TJGS Episode 12: The One Where Judy Gets Touched...A Lot

By episode 12 the edict was out.  Judy was not to touch her guests.  People who saw her being so affectionate thought it made her look nervous and didn't like Judy kissing her female guests on the cheek in greeting.  Of course, this is ridiculous, and I for one never thought that the affection Judy displayed indicated that she was nervous, but that she was attempting to calm the nerves of others.  At any rate, Judy later commented how funny it was that on the episode where she worked so hard not to touch the guest stars, they were reaching out to touch her. 

Garland had gotten very close to Zina over the week's time and was thrilled to have Vic Damone as a guest star as she was a great admirer of his talent.  He would appear on the show twice more, and each time they would perform a wonderful medley of Broadway hits.  They started of with a medley from Porgy and Bess that is really pretty wonderful.  They look so comfortable and the notes!  The notes are so passionate and full and vibrant.

The highlight of the show, to my mind, was not actually filmed in the same week.  It was taped much earlier and inserted into this week.  It's the "Tea For Two" segment with George Jessel.  Jessel had been a gigantic name in show business back in the thirties, and Judy makes sure he has the chance to have all the focus again.  She's so obviously delighted to have him with her, so gracious to him.  And for his part, he's still very quick witted and funny.  He does most of the talking, which I frankly think is nice.  I know Judy's a great story teller, and yet, these segments could have done a lot more to highlight and lift up the guest star than they do.  This is the best "Tea" segment ever (just ignore Goerge's story of how he named Judy.  Yes, he gave her the last name Garland, but Judy had named herself).  And Judy sings an amazing snippet of "Bill" that I wish she'd sung as a complete number.  Still, tossed off like this makes it seem so natural and conversational.  It packed a lot of power.

 

 

This is definitely not a notable episode, but it is pleasant, and quite funny to hear Vic Damone sing "And oh the towering feeling!" as he stands high on fork lift, which is then lowered to the ground by a little blonde pigtailed girl.  Talk about literal... 

Second Looks

Tonight's the night I am watching and blogging about episode 12, in my usually brilliant fashion.  But I have to admit, I'm really saddened by the death of Zina Bethune and the tragic way her life ended.  Learning about it has made me want to dig deeper into who she was in her time here.  Is that weird?  Death does that sometimes, though.  It can endow someone with more "depth", more poetry than what we might have initially given them in our passing thoughts.  But once you know something like that, the thought of how their life ended sticks around, altering the way you think of them.  At least until we can see beyond it and focus on the truth of who they were as a person.  But unless you take those extra looks at a person's life it can be so easy to judge them by the way their life ended.

Is it fair?  Is it fair to judge the whole of a person's life by the way it ends?  Or should we judge it based on the highs it reaches, by the moments when it reached its potential and impacted lives through the understanding of and fulfillment of its life purpose.  I think that's the way it should be.  Because in so many ways, for so many people, the end is so random, just an odd act of God, or nature, or whatever you want to call it. 

Working with the elderly has also made me think and rethink the many ways life ends.  For example,  I met this wonderful little owl like woman who lived in a room, very comfortably at a pretty exclusive home for the elderly.  She spent a lot of her time tucked in a little lazy boy, watching televison, ocassionally getting out to play bingo... She had these two beautiful paintings on the wall of her room, one of herself from when she was a young woman in the fifties, and next to it a young man, presumably her husband.  And there was something so beautiful and poignant about the way they were cherished and still displayed with such pride.

Do we judge her life by its end?  This very peaceful slowing down, which is relatively solitary compared to much of her early days, cared for by people who begin as strangers, but grow to love and respect her, because of her dear personality and spark of life?  Well...why not?  It certainly doesn't tell the whole story, but a lovely soul like that, her life slowly winding down, but still affecting people in many small ways, it's pretty telling of the kind of life she lived up to that point.

And Zina?  She died protecting an injured creature, and you can't say that doesn't speak to something.  You can't say that doesn't tell you what a caring soul she was to stop and pay attention to a little wounded soul.  Look a little deeper and you discover that when she left acting she went back to her passion for ballet and up until the end of her life was teaching disabled children how to find joy in dancing. 

It's funny, because all you have to do, with anyone really, is stop and pay attention.  Look at them from a slightly different angle.  You don't even have to force it, make yourself find a new way of looking at them.  You really just have to be open to other possible explanations of that person and not "why they are the way they are" (that's so pious and patronizing) but who they are.  I guarantee that they are more than you have been allowing them to be.  And if you are open to it, life will present you with not just one, but a handful of ways to them in a new way.  You just have to be prepared to be wrong. 

 

A Brief Hiatus

Well, I fucked up.  I didn't blog last night.  And do you want to know who did it to me?  Zina.  Zina Bethune, formerly of the CBS series "Nurses".  She was one of the guest stars of episode 12, and friends...I just couldn't do it.  She was dear, very sweet, adorable even to some, I'm sure.  But she was such a wildly inappropriate guest, such an obvious ploy for ratings, and she tries SO HARD!!  You can see the nerves bubbling up out of her skin like little pimples. It would have been fine if she were on a daytime talk show, or a night time chat show, but on a variety show that you would hope requires a little experience and talent?  She doesn't cut it, and I couldn't make it through.  I tried, but then someone texted, and my modern mind wandered and before you knew it, I was asleep. 

So why not tonight?  Why couldn't I post tonight?  I hung out with a  good friend of mine, had a couple of drinks, and...

But tomorrow I will do it.  Tomorrow I will finish the episode, although, as you can already guess, it won't be a particularly fun post that results from it.  ZINA BETHUNE???
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Ok.  Cue the raging guilt. Zina Bethune has passed on.  I got curious and looked her up on-line, and found the following on Wikipedia: "On February 12, 2012, Bethune was killed in an apparent hit-and-run accident while she was trying to help an injured opossum in Griffith Park, Los Angeles. She was five days shy of her 67th birthday."

How awful.  She really is sweet on the show, and I'm sure if I'd met her in person I would have loved her.  She obviously cared for animals, even really unattractive ones.