Margaret O’Brien’s mother protected her from becoming another Judy Garland

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Mama O’Brien looked after her own.

Hollywood icon Margaret O’Brien says she didn’t suffer the same fate many of her peers — mainly because of her tough-as-nails mother.

The former child actress, now 84, has only glowing memories of her time spent growing up on the MGM lot during the studio’s heyday, now that she’s one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

“I was very fortunate to have a mother that spoke up to [studio head]) Louis B. Mayer,” O’Brien tells Page Six. “I think Judy [Garland]’s mother was afraid to speak up and didn’t really speak as she should have for Judy.”

She adds, “I’m not saying anything out of turn because Judy mentioned that about her mother.”

O’Brien is probably best remembered for playing Judy Garland’s precocious little sister, Tootie, in the classic musical, “Meet Me in St. Louis.” The role even netted her a special Juvenile Academy Award as outstanding child actress of 1944.

But her industry experience was markedly different from “The Wizard of Oz” star, who was constantly harassed about her weight by studio execs and even forced to take amphetamines and barbiturates to lose weight and work grueling hours.

“When I came to the studio that was all taken away,” O’Brien says. “The school teachers were on the lot, there were no pills, no diet pills or anything like that when I came in.”

“Unfortunately just before that, they didn’t know how bad diet pills would be for you,” she continued.

O’Brien won a special Academy Award for her role as Tootie in the MGM musical. Bettmann Archive

Garland struggled with drug addiction and alcoholism the rest of her life and died of an accidental overdose in 1969 at the age of 47.

Also unlike other child stars, O’Brien wasn’t pushed into Hollywood by an overbearing stage — her breakthrough came as more or less an accident.

“The Canterville Ghost” star explained that her mother — who was widowed months after her daughter’s birth — was a famous Spanish dancer. While appearing in a show with Rita Hayworth’s father, she needed headshots and, left without a babysitter, took along her then-2-year-old daughter and their dog to the appointment.

O’Brien thought she would be scared of Charles Laughton but adored working with him on “The Canterville Ghost.” Courtesy Everett Collection

The photographer, the renowned Paul Hesse, took a liking to their dog and photographed him for an upcoming cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

“He said, ‘The baby’s not bad either, she’s kind of cute,’ and we made the cover,” O’Brien explained, noting that she and the family pooch posed for seven more covers. Those were seen by MGM scouts which resulted in a bit part in the Mickey Rooney film “Babes on Broadway” and, subsequently, a seven-year contract with the studio.

Miraculously, O’Brien has no sordid tales of being harassed, unlike Shirley Temple, who recounted in her autobiography that on her first visit to MGM as a 12-year-old, one of the studio’s top producers, Arthur Freed, unzipped his pants and exposed himself, saying, “I have something made just for you.”

O’Brien says she and her mother traveled all over the world together. Corbis via Getty Images

“I never had any issues,” O’Brien said. “My mother was very pretty, she had a Dolores Del Rio look. Louis B. Mayer loved that kind of look, he was trying to be very nice because my mother was very pretty. In fact, he did ask her to marry him one time but she said, ‘Absolutely not! You are not my type.’

“She could speak up and he would listen to her. She was almost like a suffragette in the 40s. She was ambitious but not overly ambitious. If I didn’t want to do something she would go to Mr. Mayer and say, ‘My child has worked hard, I’m not taking her to that.’ She was very conscientious but very aware that I should have enjoyment in my childhood.”

Enjoy it she did: O’Brien says that Garland was “like a big sister” on the “Meet Me In St. Louis” set.

O’Brien says that the “Meet Me In St. Louis” cast got along famously. Everett Collection / Everett Col

“She was so sweet, this was a very happy time for her because she was working with [director] Vincent Minnelli who didn’t overwork her; we would have regular hours,” she remembered. “She loved doing that movie. She thought she looked the prettiest in that movie than any other movie and of course, she was falling in love with Vincent [whom she would later marry].”

O’Brien also has fond memories of the 1949 version of “Little Women” that starred June Allyson, Janet Leigh, and Elizabeth Taylor.

O’Brien says that she stayed in touch with her “Little Women” costars. Courtesy Everett Collection

“We all kept in touch. Janet was one of the sweetest people in the world, she never said a bad word about anybody,” she gushed, “and Elizabeth was really more of a tomboy. She loved riding horses and she loved all her animals.”

