Sid & Judy

Year 16, Day 213 - 7/31/24 - Movie #4,801

BEFORE: We're closing down another month today so here are the format totals for July 2024:

8 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): I Am Burt Reynolds, LennoNYC, Elton John: Becoming Rocketman, Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock 'n' Roll, Keith Haring: Street Art Boy, The Real Charlie Chaplin, Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love, Sid & Judy

6 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Love to Love You Donna Summer, Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed, David Bowie: Out of This World, Moonage Daydream, Mike Wallace Is Here, Billie Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer

5 watched on Netflix: Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over, American Symphony, Money Shot: The Pornhub Story, The Greatest Night in Pop, Wham!

1 watched on Hulu: The Stones and Brian Jones

2 watched on YouTube: We Blew It, Billie
5 watched on Disney+: If These Walls Could Sing, Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium, The Beach Boys, Stan Lee, Jim Henson: Idea Man

1 watched on Tubi: The Strange Name Movie

1 watched on HBO MAX: Little Richard: I Am Everything

29 TOTAL

Well, if I could have watched 31 movies during July then I would have, but my work schedule got in the way, and I also have to sleep at some point. But yeah, if I could have fit in two more films that would have been great, because then the Doc Block would have ended today, on July 31, and I could move on to another topic with the new month.  Well, it just meant wasn't to be.  

Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand carry over from "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Judy" (Movie #3,839)

THE PLOT: A revealing new look at Judy Garland, fifty years after her tragic death, fusing the unpublished recollections of producer, manager and third husband Sid Luft with film clips, rare concert footage and Judy's own inimitable words. 

AFTER: I've seen a few different approaches to documentary filmmaking during this year's Doc Block, some just go all archive footage because really, everything's out there and available, including everyone's appearances on talk shows, all the footage just needs to be licensed, but there are HUNDREDS if not thousands of talk show episodes that can get you all the footage you may need. The other approach is the popular "talking heads" format where the director secures interviews with the subject's family and friends and maybe even enemies to learn more about them first-hand before we cut to the archive footage.  

But there are new techniques emerging and one I've noticed this year is the "audio archive" approach, where the director tracks down audio interviews that maybe were already made, even years ago, and then runs these sound clips over the archive footage.  One problem with this approach is that everything really should be treated as hearsay, like if you find an interview archive (or, really, if you just SAY that you found one) you can't really prove that what the people said in the interview represented the truth, or even their version of the truth, because they could be lying, or senile and not remembering things right.  Hell, they may not even be who they say they are, there's just no way to verify things, but documentary filmmakers don't seem to want to let this stop them from crafting the narrative they want.  "Belushi" and "Billie" are two recently watched docs that took this approach, and "Belushi" went on step further and hired an actor, Bill Hader, to read Belushi's personal letters to his girlfriend/wife because they didn't have any audio recordings of them, why would they?  

"Sid & Judy" opted for the same approach here, because they "found" Sid Lufts journals and also some things that Judy Garland maybe or probably said at one point, and they got Jon Hamm and Jennifer Jason Leigh to read these things aloud.  Ms. Leigh doesn't really sound much like Judy Garland, but she's got a scratchy, gravelly voice which does kind of work for those times when Judy was drunk or high or some combination of both, which was possibly all the time in the later years.  Jon Hamm got the easier job, he only had to sound like Sid Luft, only he really didn't need to because nobody today knows or cares what Sid Luft sounded like.  

I just went back and re-read my review of "Judy", the biopic with Renee Zellweger in it, which I watched in May of 2021, and wow, that was 962 movies ago, really how am I supposed to remember back that far?  I've watched almost a thousand movies since then, but it was only a little more than three years ago.  Anyway, that film and THIS film are not set in the exact same time period of Judy Garland's life - they both detail a trip made to London to perform in front of a sold-out crowd, however in tonight's film, the trip was arranged by Judy's third husband, Sid Luft, who was also her manager for a time, and things are kind of told from his P.O.V., in this own words, allegedly.  The film "Judy" which nabbed Zellweger that Oscar detailed a DIFFERENT trip she took to perform in London, during a time when Sid Luft was suing her for custody of their two children, so they were divorced, and Judy was being managed by husband #5, Mickey Deans, or at least he went on to become husband #5.  Got it?  So on that other trip she was a little bit older and did a little bit more drinking.  

Yes, here's where Wikipedia helps me clear things up a bit (and they should, I just donated $10 to their campaign last night, so really, they owe me.).  Judy Garland's first tour of Britain and Ireland (as arranged by Sid Luft) took place in 1951 - aka "The First Comeback Tour". During this tour she performed at the London Palladium.  Upon returning to Manhattan, Sid had her play the Palace Theater in Manhattan in October 1951. Then she divorced Vincente Minnelli and married Luft.  The Carnegie Hall concert (also seen in tonight's film) took place in 1961, and then she divorced Sid Luft in 1963.  After THAT, she returned to the London Palladium in November 1964, and then a third U.K. tour in 1968, and THAT'S the tour seen in the movie "Judy".  Well, I'm glad I was able to clear that all up, but I'm guessing I'm the only person who even cares.  

