LINER NOTES:
(As written by Louis Untermeyer for the 1951 Decca album).

About Judy Garland...

    The place is the Palace on Broadway; the date is October 16, 1951. The theatre is filled to the last seat with an excited and expectant audience...the footlights dim...the red velvet curtain parts...and vaudeville comes back with a rush--with Judy Garland.

   The epitome of vaudeville, a complete show all by herself, Judy projects the buoyant spirit of the "two-a-day" with everything she has: bounding vitality, spirited gestures expressing a vibrant personality, and an extraordinarily flexible voice which can move the heart with the whispered syllable of "Over the Rainbow," clang its way through "The Trolley Song," and cry out the unashamed sentiment of "For Me and My Gal." This is Judy, the phenomenon, the sophisticated film star - but at the same time the girl who can communicate genuine emotion with a delicate quaver, follow it with comic pratfalls, and, distaining the use of a microphone, send her vibrato straight up to the second balcony. With this combination, her personality leaps, soars, and sweeps across the footlights. It is little wonder that she lifts the crowds clear out of their seats.

    For once the critics and the audiences were in complete and vociferous agreement. "The explosion of applause which greeted Miss Garland," wrote Robert Sylvester in the Daily News, "got completely out of hand. The enfant terrible of musical films finally hollered it down herself, and then went on to do one of the most fantastic one-hour solo performances in theatrical history." "It was a spectacular night for the Palace spinning back the clocks to 1933, when vaudeville 'died' more or less officially," said Ward Morehouse in the New York World-Telegram and Sun. "And the night belonged to Judy Garland." "She was the star of the recrudescence of the Palace," wrote Jack Lait of The Mirror, "Leading it back toward its splendor and glory as the cathedral of Broadway's cult, show business."

    All this was no more than one might have expected, for Judy belongs to the top echelons of show business. She was practically born in the theatre. Her father ran a variety playhouse in the little town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and Judy was three years old when, as "Baby Frances Gumm," she made her debut on his stage. A little later Judy and her two sisters set out on a vaudeville act, billed as "The Gumm Sisters." One day Judy took matters into her own hands. As soon as her sisters walked off the stage, she stayed on to sing by herself. The song was "Jingle Bells" and she repeated it five times. her natural gift for holding the center of the stage never deserted her. From Minnesota the family moved to California, where Judy attended school, became an active member of the baseball and basketball teams, and continued to sing on any stage that was handy. She won her first role with Deanna Durbin in a short entitled "Every Sunday Afternoon." When "Broadway Melody of 1938" came along, it established Judy as a young singing star. Fame came to her easily. Her stature grew with "Love Finds Andy Hardy" and rose to heights with her unforgettable performance as Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz." The latter brought her the coveted Academy Award, and Judy accepted the golden statue from her most arden fan, Mickey Rooney. "For Me and My Gal," "Girl Crazy," "Meet me in St. Louis," "The Harvey Girls," and "Easter Parade," in which she was co-starred with Fred Astaire, are some of her more distinguished successes. Her records sold in the millions. Her appearance at the London Palladium was a record-breaking engagement.

    Yet, through all of this, Judy retained her amazing simplicity joined with an even more amazing versatility. Wistfully plaintive or exuberantly gay, she has never lost the breathlessly young quality which is characteristic of perennially youthful vaudeville - - and Judy Garland.


About the Palace...

    The Palace Theatre was built in the spring of 1913 and became the pivotal point of the B.F. Keith circuit, which at its height booked 1,500 theatres and controlled some 20,000 performers throughout the country. B.F. Keith and Edward Albee had become partners in the 1880's and they were responsible for having introduced "refined" vaudeville to a public fed up with the common variety entertainment. It grew to be the center of the "two-a-day" - which was Broadway's way of indicating that there were two performances every day, including Sunday.

    For 20 years the Palace was the home of all that was best in vaudeville. It held its position as the show-place of the nation with its assembly of the country's greatest entertainers performing against a background tingling with excitement. Then a combination of motion pictures and vaudeville was introduced. This lasted only a few years, and by 1936 the Palace adopted a straight picture policy. In 1949 the Palace again combined feature films and feature acts by live actors. However, it was not until October 16, 1951 that the cycle completed itself and the Palace returned to the two-a-day routine - with Judy Garland launching the historic event.

CREDITS

Notes by Louis Untermeyer