The Final Act and Legacy

This is exactly right . Double Elvis . Virgin Voyag es presents with Love from the Pacific . I didn't think cruising was my thing. Turns out, I was right. This isn't that. Food that's cooked to order, music that carries you into sunset and forgetting what day it is, on purpose, from Alaska's stunning views to warm nights along the Pacific coast in Mexico, this is cruising your way . Award winning kid free cruises from Virgin Voyages now sailing from Los Angeles and Seattle, explore sailings at Virginvoyages. com . I'm Cindy Lauper with fellow Cosentix Advocate Chef Michelle Bernstein. We'll share our experiences with plaque psiisas, with psoriatic arthritis, and Dr. Panico will talk about the possible connection. Cocentic secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis three hundred milligram dose, and adults with active psoriatic arthrit is one hundred and fifty milligram dose. Don't use if you're allergic to cosentics, before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial fungal, or viral, in fections, some are fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough. Had a vaccine or planned to. Or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen , serious allergic reactions and severe eczema like skin reactions may occur . Learn more at one eight four cosentics or cosentics. com slash chef Michelle . My name is Jess a. One of the things I love the most about working for United Healthcare is that everybody matters. Every moment matters . There's a person behind every problem. I care because it's what I was put on this Earth to do. I'm Ben and I work at United Healthcare. I am just one piece of a larger puzzle, but every piece matters. It's more than just work. We want to make the healthcare system better for everyone. I care because I want to make a difference. That's what committed to care means to me . Hey guys, it's Zeth Lundy, good doctor here at Devil Elvis and co host of the Hollywood Land podcast and welcome once again as we wind the reels back for another story from our archive, this one on Judy Garland . MGM made sixteen year old Judy Garland a box office giant, but their strict rules nearly killed her in the process. The studio's strict diet of chicken soup, uppers, and downers set up teenage Judy for a life fought with addiction, malnutrition, extreme health complications, and regular vis its to rehab . Even years after Judy severed ties with MGM, the effects of her highly regulated adolescence creeped into her career, literally poisoning her life. A star was born when Judy filmed The Wizard of Oz, but by her late forties, that same star was in rapid decline. And speaking of a star is born, make sure you check out a brand new installment of the screening room here on Friday, in which I'll take a deep dive into the twenty eighteen remake of A Star Wars Born directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Lady Gaga, but not before I hear from all of you about your favorite movie remakes Wednesday in the Rap Party . This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information . Hollywoodland is a production of Double Elvis. Your day one light when light on they didn't all The stories about Judy Garland are insane . She began a daily regiment of diet pills and down ers when she was only fourteen years old . She subsisted on a diet of chicken soup, black coffee and cigarettes to remain ninety eight pounds at the request of MGM studios . Her decades long dependence on pills caused her liver to swell to four times its normal size, nearly killing her in her late thirties . But despite all the abuse her body received from a very early age, Judy Garland made great films. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't a clip from a great film. That was a fair use sample from the Library of Congress of the Homestead tri o performing Just a Baby's Prayer at Twilight in nineteen eighteen . I played you that clip because I can't afford the rights to Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard . And why would I play you that specific slice of ready for my close up cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one movie in America on september twenty ninth, nineteen fifty , and that was the day MGM dissolved their contract with Judy Garland , leaving her completely alone for the first time in her life . On this episode , Uppers , Downers, Near Fatal Diets , MGM in the Little Movie Star , Judy Garland . I'm Jake Brennan , and this is Hollywood Land The taxi blitzed through another red light. Judy Garland watched the traffic signal shrink to the rearview mirror as the car raced forward . That was the second one the driver ignored, for count was correct. The cab glided like a cheredc yekellow race