Albert Poland

PRODUCER

Your remarkable stage career includes the 2005 revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” the 2003 revival of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Tommy Tune Atop the Village Gate and much more. But in a way it begins with Judy Garland.

Yes, I was 16 when I met Judy Garland and, on that first meeting, I gave her a bootleg copy of the “Annie Get Your Gun” movie soundtrack. I don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway, she opened the present, looked at the soundtrack and said, “Oh … I wasn’t ‘available’ for that one. Available? I was fired.”  That could have gone very badly. But I knew her for many, many years until I just couldn’t know her anymore. 

What is your take on Judy Garland’s relatively brief involvement with the movie version of Valley of the Dolls? 

Judy had such instincts about roles. When MGM struck her in Annie Get Your Gun, Judy had Ethel Merman’s voice in mind. Judy sang the songs flatly, without that famous vibrato. It didn’t work at all. And she looked awful. She looked butch. I showed the outtakes from Annie Get Your Gun to a couple of lesbians and I swear they were ovulating just looking at her. Judy knew she was wrong for it and had to get out of doing that movie.

So you think Judy Garland also knew she had to get out of playing Helen Lawson?

If you ask me, Judy Garland was offered the role in Valley of the Dolls to buy her off. The character of Neely O’Hara was so obviously patterned after her that they were willing to pay her the $100,000 and gain all that publicity. She just went through the motions. I don’t think she ever intended to do it. I don’t think Fox ever intended her to do it. I don’t think the buy-off was ever articulated by either party, just quietly understood by both parties.

She didn’t like anything about it. She hated the Dolls songs the Previns had written. I mean, “I’ll Plant My Own Tree”?  Really?  She told all of her close associates, “The Previns don’t know how to write for me.” When Mel Torme got fired as musical arranger for The Judy Garland Show, Judy got Bobby Cole, the jazz singer, pianist, composer and arranger, hired in his place. They were very close. So Bobby wrote her a song especially for the character of Helen Lawson to sing called “Get Off Looking Good.” The lyrics basically say that if they’re shoving you off the stage because they think you’re too old or too whatever, at least quit with style and looking great. I could imagine that she asked Cole to write it to bring reality to the illusion she was going to do the movie. The song was touching, perfect for her, and sounded like a Judy Garland song. She sang it a capella with Bobby at the Palace while wearing the Helen Lawson costume. She looked this Lazarus figure rising up on stage. She brought the house down singing it, too. 

You earlier said you knew Judy Garland until you couldn’t know her anymore.

The last time I saw her was In 1967, after the whole Valley of the Dolls affair. I’d gotten a 90-day option from Lotte Lenya to do The Threepenny Opera starring Judy for a road tour leading to a possible Broadway production. I got permission from Lenya to give Judy’s character the songs “Mack the Knife” and “How to Survive.”  I hadn’t told Judy anything about this and, in fact, I’d been trying to find her for a while and couldn’t. One night, I was at Jilly’s on West 52nd, where Bobby Cole was the house pianist and he was playing that night. Judy just happened to show up with [Judy’s onetime fiancé] Tom Green and I joined them for a few minutes. She was so incoherent that I never even bothered to bring up The Threepenny Opera. It obviously would have been impossible for her to do it. That was it.