Rating: 
Summary: Not a happy book!
Review: For most people, the name Judy Garland brings up images of her most famous role as the cute pig-tailed, blue-checked dressed Dorothy Gale from "Wizard of Oz." But in real life, Judy Garland led a tortured, somewhat miserable life. While most of her miseries where of her own making, there were plenty of others who were glad to help lend to her tribulations along the way.The world will never know how Judy Garland might have been in her elder years, but in my mind we at least have the privilege of knowing how she was when she was at her best. If only she could have forgotten all her troubles and gotten happy. This new biography is frank and startling. Be prepared not to get happy reading it.
Rating:
Summary: A Train Wreck of a Life
Review: My major complaint about "Get Happy" is the author's odd decision to include so few photos with his text. The ones included don't illustrate the story very well - we want to SEE the main players in Garland's life, including all of her husbands. Judy does not come across as a likeable woman. She is spoiled, difficult, resolutely drug addicted, and unreliable. Yet Clarke lets us sympathize and understand the reasons for her temperment. Her family life was a disaster, MGM did its best to make her chronically insecure, and her astounding talent was never enough to make her like much about herself. Her questionable taste in men (Minelli wore makeup; Sid Luft was a bully and a thug, most of them were undeniably gay)makes on wonder. Not as good as Clarke's book on Capote, but Garland fans will find it fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: Miss Misery
Review: I am in quandry about rating this book; I probably would've given it more stars if I'd enjoyed the subject more. Judy Garland is one of the most depressing subjects I have ever read about, this coming from someone who enjoyed reading about Bloody Mary. While Judy Garland appeared to give much joy through her music, she seemed to give much more misery to those around her. And it's hard to get my head around the idea of a person trying to commit suicide on almost a daily basis. While the author does show where Miss Garland was psychologically & physically abused (through the use of drugs), at some point she was clearly responsible for her actions. One can only sympathize with her three children and marvel that they survived childhood at all. I wanted to like this book, and did feel compelled to finish it, but it was like watching a bad car accident.
Rating: 
Summary: If only ...
Review: The drawback with biographies of favourite people is that the reader knows how it all ends before beginning. So I approached this book with trepidation - preparing to be depressed. I was not disappointed. For Judy, there were glorious highs - and lows that would have decimated most people although Judy "recovered" from all but the last. This book is an amalgam of previously published resources and new information including the author's interviews and Judy's own autobiographical musing and ranting into a tape recorder for a book that never was. The book is sometimes disconcerting as it jumps back and forth through the years, sometimes pedantic, and told this reader more that I wanted to know about Judy's sex life. (I hope I can forget the one encounter involving the song or my enjoyment of her singing "Over the Rainbow" will be forever diminished.) As the author says: "More than any other stimulus, [music] awakens sleeping memories." The author, while casting aspersions on Judy's mother and Louis B. Meyer & the MGM system for starting Judy on pills and yo-yo dieting , himself seems fixated with Judy's constantly fluctuating weight. There is a picture on page 346 of a bloatedly ill Judy that one would think would do more to motivate dieters and fitness wannabes more than any exhortations by Richard Simmons or Sarah Fergason. Just put a copy of that picture on your freezer door - you won't want to reach in to grab Haagen-Daz! When Judy was "on" she was brilliant. The author points out that for most of her life "In those days, there were no drugs to fight depression - the first antidepressant, Iproniazid, did not come on to the market until 1957." Later in the book, he speculates that Judy was "probably bi-polar." How different could it have been if only ...
Rating:
Summary: What About the Concert Years
Review: The book was excellent. In fact I didn't find it sensation in the least. The facts are layed out so matter of factly that if I wasn't interested in the story, I would have found the book dull. Much, much better than that awful Lorna Luff book who still can't get over the fact that she'll never be as good as her mother or sister.
Rating:
Summary: WORTH THE PRICE
Review: Growing up as a child of the 50's, my experience with Ms. Garland began with "Wizard of Oz." It would be hard to explain, effectively, to my son the wonder of finally seeing that picture in color on TV. Similarly, opening this book was the same. I was mesmerized from the opening page to the end. I know that sordid parts appeared glamourized but to suffer through them I learned a lot about Ms. Garland's life that otherwise I could not obtain in such a concise manner. Love it or hate it, the education provided within this book is awesome - not only explaining her toils, but giving an accurate depiction of life as a MGM slave/star.
Rating: 
Summary: Deja vu
Review: Try "Get Original," Clarke. I was so dumbfounded by the cover could hardly open the book. The author used the very same photo as the first edition of John Fricke's Judy Garland: World's Greatest Entertainer. He even mirrored Fricke's layout. When I first saw it, I thought that (terrific) book had been released with the original cover again. Hmmm. What might this suggest? Perhaps we should pull out all our Judy bios and see if any of the text from any of them is a mirror image, too...
Rating: 
Summary: Get Happy
Review: Only being 16 years of age, and still in love with the innocence that Judy seemed to portray in The Wizard Of Oz, I was shocked by the detail of Judy's sex life, although, not at all dissapointed. Respect still in tact, I finished the book and learned from Judy, and I actually trying to hope that history would somehow change just for me and she wouldnt die at such a young age. It is a tragic story, from her mom's loveless raising to her father's homosexuality, to her desire to be wanted, and not to be Louis Mayer's "Little Hunchback". I enjoyed it through and through and learned much about life's hardships.
Rating:
Summary: I'd prefer to give it NO STARS--the photos aren't even new!
Review: Anyone who appreciates Garland's genius and its incredibly long-lived legacy would do well to stay away from this short-sighted and sensationalistic book. How someone who purports to have spent 10 years "researching" one of the world's most legendary women could have contrived such an uninsightful and ill-informed rehash defies explanation. Mr. Clarke seems never to have taken a moment from "uncovering" lurid details to have bothered noticing (much less understanding) the joy and sheer magic Garland brought to her work or the overwhelming pride and love she shared with her family. Get happy indeed! *Those who want to learn about the TRUE Garland legacy--its triumphs and failures--should read the inestimable WORLD'S GREATEST ENTERTAINER by John Fricke or RAINBOW'S END by Steven Sanders. Or watch the wonderful A&E Biography special. And for in-depth and insightful looks at her personal life, read the works by Gerald Frank, Christopher Finch, and Lorna Luft. Better still, spend a few hours watching one of her films or the JUDY GARLAND SHOW DVDs. Or listen to JUDY AT CARNEGIE HALL. That's all the proof you'll need to know that Garland's life had very little to do with the grand tragedy Clarke imagines it to have been.
Rating:
Summary: Get Happy
Review: The thing I found troubling about this book was the fact that many stories the author started to tell never seem to go anywhere or they were so trivial why write about them? I didn't hate the book I just found it to be pretty superficial. If you want to read a great book about Judy read Gerold Frank's JUDY.
| 