car, swerving, speeding, switching lanes on a dime with fractions of a second to spare. Red lights were merely suggestions . In this cab you wasn't taking any unsolicited advice today. You'd be hard pressed to find an ambulance driver who could do any better. Judy's husband flagged the right cab driver that day, and that much was certain. It didn't matter who he pissed off or whose new paint job he dinged. This ride was a matter of life or death . Frankly, at this point, it was closer to death. Judy rested her hands over her stomach like an expectant mother in the back seat. The plush fabric of her gown strained to contain her sw ollen flesh . She imagined the buttons down her back bursting off one at a time , and the sleeves of her gown cutting into her thick biceps , and the stage clothes slicing her porcelain skin. Her third and current husband, Syd Love, rested a hand on her knee, also swollen. Everything about Judy Garland was swollen . Body parts you didn't even think could swell. Sidney had never seen anything like it before. He gave her inflated knee a sympathetic squeeze and forced a smile . But when his gaze drifted to the Martini in Judy's hand, his smile crumpled into a grimace. November nineteen fifty nine . In the beginning, Sidney didn't think anything of Judy's weight gain, not when her current tour began, right here in New York roughly six months prior . In May, she looked exuberant , well, as exuberant as a woman addicted to prescription pills could be. While Judy ate pills like candy, her fans ate up her live performances, swooning over her renditions of famous show tunes. Sydney booked the shows, Judy sang the classics. It was an arrangement that kept Judy off movie sets and kept her hardcore admirers AKA the cult of Garland Happy . By nineteen fifty nine, Judy had repeated this rigorous regiment of performances hundreds of times. She even set a new record for most consecutive shows at the Palace Theater in Los Angeles. Judy once packed the palace every day twice a day for nineteen weeks straight. No days off. Judy single handedly brought eight hundred thousand people to the palace between nineteen fifty one and nineteen fifty two , making her solely responsible for the renewal of America 's premier vaudeville theater . But that was at the beginning of the fifties . This was the tail end of the decade . Judy was thirty seven now. She wore almost twenty five years of showbiz and the lines on her face . Most people with deep seated addictions didn't make it to twenty seven, let alone thirty seven . She and Sydney had to cough up their own cash to finance and promote her performances. As Judy's fig ure bloated further over her six month oper a, it became clear why no insurance company wanted to touch her . Sydney knew his wife. He knew her way fluctuated, whose didn't, but something was different this time. This didn't just seem like extra pounds. Something was very wrong. So Sidney devised a plan. He rang up a doctor palate his and invited him to stop backstage before a show. Sidney instructed the doctor to visit him and Judy away from the crowds, and while he was back there, he needed to get a good glimpse of Judy. He was to report back to Sydney under the radar. The doctor's discrete diagnosis was worse than Sidney imagined. Judy hadn't gained weight, not in the normal sense . Instead, her body was flush with toxic fluids, an after effect of her daily pill popping that went back to her formative years as a teenage actress , back when MGM pumped her full of chemicals like a lab rat . The buildup meant that something in Judy's body wasn't functioning properly, her spleen or her pancreas, even her liver , maybe all the above. Her condition was so severe that the doctor informed Cydney that Judy could slip into a coma at any moment, and there was no guarantee that she'd come out of it either. The odds were grim , but not as grim as what Judy demanded next . Apparently, the urgency of her current medical situation paled in comparison to Judy's urgent thirst for a stiff drink . When Sydney tried to coerce her into a cab, Judy's face snapped. And there it was her stubbornness . Smuggled inside that transatlantic accent of hers . She wasn't going anywhere, she informed her husband , not until she had a Martini in her hand. Sidney wanted to snap right back at her. She was a stuck up fool, incapable of seeing the irony of her request , but arguing meant losing precious time. Sidney conceded, and Judy got her trip of vodka, and nur shesed it in the back seat of the taxi that Sidney had flagged down. Judy clutched her drink in one gloved hand and tapped the cabby on the shoulder with the other . She instructed him to whisk her away to the doctor's hospital on East End Avenue and to fucking step