago? Judy died a couple of months after Renee was born.

Curious George said...

I suppose they could just cast Liza to play her last days.

traditionalguy said...

I love Zellweger, but she's no Judy Garland. I guess she will have to do, since there will never be another Judy Garland level talent.

Etienne said...
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Etienne said...
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MayBee said...

I'm glad they've found a movie for Zellweger to look like someone else, since she doesn't look at all like Zellweger any more.

Earnest Prole said...

They nail it: You wouldn't hire and style an actor to look like rail-thin Young Elvis if the role is Puffy Elvis heading for his rendezvous with the eternal toilet.

rhhardin said...

This seems like it's of iterest to gays only.

tcrosse said...

Judy Davis did a great job of this in 2001:
Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows
It could be the title of an academic paper because it has a colon in the middle.

Brand said...

So the publicity shot is the before Kennedy Garland and the link shows the post-Kennedy Garland.

DAN said...

Google "zellwegger weinstein" and you'll see her with her hand on Harvey's leg at the Venice Film Festival for "Cinderella Man", a big #MeNotSoMuch sloppy look on her face. You'll never think of her the same way again.

Henry said...

Maybee wrote: I'm glad they've found a movie for Zellweger to look like someone else, since she doesn't look at all like Zellweger any more.

It's amazing what you can do with painted eyebrows.

tim in vermont said...

She does look sort of like she was surprised stumbling out of the meth lab behind her trailer.

madAsHell said...

It could be the title of an academic paper because it has a colon in the middle.

That's not a colon. That is a brown number operator. Shit happens here.

Mike Sylwester said...

I read a book that the singer Mel Tormé wrote, titled The Other Side of the Rainbow: Behind the Scenes on the Judy Garland Television Series, about his collaboration with Garland on her television series in 1963-1964.

She destroyed the show with her alcoholism and irrationality.

Tormé agreed to do the show with her on the condition that he would be allowed to perform a certain number of times on the show. Then she did not allow him to do so. He was going to sue her, but he figured he never would get any money out of her anyway.

tim in vermont said...

Judy did a lot of good stuff in her life. Are we going to exhume Abe Lincoln's body now and take pictures of it to use as his official portrait? I don't think it is a crime against history to remember her the way she would have wanted to be remembered.

cronus titan said...

@DAN:

Saw that picture (actually a series of photos at different events looking quite chummy). Weinstein claimed that Zellwegger, and a few other actresses, slept with him for premium roles. Zellweger denied it, but she and some others were notably silent when the scandal broke (until Weinstein's comments came to light very recently).

At this point, it is like the baseball steroids scandal -- a public presumption that they became stars because they played the game. Women who kept their integrity and refused to play the game went nowhere, just like the baseball players who stayed off the juice.

William said...

The real challenge for Rene Zwellweger is to look like Rene Zwellweger......I looked at the picture gallery of Judy Garland. She did truly have a tough life that ended badly. No lack of dramatic content there. Very many of those child stars had lives that were more consistent of incest survivors than of a background of wealth and privilege. I wonder if The Reckoning will be written into the script. Louis B. Mayer was not so different than Weinstein and deserves some mud to be heaped upon his name.

Mike Sylwester said...

Here is a YouTube video of Mel Tormé singing "I Don't Get Around Much Any More" in a rehearsal for The Judy Garland Show, but he was not allowed to perform it on the show itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPou_i2plhQ

Ralph L said...

I saw some of her early 60's TV shows last year. She looked gaunt even then, but not as haggard.

Why did at least three generations of women in her family marry gay men, Judy twice?

Gordon Scott said...

They're publicizing a photo of Renee/Judy looking good, because putting a picture of Judy looking bad ain't gonna draw viewers.

William said...

Many people claim Queen Elizabeth is still alive. I'm willing to accept their opinion, but I would have doubted that she had a life that was in any way dramatic or worthy of a biopic. That was before I saw The Crown. They made an interesting series about her, and the whole point of Elizabeth's life was to be dull and serene. There's lots more material to work with with Judy Garland, and I'm open to seeing it. Anyway, they won't blame the tragedy of her life on white racism, and that's refreshing.

tim maguire said...

How much pathos would we find in Judy Garland's story if she weren't Dorothy? Would anybody care?

Birches said...

That 47 looks like 67. Wowza. Advertisement for clean living.

Ralph L said...

Mickey Rooney might.

the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...

"It's impressive until you realize the problem that Tom and Lorenzo identify"

I defer to gay men on most matters regarding Judy Garland.

