Judy Garland was going to be Mame?

Just flipping through this book in Barnes & Nobles - Judy Garland: The Day-by-Day Chronicles of a Legend.. and aside from being a fascinating book (gives small itnerary of what she did almost every day of her life).. it says on multiple days that Judy went to see Mame, and was interested in replacing Lansbury. This book shows her going to the show about 4 or 5 times in 2 weeks, and also says that she met with the production team on several occasions. She wanted to watch the show from the wings, but the Stage Manager made her sit in the house because they were afraid she would get injured.

Eventually, was not a replacement, because the producers did not feel that she could be responsible enough to carry the show every night.

Did anyone know about this? I was shocked! How fun would it have been to see Judy as Mame?

neat!
I love judy

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Jerry Herman writes about this at great length in his autobiography.

The producers of the show, simply couldn't rely on her showing up 8 times a week to do the show. She was in declining health at the time and it never worked out. No contracts were ever signed or anything like that.

Read his book and you'll get the full story.

This is called History.


You should learn it.


It's really great.

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TheatreDiva90016, why do you have to be so catty?

I agree with JsnWse, why do you have to be so catty, TheatreDiva? Your posts come across extremely negative, self-serving and uneducated.

Updated On: 2/12/08 at 08:54 PM

She would have be wonderful. But, it wasn't in the cards.

Especially not how to quote in an obvious way.

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Kaye Ballard's auditions were.

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There is a concert recording of her starting to sing If he walked into My Life... but it is impromptu... and stops after a few bars and slurs.. "we'll just leave that one to Angela Lansbury... how 'bout I sing San Francisco!"

Even more tantalizing is that she and Minnelli were ALMOST the replacement cast for the original Gypsy.

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That would have been a dream come true.....

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philcrosby-
I *think* it was in the Making of "Gypsy" book.

Don't hold me to that, I had to speed read it about 6 months ago, so the details are all a little vauge.

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I had heard about Judy staging an audition in her home for the producers, but she was dressed horribly and hadn't been able to learn the lyrics. It was very sad, apparently...

Elaine Stritch, who was good friends with Judy, talks about how they had discussed the possibility of trading off the roles of Mame and Vera--one of them could go out and party and then take on the "less demanding" role of Vera that night while the other one played Mame, and then vice versa the next night. Judy's response? "Elaine--what about matinee days?"

Judy and Elaine together--can you imagine?

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