on it Judy didn't slip into a coma in the back seat. Miraculously, her liver held out for the ride as she doused it with more alcohol, even more poison on top of the poison she was already packing. After she weakly sauered into the hospital, doctors drained twenty quarts of toxic fluids from her body. That's five gallons . Five gallons of poison swishing around in her body , inflating her limbs, her stomach, her face, every day for God knows how many months. As it turns out, Judy's liver had grown to four times its normal size . Undoubtedly the result of two plus decades of pill and alcohol abuse. Judy wilted in a hospital bed for nearly two months. The whispers, on the other hand, flourished. Judy Garland might not make it. Judy Garland had already performed her final show . But Judy's signature stubbornness resurfaced. After seven weeks she pulled through, perhaps if only despite the naysayers . When she regained her strength, the doctors shared one final earth shattering discovery . She would likely never perform again . After such a close brush with death, Judy was bound to live the rest of her life as a quote unquote semi invalid . The recommendation was that the only time she would appear on screens was for a rerun of the Wizard of Oz . Hey, at least it was a regular gig and the pre cable era The Wizard of Oz was broadcast on CBS at least once a year from nineteen fifty nine to nineteen ninety one . But the doctors underestimated her. Few performers had ever spent more hours on a set or stage than the great Judy Garlin. She was born to perform. This debacle was just a short lived setback . If anything was going to bring down the curtain on Juddy Garland , it would be the one constant in her life since age fourteen . Not movie sets, not stages. It would be the tablets of Seconol , Benzitrine , indexotrine . Oh my Okay , not so fun fact . Autoimmune skin conditions are actually on the rise . Cases are climbing nearly twenty percent every year . I know, terrible opener for a podcast ad. But here's the thing. I'm Holly Fry, and our skin exists precisely because of stats like that. Because more people than ever are living with conditions like psoriasis and hydrodinitis suprativa, and most of them are doing it alone, without answers, without community, without anyone to tell them what the heck is actually going on. You know, not that many people knew about it and I felt kind of alone like Am I an outcast? That's where we come in. We talk doctors. We talk appointments that are well, a disappointment. We talk about the flare up s and the breakthroughs. Then we dive deep into the wild, occasionally gross, always fascinating history of how humans have tried to understand our skin over the centuries Spoiler alert, we did not always get it right . Listen to season three of Our Skin, a Personal Discovery Podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Virgin Voyages presents with love from the Pacific . I didn't think cruising was my thing. Turns out I was right. This isn't that food that's cooked to order, music that carries you into sunset , and forgetting what day it is, on purpose, from Alaska's stunning views to warm nights along the Pacific coast in Mexico, this is cruising your way . Award winning kid free cruises from Virgin Voyages, now sailing from Los Angeles and Seattle. Explore sailings at Virginvoyages. com. Hey, what up y'all? Summer moves like a great jam session. You start with one idea, one direction, and then a ships, somebody calls. Energy changes. You take a detour. That's the beauty of it. For me, summer's always been about discovering new sounds, new places, new people, new ideas. You start one place, end up somewhere completely different. And somehow, that's exactly where you're supposed to be. I've always had my spots along the way. Starbucks has been one of those constants before session, on the way to a gig, and between conversations that turn into something bigger than you expected. It's part of that movement, part of that rhythm. The summer's got its own soundtrack too. You can almost hear it without trying. Life's happening all around you, that feeling of staying open to whatever's next. Sometimes it's the smallest things that lock you into that moment. What you're holding , what you're sipping, the new tropical butterfly refresher from Starbucks. Guava and Passion fruit flavors with mango pineapple flavored pearls. Cold, colorful, alive, feels like something made for the day that's still unfolding. And that's the thing. Sometimes one small stop changes the whole mood of your day. Start your summer rhythm with Starbucks. Try the new tropical butterfly refresher from Starbucks . Judy Garland felt it in her chest first. The delicate pitter powder of her heartbeat graduated