Rating: 
Summary: The closest Autobiography we will ever have!
Review: I can't believe some of the reviews I've read here. Obviously, if you only know Judy Garland from Oz or St. Louis, you have no business reading this book until you know more about her & her tortured life. I've read all of the books including Lorna Luft's very own & found this one to be by far the most honest, straight-forward, non-biased, truthful book available about Judy. It is NOT a book about her movie career - there are already many of those - it's a book about her sad & troubled life. My only complaint is that there weren't enough pix to reference to as the story was being told - I had to pull out some of my others to see what the author was describing. I have been a fan since I was very young, & when I heard this book was coming out, I could not wait. I have treasured each page I've read & it only makes me more sad that Judy's life had to end so soon & so many people had to miss out on all of her wonderful talents. Wouldn't it have been wonderful to see Judy at Oz's 50th Anniversary! If you love Judy & know of her troubled life, this book will fill your heart & make you miss her even more. Her death was totally & completely unnecessary & no one should ever have to suffer like Judy did - especially someone who provided so much happiness to those around her. We miss you Judy & this book brought you back to life for just a short while!
Rating: 
Summary: Awesome
Review: My mother bought this for herself and I actually read it first. I was born just two months before Judy Garland died and never knew much about her until now. I think Clarke did a great job in making her real to the reader and I was heartbroken when it got to the circumstances around her death! I felt like I'd gotten to know her! Excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating portrait
Review: I'm actually shocked to read some of the other negative reviews here. It's obvious there are a lot of fans who won't settle for anything less than a rosy, idealized portrait of their godess. I, on the other hand, thought it was a fantastic, well-rounded look at an extremely talented and complicated woman. Clarke obviously has great respect for his subject but does not treat Garland or her life with kid gloves. Ultimately, though I thought the book was compelling, full of insight on this woman who is almost mythic now, sympathetic and touching.
Rating: 
Summary: Judy Garland Does Deserve MUCH MORE THAN THIS!
Review: After hearing the author on the Today show promoting his book, I rushed to the local book store in great anticipation. After reading the book I just felt so depressed. This is not the way I felt after watching Dorothey or any other character she ever portrayed of film! Judy always rose to the occassion no matter what her personal situation was at the time! She pulled herself up bootstraps and gave us another burst of glory. This woman defines the word LEGEND and we should as Americans try to preserve this not tear it down. Unfortunatly this author seems only to tear our heart out with this filth that more than likely we all have but put behind us. I think it is time after being gone for over 30 years to Celebrate the life of An AMERICAN LEGEND and great person! Let's start today, just get one of her films on video and watch it, you'll see what I mean!
Rating:
Summary: Not a fan, so this is unbiased
Review: After hearing all the hype on this book it was a must read for bio enthusiasts like me, so although not a great fan of Garland (I can't name any other movies besides Oz, St. Louis and Easter, - oh, yeah. Star is Born) I decided to take it up. A very poor bio, indeed. The book is rampent with iffy sources, I especially love the 99 1/2 year old lady in the nursing home, but now deceased. A darling, I'm sure she was, but wholly unreliable. Other stories seemed just contrived to back up something the author believed or, rather, wanted to. Too many uncorroborated stories. Also, there is very little about her actual career and talents and the author is very obvioulsy no fan of Garland or her movies and songs. It is obvious this author just wanted the sleaze factor to permeate his work. Also, I love the way he tries to back himself up by quoting the classics. I've heard and seen interviews with author Clarke and he is very much taken with himself. His self-importance shines through more than Judy's life. My suggestion; don't bother.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Get Happy -- Get Mad!
