Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir by Lorna Luft
Authors: Lorna Luft
Tags: Humor & Entertainment, Biographies & Memoirs, Women, Leaders & Notable People, Rich & Famous, Memoirs, Composers & Musicians, Specific Groups, Arts & Literature, Actors & Entertainers, Television Performers
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MGM did suspend her for failing to appear on the set again; she got a telegram notifying her of thesuspension on June 17, 1950. Two days later she locked herself in the bathroom at home, broke a decorative bottle, and scratched her throat. Then, according to Vincente, she unlocked the door and let him in. She hadn’t cut herself deeply enough to cause serious injury, but there was a lot of blood because of the wound’s location, and Vincente was terrified. Friends bundled her up, took her to another house (she and Vincente kept two homes), and met the doctor there. Vincente stayed behind with Liza and tried to keep the incident a secret. As usual, though, the story was leaked to the press, and in no time every paper in town carried headlines about my mother’s “suicide” attempt.
My mother was in desperate need of a way out. She spoke privately to our old family friends Marc and Marcella Rabwin and asked Dr. Rabwin to help her. She’d always loved New York. She thought moving to New York and doing some Broadway shows might be the answer to her unhappiness. She and Marc talked the situation over, and at Mama’s request, he went privately to L.B. Mayer and asked him to cancel my mother’s contract, which legally had two years left. In a sense the request was only a formality, since both the studio and my mother knew her situation there had reached a stalemate. L.B. agreed. He also agreed to cancel my mom’s debt to MGM ($9,000 she’d borrowed against her future salary to pay for her last rest cure).
Three months after her suspension and “suicide” attempt, on September 29, 1950, MGM officially terminated Judy Garland. It was a painful parting for everyone involved.
My mother rarely talked to me about her MGM years. Who could blame her? One thing I do know, though, is that she loved L.B. Mayer to the end of her life. Much has been made of the legend that MGM used my mother and tossed her aside. In the last years of her life, as chemical addiction ate away at her memory and her consciousness, she sometimes fed those rumors herself. In the decade after she left Metro, though, she never blamed L.B. for what had happened to her. She always spoke lovingly of him to uschildren and to my father. It was L.B. Mayer who paid for my mother’s hospitalizations when she became ill during her years at MGM, even when it was clear she might never be able to make another movie for him. My father passionately asserts that L.B. loved my mother and wanted to help her get well, and that my mother always told him this herself. Years after she left Metro, my dad had breakfast with L.B. and an MGM attorney, and they still spoke of my mom with love and respect.
It’s true that the studio started my mother on amphetamines, but once they found out about the pills’ effects, MGM did everything they could to get her free of them. They not only provided my mother with doctors, therapists, and several “rest stays” in hospitals; they put the studio police to work figuring out where she was getting the pills. Years afterward Aunt Jimmy told me that everybody at MGM tried to keep my mother’s medication problem under control, from Mama’s costumer to my grandmother to the police. It was useless. My mother sought escape in the pills and was determined to have them. It makes a much better story to say that MGM was an evil kingdom and L.B. a sinister figure, but it simply isn’t true. L.B. himself took the same kind of pills they gave my mother; as far as that goes, half the truck drivers in America took those same pills to stay awake, and half their wives took them to lose weight.
Ignorance, not evil, began the process that destroyed my mother’s life. If she had been born two decades later, after the dangers of amphetamines were recognized, she would be alive today. She tried to stop many times, from 1943 to 1968, but she didn’t have access to the kind of information that’s available today. They knew how to dry you out, but they
My mother was in desperate need of a way out. She spoke privately to our old family friends Marc and Marcella Rabwin and asked Dr. Rabwin to help her. She’d always loved New York. She thought moving to New York and doing some Broadway shows might be the answer to her unhappiness. She and Marc talked the situation over, and at Mama’s request, he went privately to L.B. Mayer and asked him to cancel my mother’s contract, which legally had two years left. In a sense the request was only a formality, since both the studio and my mother knew her situation there had reached a stalemate. L.B. agreed. He also agreed to cancel my mom’s debt to MGM ($9,000 she’d borrowed against her future salary to pay for her last rest cure).
Three months after her suspension and “suicide” attempt, on September 29, 1950, MGM officially terminated Judy Garland. It was a painful parting for everyone involved.
My mother rarely talked to me about her MGM years. Who could blame her? One thing I do know, though, is that she loved L.B. Mayer to the end of her life. Much has been made of the legend that MGM used my mother and tossed her aside. In the last years of her life, as chemical addiction ate away at her memory and her consciousness, she sometimes fed those rumors herself. In the decade after she left Metro, though, she never blamed L.B. for what had happened to her. She always spoke lovingly of him to uschildren and to my father. It was L.B. Mayer who paid for my mother’s hospitalizations when she became ill during her years at MGM, even when it was clear she might never be able to make another movie for him. My father passionately asserts that L.B. loved my mother and wanted to help her get well, and that my mother always told him this herself. Years after she left Metro, my dad had breakfast with L.B. and an MGM attorney, and they still spoke of my mom with love and respect.
It’s true that the studio started my mother on amphetamines, but once they found out about the pills’ effects, MGM did everything they could to get her free of them. They not only provided my mother with doctors, therapists, and several “rest stays” in hospitals; they put the studio police to work figuring out where she was getting the pills. Years afterward Aunt Jimmy told me that everybody at MGM tried to keep my mother’s medication problem under control, from Mama’s costumer to my grandmother to the police. It was useless. My mother sought escape in the pills and was determined to have them. It makes a much better story to say that MGM was an evil kingdom and L.B. a sinister figure, but it simply isn’t true. L.B. himself took the same kind of pills they gave my mother; as far as that goes, half the truck drivers in America took those same pills to stay awake, and half their wives took them to lose weight.
Ignorance, not evil, began the process that destroyed my mother’s life. If she had been born two decades later, after the dangers of amphetamines were recognized, she would be alive today. She tried to stop many times, from 1943 to 1968, but she didn’t have access to the kind of information that’s available today. They knew how to dry you out, but they
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