to thumps , loud, pounding wallops that beat against her ribcage. Her heart pumped blood in deep throbs . Energy surged through her veins. She gasped and sat up in her chair. It must be showtime . Judy didn't know what time it was. She didn't know how long she had been knocked out either. She never knew much of anything when she jolted awake from the smog that washed over her brain, courtesy of a mighty dose of Nempital. Judy felt the speed course through her nerves, striking her limbs like bolts of lightning. She twirled one of her braids as she meandered back onto set . Munchkinland was gone. So were the literal thousands of quote unquote munchkins frolicking around in their glittery garb. MGM staff had apparently reset the scenery for the wizard of Ozhu while Judy dozed peacefully on the sidelines . So dead to the world you would have thought someone dropped a house on her. It was only natural then that another handful of diapills were required to kickstart Judy's spunk and prepare for the next scene. MGM dished out those diillset like p routine vitam ins . Back when Judy Garland first inked the contract with the studio in nineteen thirty five , she was a perfectly healthy thirteen year old with a taste for pistachio ice cream , but perfectly healthy just would n't do , not by the unattainable standards of the nineteen thirties , and ice cream wouldn't do either. The studio had strict orders from Louis B. Mayer himself. Groomed that girl and slimmer. The studio began a regiment of daily diaphelps for Judy, which she washed down with a bowl of chicken soup single day . Hot sticky broth in the dry California heat for lunch for dinner . Ch Ornistmas , it was practically torture , but it was torture that provided results, and Louis Mare was all about results. When Judy thinned out, the constant stream of soup and pills didn't slow down. A diminutive lady like figure was a top priority if you wanted to be in pictures. MGM liked Judy best when she was ninety eight pounds. No more , no less. So the regiment continued. The diet pills kept her upbeat and underweight, but they kept her wide awake at night too . MGM was unfazed. They had an easy solution for that, also in a pill form. She was already accustomed to taking a bunch of those every day , what were a few more. The studio doctor prescribed Judy a heavy dose at a second hal to help her quickly slip into her beauty sleep every night, essentially overpowering the pep of the diapils. The second hauls worked so well that Judy now needed to die of pills as she wanted some spring in her step on set. Less she succumbed to the coma like slumber than the second halfs provided her. It became, of course, a vicious cycle practically overnight. Judy needed downers to overpower the uppers. She reached for uppers to snap her out of the drowsiness provided by the downers . Up, down, up, down, a walking talking yoyo. MGM saw the cycle as so effective that they started using Nemvatal to coarse Judy's body into rest when a set needed to be changed in the middle of the sixteen hour days. If there were two or three hours to spare and Judy was wide eyed and jeeped up, that meant it was time to metaphorically trapez through some poppy fields on the way to Oz and pass out for a spell. When the set was prepped, the diet pills reanimated her and she was off to see the wizard once again. Judy lived the life of a nineteen seventies era rock star swinging between states of consciousness, each triggered by a prescription pill. She was hopeless ly hooked . But unlike the troubled rockers who pissed away their twenties and thirties with pills, Judy Garland was sixteen years old . Not to worry though. She'd be a full fledged fully grown superstar in no time . Judy was on the up and up , and so was her pill to take. Judy Garland's migraine pulsed so intensely that it almost aligned with her heartbeat. The stream of California sun peeking into her trailer pierced her vision like shrapnel. It cut to the core of her retinus pinched her brain . Judy snapped the blind shut and plopped onto her sofa, shielding her eyes from any extra light with her palm. She smeared a swath of face paint in the process. Ah, shit . Oh well, wardrobe could do it again after her lunch break. It was a ridiculous sight. A lily white woman dressed head to toe and a ph ony native American costume. The moccasins, the single red feather tucked between her brunette braids, white and yellow lines drawn down her nose as her cheeks. She was a gaudy caricature. Hollywood st'sereotypical ide a of what an entire race of people looked like. This was not how Annie Oakley, sharpshooter of the Wild West, dressed, but to the folks at MGM producing the film version of Annie Get Your Gun, it was imperative to include a