Review: In the audio clip of Garland's "autobiography" tapes, she rails against the so-called "lies" being printed about her. She might have been looking 30 years into the future at the muck Gerald Clarke made of her life. Sadly, Garland herself propagated many of the lies Gerald Clarke trots out about her sexuality --tossing off quips at parties just to shock or get a laugh, clueless that her jokes would later spawn a cottage industry of salacious speculation about her sex life and her whole moral fabric. Might Garland's sexuality have been seriously damaged? Almost certainly. None of the kids who grew up on the movie lots with classmates Elizabeth Taylor and Lana Turner being touted as the sexual ideal came out with a remotely healthy body image and sexuality, and that includes Taylor and Turner themselves. It shouldn't take 10 years and 528 pages to figure that out. Clarke clearly takes those "autobiography" tapes as gospel, ignoring entirely that by the time she made them, Garland was often near-psychotic from the effects of the mega-doses of medications she was on, and probably no longer knew the truth about her own life. It hurt my heart to hear those tapes being played endlessly in news clips about the "new information on Judy Garland's life". I've read every bio of Garland to come down the pike. Only one seems to tell her story both honestly and compassionately, and that's Gerold Frank's JUDY. This latest travesty on Garland makes me hanker even more for Sid Luft's memories of this extraordinary woman and her staggering gift. He knew the woman behind the legend -- and the lies --as few others did. If you're a Garland fan who cares about Judy the person as well as the entertainer, don't Get Happy. Get MAD as hell that this latest trashing made it into print. If Amazon permitted, I'd give this no stars at all but a flying middle finger on Garland's behalf.
Rating:
Summary: Who? would be a better title
Review: Who gave all this info....many unsubtantiated claims, pure Hollywood trash. Judy deserves so much more than this author could ever properly detail. By the way the autobiography was disowned long, long ago by Judy and the tapes have been around for a while, a long while and are hardly illustrative of the true Garland persona.
Rating:
Summary: Lies! Why must most Judy biographers print the myth?
Review: I for one must say that I am dissapointed in this book. Can't anyone take a hint from John Fricke and print good material? We fans REALLY DON'T CARE to read the LIES printed here. All this just makes people who don't know much about Judy think that she was a terrible person who did horrible things. We LOVE Judy and we don't appreciate people who try to show her in the worst possible light. Look at the good things she's done, don't try to bog us down with bad.
Rating: 
Summary: Sexography
Review: Although I've never been a fan of Miss Garland, I think she deserves better than to have her rather vulgar and depraved sexual appetites so gratuitously depicted. Do we really need to know that she perceived sex as nothing more than an itch that just about anyone could scratch? Is a root cause of her singular unhappiness her inability to relate sex to love, romance, or even true passion? In addition, Mr. Clarke doesn't always make a whole lot of sense in discussing Miss Garland's sex life. He states, for example, that she wasn't a lesbian or a "bisexual" (whatever that is), but that she did have sex with women. Well, what better definition of lesbianism can one find than one woman having sex with another? It should also be noted that other students of Miss Garland's life disagree with Mr. Clarke's interpretation of her attitude toward sex . I've read that her interest in "The Act" was rather minimal, that what there was was sapphic, and that she was a fruitfly -- i.e., what little interest she showed in men was in homosexual men. Who knows? Nobody, really. And that's the point. On the plus side, this book is chock-full of other, more interesting, and better documented aspects of Miss Garland's life -- one both tragic and triumphant.
Rating:
Summary: Get Happy? Sure wish Judy could have done that....
Review: I have no idea why I wanted to read about Judy Garland's life again.
After reading Lorna Luft's ME AND MY SHADOWS, as well as various other tidbits over the years, I'd concluded that Judy's story is undoubtedly one of the most tragic and sad ever to come out of Hollywood. This book left me feeling no different, and I can't say that I necessarily learned anything particularly new or revelatory about Judy. Her life was spent under the control of so many others that her life just isn't all that interesting. All the problems she had have been so well reported that alot of what's here is just a rehash. As far as the sexual element to this book, even her daughter's bio made a few allusions to Judy's sexual appetite. Not a shock there.
In any event...I did find the book interesting enough to get through in about three days. All in all, the book is very personal, and alot of the sections with "iffy" proof are hard to swallow as reality. It just left me feeling so sad for this immensely talented woman, who deserved so much better for what she gave us than what she got.
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