Judy at Carnegie Hall: 50 years later ~ Commemorating Judy Garland’s historic performance at Carnegie Hall

http://goqnotes.com/10771/judy-at-carnegie-hall-50-years-later/
by admin | April 16, 2011

April 23 will mark the 50th anniversary of what was probably the greatest evening in show business history. Over 3,000 lucky people packed the world-famous Carnegie Hall in New York City to see Judy Garland. We are lucky enough that this evening was recorded live and complete and has been transforming fans for the last 50 years to front row seats to hear and experience Judy Garland, her charm, charisma, presence and her truly marvelous voice in full form.

New York Herald Tribune reported on that evening this way: “There was an extra bonus at Carnegie Hall last night, Judy Garland sang.” New York Post said: “Last night the magnetism was circulating from the moment she stepped on stage.”

All accounts of that night hailed the Carnegie Hall concert as a triumph.

Variety, the periodical of record for the show business industry, reported: “New York’s Carnegie Hall was supercharged on both sides of the footlights Sunday evening … Pandemonium broke loose and a standing ovation stalled the song fest for several moments. After her twenty-fourth number of the evening, she halted the tumultuous applause demanding still another encore … Few singers around can get as much out of a song as Miss Garland … The tones are clear, the phrasing is meaningful and the vocal passion is catching. In fact, the audience couldn’t resist anything she did. The aisles were jammed during the encore … she followed with two additional numbers ‘After You’ve Gone’ and ‘Chicago’ which brought her song bag for the evening up to 26 numbers.”

“Two hours of pow,” was how Judy Garland described the event.

Clearly Judy’s performance at Carnegie Hall was a milestone in the life and career of a performer who had seen many successes in her lifetime. Judy had already experienced comebacks many times before. Today, 50 years later, people are still raving about this concert, no matter if they have heard it hundreds of times or for the first time. Even those who might not be Judy Garland fans (say it ain’t so) are hooked by this concert. It’s particularly wonderful given the fact that a year-and-a-half earlier Judy Garland had nearly died.

“Judy At Carnegie Hall” remains her biggest selling recording. It originally stayed on the charts for 94 weeks — 13 at number one — and won her five Grammy Awards, including Best Female Vocal Performance and Album of the Year (the first time a woman to win this category). Today it is still in print and a very popular selling CD and music download.

To listen to it is to re-live what truly is the greatest night in show business history sung by the greatest entertainer in show business, Judy Garland. If you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favor and listen. If you have, listen again. You’ll smile, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry. You will love it. : :

Everything’s Coming Up Roses for Streisand’s ‘Gypsy’

http://www.wordandfilm.com/2011/04/everythings-coming-up-roses-for-streisands-gypsy/?ref=facebook_corp_streisand&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Ads&utm_campaign=Streisand

By Tom Blunt

Fifteen years have gone by since the Barbra Streisand’s last serious directing credit (”The Mirror Has Two Faces“), so you might imagine that filmmaking was simply a phase she’d outgrown. Remember though, we are talking about a woman who has an entire fake store full of dolls in her basement. So for better or worse, Babs is back in action, determined to overthink and overact in a brand-new adaptation of “Gypsy,” the award-winning Sondheim musical inspired by the memoir of notorious burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee. Who cares what Warner Brothers says — haven’t they seen this woman’s barn? Her chickens lay green eggs. You don’t mess with the Streisand.
Classic though it may be, Lee’s own account of her life story is especially noteworthy for its … shall we say “relaxed” attitude toward factual accuracy. “When Gypsy wrote memoir, it wasn’t only her monument – it was her chance for monumental revisionism,” says Karen Abbott, whose biography American Rose closely examines the star’s self-made mystique. “She transformed every painful experience into a punchline or omitted it entirely. In the musical, her mother is plucky and eccentric rather than a demented sociopath (and murderer!). She never associated with shady characters or did things that later brought her shame. I think she got away with it because Gypsy got away with everything – nearly everything, anyway.”
According to Abbott, the glamorous persona that Lee invented for herself became an incredible burden: “She adored her creation for all of the things it gave her – money, fame, autonomy, distance from her mother – but she also loathed it for its limitations; she lived in an exquisite trap she herself had set. Every time she tried to expand the parameters of who Gypsy Rose Lee was, people didn’t know quite how to react. Gypsy’s sister, June Havoc, made a very telling comment: ‘It wasn’t hilarious and funny at all, when you got back to the dressing room,’ she said. ‘Gypsy put on this wonderful, sophisticated, glamorous, I-know-more-than-you-do attitude with such conviction, she convinced the world. But she would come home and cry because she’d been on an interview and all they wanted her to do was take off her gloves, slowly. They wanted to leer. It made her sick, and nobody ever knew that.’”
Before her death in 2010, Havoc (herself a dance prodigy and successful actress) spoke with Abbott at length about the unique damage that Lee’s revisionism had exacted upon her. “Even at ninety-five years old, she was still angry about it,” Abbott recalls. “She believed the characterization of Baby June thoroughly distorted the girl she remembered being. ‘It was like I didn’t own me anymore,’ she told me. She begged to be written out of it entirely. She thought her sister was ’screwing me out in public,’ and that the whole ordeal was ‘an example of a non-love I didn’t understand.’ In addition, June didn’t really benefit monetarily from the musical. She got a percentage of the royalties from the first run, and that was that. If there’s an afterlife, I think Gypsy and June are hashing out lingering resentments about the musical – among many, many other things.”
As for the upcoming Streisand joint, whom would Abbott’s dream cast include? “I think Natalie Wood was so perfect; it would be difficult to top her,” she comments. “I’d actually love to see a version of the musical that incorporates the sisters’ later years and examines their complex dynamic. To that end, I’m thinking Reese Witherspoon as June and Winona Ryder as Gypsy. And maybe Jane Lynch as Mama Rose! I know the ages of those three wouldn’t quite jibe, but damn, that would be a fantastic cast. And just to top things off, Alec Baldwin as Herbie.