massive and wildly racist musical number called I am an Indian two , horrific by twenty twenty two standards, but reprehensively normal in nineteen forty nine. As one of the heavy hitters at the box office and MGM's Golden Girl Next Door, Judy Garland was the obvious choice for the role of the titular markswoman. At least she was until it came time to film the movie. When it became obvious that Judy was very much the wrong choice . By the end of the nineteen forties, Judy Garland had filmed twenty seven movies in thirteen years with MGM. She was hooked on pills while she filmed every single one of them . Judy had already been in and out of rehabilitation centers, diagnosed with malnutrition and exhaustion. Her strict chicken soup diet expanded to include black coffee, benzodine, and four packs of cigarettes a day , required to curb the extreme hunger after working sixteen to eighteen hour days . While shooting the pirate just a year or so prior , Judy became so thin that MGM even asked her to gain weight. The diet pills were useless, even harmful now, but the withdrawals gnawed at Judy's acting abilities. She kept with her upers and downers routine just to spare herself the pain. A former U. S. Commissioner of Narcotics even suggest ed to MGM that Judy get a year of rest because of her severe drug problem. MGM scoffed at the notion. They had fourteen million dollars tied up in this woman. Judy wasn't going anywhere. You can say that the shit started to hit the fan when the camera started rolling for any gay gun. But truth was, the shit had been splattering all over MGM sets for years. This was just a breaking point, one of many to come over the course of Judy's career . Let's started with that migraine . The omnipresent stab wound between her eyes and her forehead and striking her brain and her skull simultaneously . The pain made it difficult for Judy to retain her lines, or the immense amount of coordination required to remain in step with the choreography for a complicated musical number. And then there was the Southern Drawl, or Judy's complete lack thereof. She struggled to pick up a convincing twing that would hide her crisp way of speaking . But the most glaring evidence that Judy Garland had been woefully misscast is that Judy Garland was afraid of guns. The movie's hero, out anlaw with a quick draw, was terrified to pull the trigger. MGM found a replacement before they wasted much more time trying to sell Judy as a rifle to a rough and tumble rascal of the wild west. A knock on Judy's trail er roused her from her position on the sofa. She dragged herself over to the door, telegram . Her eyes struggled to focus on the message. She squinted at the brief note. Don't bother to report back to work after lunch because you were dismissed from the picture, the telegram stated. Those rats. She crumpled the letter in her fist with disgust, tossed it on the floor and stomped on it with her tacky moccasins. The audacity dropped from a picture like a hapless husband or an underwhelming amateur. She was Judy Garland. She practically invented the great MGM musicals. What was Louis V. Mayer thinking ? Judy collapsed back onto the sofa with a huff. This wouldn't sit well with her fans, that much was for sure . So while the public and the press salivated over their so called scandals of Jewie's medical matters, she jetted to the east coast to try to pry herself from her pill popping yet again. She checked into the Peter Bent Bringham Hospital in Boston in May of nineteen forty nine. In place of the pills, the facility provided Judy with three hearty meals a day. Chicken soup was finally off the menu. Judy gained back her spirit and some healthy weight over the course of thirteen weeks . Right up until Louis B Meer closed his checkbook . He insisted that Judy return to Hollywood to film summer stock, MGM's next musical starring Judy and Jean Kelly. But according to the hospital staff, Judy still needed another three months of treatment to fully recover. Mayer dangled Judy's contract over a shredder SB. When Judy left the facility that summer, she left behind her hard earned personal growth too . As predicted, summer stock undid everything . The progress with the kicking of the pills, her health y new figure both gone instantly. Upon her arrival in California, MGM reeled at Judy's weight gain. The studio demanded that she drop fifteen pounds before the start of summer stock. Judy only managed to drop eleven pounds in seven days , a frightening medical feat, but a major disappointment for MGM, nonetheless. Boston had recharged Judy's battery, but barely, she suffered through SummerStar. She got happy when she needed a smile on set as the flick's famous musical number demanded, but Summerstock depleted Judy