The goal here seems to be to shine a focus on the years of the Sid Luft marriage (1952 to 1965), however Luft's narration also acts as an omniscience of sorts, he seems to know everything about Judy Garland's back-story, even from when she was a child, decades before he even met her. Well, that doesn't make much sense, so clearly he's just being used as a narrative device here to tell us whatever we need to know about Judy.  Really, it's the same back story we saw in that other film, how the studio controlled what she wore, what she eat (or more often, did NOT eat), and gave her "bennies" when she was tired and they still needed to do another few takes.  And the implication that Louis B. Mayer was infatuated with her and may have molested her, but if not, then he at least did a great job of messing with her head.  

But then "Sid & Judy" kind of skips over a lot, or at least goes through "The Wizard of Oz", "Broadway Melody of 1938", "Everybody Sings", "Presenting Lily Mars", "Meet Me In St. Louis" and "Easter Parade" so we can get more quickly to that first London tour, with Sid Luft in the picture, and of course, "A Star Is Born".  This was huge for Judy, finally leaving MGM, the studio that had super-controlled her life for 18 years to start a new career over at Warner Bros.  However, she proved to be just as unreliable in her first film for Warner as she was in her last few years at MGM, always claiming to be sick, but more likely she was suffering from the effects of alcohol and drug abuse.  So it took TWO YEARS to film "A Star Is Born", but not all of that can be blamed on Garland - at some point midway through the production it was decided to switch the from standard ratio over to the new CinemaScope, which meant that everything filmed to date had to be filmed again in the new wider-screen ratio.  And there were constant script changes, too - but sure, some of the delay can be blamed on the leading lady's chemical dependencies, and the illnesses, hypochondria and drastic weight changes that came along with that.  

Then, once the film was completed, with a running time cut DOWN to three hours, it premiered in New York to great acclaim.  However, theater owners complained about the running time, as they could only show a film that long three times a day on a screen instead of five, and therefore it would be nearly impossible for theaters to make any money.  So Warner executives made drastic cuts in the film, losing crucial scenes and two musical numbers to get to a running time of 2 hours and 24 minutes.  The theater owners were happy, however then the film didn't make as much sense.  (The uncut version of the film was finally released, but after Judy Garland died.)

Well, that must have sucked, and it possibly cost Judy Garland an Oscar, she was considered to be a shoo-in that year, but that was before Warner Bros. hacked up the film - so Grace Kelly won instead for "The Country Girl".  All of this fighting with the studio led Judy to seek out other performance venues, not just live stage concerts, but TV specials, and eventually her own variety show, "The Judy Garland Show" on CBS in 1962.  But the TV executives screwed her, too, by putting her show on opposite "Bonanza", the most popular show on TV at the time.  So her TV show only lasted one season, but got four Emmy nominations. 

And then we know what happened to her after that, she divorced Sid and went back on the road - so again if you're planning to watch both THIS documentary from 2019 and also the 2019 film "Judy" with Renée Zellweger, I would suggest watching this one first, because it's almost like that one picks up where this one ends.  Sort of.  But of course I didn't know that, and I watched THAT one three years ago and this one now.  Oh, well, how was I to know? 

Also starring the voices of Jon Hamm (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Jennifer Jason Leigh (last seen in "Kill Your Darlings"), Norman Jewison (last heard in "Sly"), George Schlatter (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me")

with archive footage of Judy Garland (also carrying over from "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Fred Astaire (last seen in "Moonage Daydream"), Bing Crosby (ditto), Lauren Bacall (last seen in "Under the Silver Lake"), Count Basie (last seen in "Billie"), Humphrey Bogart (last seen in "Whatever It Takes"), Ray Bolger (last seen in "Capone"), Jack Haley (ditto), Bert Lahr (ditto), Billie Burke (last seen in "Topper Returns"), George Burns (last seen in "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work"), George Cukor, Ethel Gumm, Francis Gumm, Mary Jane Gumm, Virginia Gumm, Lena Horne (last seen in "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street"), George Jessel (also last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Dean Martin (ditto), Danny Kaye (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), Gene Kelly (last seen in "Babylon"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Peter Lawford (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Lorna Luft (last seen in "54"), Sidney Luft, James Mason (last seen in "Salem's Lot"), Louis B. Mayer (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Mickey Rooney (ditto), Vincente Minnelli, Jack Paar (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali"), Martha Raye, Frank Sinatra (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Lana Turner (last seen in "Topper"), Jerry Van Dyke, Jack L. Warner (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind")

RATING: 5 out of 10 takes of "The Man That Got Away"