The Germans have a word for this.

David53 said...
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WK said...

I thought Anna Kendrick was supposed to be getting all the female singing/acting parts now.

dreams said...

Judy Garland self destructed by age 47 while Mickey Rooney lived to be 93. I've never been a Judy Garland fan, a loser. I liked Mickey Rooney, a winner and a survivor.

Earnest Prole said...

To make the Tom and Lorenzo point a bit sharper, the actual focus of fascination with Judy Garland is on the tragic, desperate heroism of trying to put yourself over as a diva when you’re a physical wreck of a person in your last months; devastated and depleted by a lifetime of abuse and addiction, looking decades older than your 47 years.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

I'm not gay or transvestite.

Do I have to care about Judy Garland anyway?

John Henry

traditionalguy said...

Don't miss Meet Me In St louis. It is a tour de force of actressing and singing. Garland just wanted to cooperate and do whatever made other people happy. So Hollywood used her up and threw her away. And the poor girl had to deal with Mickey Rooney.

traditionalguy said...

FTR: it's Liza Minelli you remember as the Gay's idol. Judy was sensitive, but she was as hetero-sexual as they come.

langford peel said...

Why isn't a black girl playing Judy? Racist fucks.

langford peel said...


"It's impressive until you realize the problem that Tom and Lorenzo identify"

I defer to gay men on most matters regarding Judy Garland.

The Germans have a"

Yeah.

Homo.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

tim in vermont said...

Are we going to exhume Abe Lincoln's body now and take pictures of it to use as his official portrait?

Better get busy, he's buried pretty deep under several tons of cement.

Earnest Prole said...

FTR: it's Liza Minelli you remember as the Gay's idol. Judy was sensitive, but she was as hetero-sexual as they come.

Um . . . you've never heard the term "Friend of Dorothy," have you?

Ralph L said...

Judy and Liza both had 2 gay husbands.

traditionalguy said...

Nevermind. My straight privilege has let me down again.

Earnest Prole said...

The Wikipedia article Judy Garland as gay icon has some great quotes that underscore Tom and Lorenzo’s point, including:

"Judy was beaten up by life, embattled, and ultimately had to become more masculine. She has the power that homosexuals would like to have, and they attempt to attain it by idolizing her."

“Homosexuals tend to identify with suffering. They are a persecuted group and they understand suffering. And so does Garland. She's been through the fire and lived – all the drinking and divorcing, all the pills and all the men, all the poundage come and gone – brothers and sisters, she knows.”

The piece also mentions something fascinating: The Stonewall Riot (the Boston Tea Party of gay liberation) occurred just hours after thousands of gays had wept at Judy Garland’s funeral.

Michael K said...

Blogger Mike Sylwester said...
I read a book that the singer Mel Tormé wrote, titled The Other Side of the Rainbow: Behind the Scenes on the Judy Garland Television Series, about his collaboration with Garland on her television series in 1963-1964.>


I read it too. But the title was "The Other Side of the Rainbow with Judy Garland on the Dawn Patrol ."

tcrosse said...

I spotted Mel Torme in the airport one day, walking the other way down one of the concourses all by himself. I gave him a finger-pistol, and me gave me one back, with a wink. I felt so hip.

RMc said...

When I was reading Mickey Rooney's wiki page, this stood out to me:

During an interview in the 1992 documentary film MGM: When the Lion Roars, Rooney describes their friendship:

Judy and I were so close we could've come from the same womb. We weren't like brothers or sisters but there was no love affair there; there was more than a love affair. It's very, very difficult to explain the depths of our love for each other. It was so special. It was a forever love. Judy, as we speak, has not passed away. She's always with me in every heartbeat of my body.


Well, from what I understand, both Rooney and Garland -- as well as many other young people in Hollywood in those days -- were sexually abused. They both may have grown up thinking sex was dirty and shameful, which would explain why they had no such feelings for each other. They married a total of thirteen times, always looking for love and companionship, rarely, if ever, finding it.

Sad.

tcrosse said...

And here she is, digging into her grab-bag of cheap histrionic tricks to sing the hell out of The Man That Got Away
Eat your liver, Streisand.

Ralph L said...

The gays went for Maria Callas, too, perhaps for the same reasons.

eddie willers said...

I read it too. But the title was "The Other Side of the Rainbow with Judy Garland on the Dawn Patrol ."

So I checked at Amazon. It was published under BOTH titles.