Garland. She was running on empty once again. And when she missed a handful of rehearsals for MGM's next picture, Royal Wedding, the studio gave Judy the boop before she had the chance to redeem herself . Another failed starring role, another telegram, and a final parting message from MGM straight from Western Union, You're fired this time for good . First, MGM suspended Judy's contract in June of nineteen fifty. They officially ripped it up in September . MGM offered her no severance pay. She had no retirement funds, no residuals, nowhere to turn from new film work , no directors to guide her through her next steps. Her career was in her own shaky hands now. For the first time since she was thirteen, Judy Garland on her own . We'll be right back after this word, word, word . Okay Okay , not so fun fact . Autoimmune skin conditions are actually on the rise . Cases are climbing nearly twenty percent every year I know , terrible opener for a podcast ad. But here's the thing. I'm Holly Fry, and our skin exists precisely because of stats like that . Because more people than ever are living with conditions like psoriasis and hydrodinitis suprativa, and most of them are doing it alone, without answers, without community, without anyone to tell them what the heck is actually going on. You know, not that many people knew about it and I felt kind of alone like am I an outcast? That's where we come in. We talk doctors. We talk appointments that are well a disappointment. We talk about the flare ups and the breakthroughs. Then we dive deep into the wild occ,asionally gross, always fascinating history of how humans have tried to understand our skin over the centuries. Spoiler alert, we did not always get it right. Listen to season three of our skin a person,al discovery podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts . Virgin Voyages presents with love from the Pacific . I didn't think cruising was my thing. Turns out, I was right. This isn't that. Food that's cooked to order, music that carries you into sunset, and forgetting what day it is, on purpose, from Alaska's stunning views to warm nights along the Pac ific coast in Mexico, this is cruising your way. Award winning kid free cruises from Virgin Voyages, now sailing from Los Angeles and Seattle. Explore sailings at Virginvoyages. com. Hey, what up y'all? Summer moves like a great jam session. You start with one idea, one direction, and then it shifts, somebody calls. Energy changes. You take a detour. That's the beauty of it. For me, summer's always been about discovering new sounds, new plac es, new people, new ideas. You start one place, end up somewhere completely different . And somehow, that's exactly where you're supposed to be. I've always had my spots along the way. Starbucks has been one of those constants. Before session, on the way to a gig, and between conversations that turn into something bigger than you expected. It's part of that movement, part of that rhythm. The summer's got its own soundtrack too. You can almost hear it without trying. Life's happening all around you, that feeling of staying open to whatever's next. Sometimes it's the smallest things that lock you into that moment. What you're holding, what you're sipping, the new tropical butterfly refresher from Starbucks Guava and Passion Fruit Flavors with Mango pineapple flavored pearls . Cold, colorful, alive , feels like something made for the day that's still unfolding. And that's the thing. Sometimes one small stop changes the whole mood of your day. Start your summer rhythm with Starbucks . Try the new tropical butterfly refresher from Starbucks . Judy G arland hunched over and placed both hands on her knees. She panted. The blue and white polka dotted kerchief knotted around her neck seemed to squeeze the air from her throat. Sweat soaked into her itchy nylon . Pins in her hair pulled at her scalp. Picture perfect updues weren't made to wear all day , not unless you were on set, of course. They then stayed in until the scene was picture perfect, literally. In this musical sequence for the song The Man The Get Away was far from it. From her crouched position, Judy slowly raised her eyes to director George Cukor, as if to say, Are we done yet? He shook his head. No , Judy almost collapsed , almost . But instead, she dabbed the beads of perspiration from her forehead and went back to her seat at the piano bench. Was this take twelve? Take twenty three ? Judy couldn't keep track if she tried, especially not over the course of three days, singing the same song for the same scene. She caught her breath at the piano and reset her mind, then her voice and then her face , and she did what the pros did. Judy Garland was still a pro , even if she wasn't making movies with MGM anymore. For one, Judy had already proven herself to the public hundreds of times over with her live perform ances of girl and catalog classics . Hundreds of thousands of tickets sold, almost a million. But could Judy still move movie tickets? That was the real question . You're only as good as your last picture. And Judy's last picture was, well, she got kicked out of her last picture. Royal wedding was a few years ago now. That's why her return to the screen had to be larger than life . Personal, musical, magical , intricately dotted with details about rising to celebrity status, influenced by Judy's very own story . It had to be a star is born. The nineteen thirty seven film starring Janet Gainer had been on Judy's mind for more than a decade. Judy had played the leading role of Vicki Lester in a nineteen forty two Luxe radio production of the story, but that was only audio. Judy yearned to bring her to life in a proper remake of a star was born, to depict two lives entangled in the nefarious nature of fame, as one lover rises to the height of celebrity, while the other sinks from standing ovations into obscurity . Since MGM was no longer forcing her to tap dance through mind numbing musical numbers, the project was a real possibility now. She switched studios and secured the rights to make a new version of a Star W was born witharner Bros. Judy could continue her career on her own. She could make a movie on her own, so to speak. Judy Garland could do the same scene, and I mean the same scene, same voice inflection, same facial express ion, same show girl poise twenty seven times over the course of the three days. Judy Garland could do anything if she had the proper pills. That was the caveat . It had always been the caveat. Nothing could keep Judy down, except a lack of pills. When filming for a star is born began, Judy's husband, Sidney created a compromise of sorts. He hired a studio doctor from MGM and was already familiar with Judy's medical history to oversee her pill and take over the course of the film shoot. At the time, it seemed like the most humane option. The work would still get done, Judy could focus. There would be no withdrawals to weaken her performance, and the doctor could ensure that her intake didn't escalate. Not that it could escalate, really. Pop upers and downers every day of your life from age fourteen and onwards in your to lerance will rocket over the rainbow. For months, Judy chased a new personal career high as she filtered her own life story through the explosive passion of the character of Vicki Lester. The pills powered her through an unhinged portrayal of a new starlet witnessing an older star crumble into ashes at the hand of alcoholism. Judy took her time developing her rendition of the story, giving it the care and attention to detail she knews it deserved , and the movie's final cut clocked in at just over three hours . But the film that the cult of Garland saw on opening night in September of nineteen fifty four was not the same film that the rest of the nation would see later that fall. With a runtime of one hundred eighty two minutes, movie theaters could only show the film three times per day , so they demanded a shorter cut, a cut that could show five times every day to sell more tickets and bring in more movie goers with more cash. Warner Brothers wanted to see more ticket sales too, since the film had cost them six million dollars , instead of the two and a half million dollars they originally budgeted for. The studio cut the film to one hundred minutes, removing almost half of the movie. The story was ruined. Judy's authentic, well developed drama was reduced to a shallow set of musical numbers. A star was born was considered a financial failure. It was a failure at controlling Judy's pill problem too . Sydney's heart was in the right place when he hired that studio doctor, but his common sense was not. Once the couple returned to their home in Bel Air just a stone's throw from a fellow Hollywood hot shots being Crosby and Lana Turner, he suspected things were worse than he could have ever imagined. Sidney realized at the moment he accepted a package from Sax Fifth Avenue, on Judy's behalf, of course . Under normal circumstances, a flush film star receiving an order from a high end clothing store might not raise any red flags. But Sydney knew that Judy wasn't on set anymore, where she could copy pills from almost anyone on payroll, even from the Masuse if she needed to. But now, Judy was home, and that meant she had to get crafty. Sidney unwrapped the package. He removed a flowing robe from the box, and rubbed the plush fabric between his fingers. That's when he felt it. A tuna capsule sewn into the lining. He ran his hands down the length of the robe