The only star that O’Brien didn’t enjoy working with? Academy Award-winner Wallace Beery, who would pinch her on set.

O’Brien hated working with the infamous curmudgeon Wallace Beery. Everett Collection / Everett Col

“We were filming in the wilds of Wyoming because he had a ranch up there,” O’Brien recalled. “The children were given hot food and he would come and steal my hot food — when he had his own kitchen!”

“As a little girl nothing bothered me,” she added, “but my mother would take the food back and say, ‘You stop that Mr. Beery!’”

Even her lost-Oscar story sounds like the plotline of an MGM movie.

O’Brien relates that back in 1954, a maid took her statuette home to clean. Shortly after, her mother died, and in the aftermath, O’Brien forgot about her Oscar for months. By then, the maid had moved, leaving no forwarding address and the Oscar seemingly lost forever.

But in 1995 it resurfaced at a flea market, where it was bought by two memorabilia collectors, who then sold it to an auction house. The executive of the Academy found out about its existence from a catalog and had it returned.

O’Brien was thrilled to have her Oscar returned after nearly fifty years. Ron Galella Collection via Getty

In February 1995, nearly fifty years after it went missing, the Academy held a special ceremony to formally return the award to O’Brien, who gleefully noted she’s the only actor to have two ceremonies for the same award.

The “Secret Garden” star eventually married twice, had a daughter and has steadily kept acting on television and the stage.

Looking back, “I really enjoyed it and it gave me a wonderful life,” she says simply.

Liza Minnelli, the one and only

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“Sunday Morning” caught up with Liza Minnelli where she’s most at home … at the piano with Michael Feinstein, and a tune by George and Ira Gershwin:

“Embrace me,

my sweet embraceable you…”

Singer Liza Minnelli, accompanied by her longtime friend Michael Feinstein, performs for “Sunday Morning.” CBS News

Still the one and only Liza, yet even now, uncertain of her own immeasurable gifts.

“Sunday Morning” anchor Jane Pauley asked her, “Do you recognize that you have achieved the status of legend?”

“No, I have to be told a lot,” Minnelli replied. “Like, I keep saying to Michael, ‘Is that all right?’ I had great people around me. The biggest thing I got was to recognize somebody else’s talent.”

No one knows Liza like Feinstein, her best friend and confidante. She said, “I mean, we met each other and we were joined at the hip.”

Feinstein said of Minnelli, “You understand human nature better than almost anyone I know … I think that’s one of the extraordinary things about her. I think that’s why she’s a great artist, because she’s able to channel a fundamental understanding of the human condition into her art.”

It takes talent, tenacity, and originality to become a star. But the great ones have an undefinable something that endures. And Minnelli had it from the start.

Liza Minnelli performs “Mein Herr” in the 1972 film “Cabaret”:

She won her first Tony in her teens, for “Flora, the Red Menace” … and both an Oscar and an Emmy in a single year! The Grammy “Legend Award” made it an EGOT grand slam.

Fame was practically her birthright. She was just a toddler when she appeared with her mother Judy Garland in the movie musical “In the Good Old Summertime.”

“I thought my mother was perfect, perfect. Every little thing she did,” Minnelli said. “But my father – there was no one in the world like my father, and I’m so much like him.”

Film director Vincente Minnelli was a Hollywood giant in his day. Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Kay Thompson were literally household names. “I grew up around all of these wonderful people,” Minnelli said, “and yet, my parents always said to me, ‘No, you’re your own. There’s nobody like you.’”

At 17, she began to see it herself.

Liza Minnelli, at 17, rehearsing a dance number from “Best Foot Forward,” in 1963. The Broadway revival also featured a young Christopher Walken. Bettmann/Getty Images

“I remember my first gig was in a show called ‘Best Foot Forward,’ Off-Broadway, and I mean Off Broadway, right? I don’t know, I just knew then that from the minute I walked onstage, I wasn’t me. I was the person that I knew so much about, because I had thought so much about her habits, about her thoughts.”

And then in November 1964, at London’s famed Palladium, Judy Garland filled the house, but her teenage daughter was a revelation … And not just to the audience.

“My mom was my mom. You know, other people think of her as Judy Garland. That’s Mama. If I get frightened, I’d look at her, and she would somehow know, and she would calm me down. Just by her look.”

Judy Garland died five years later, four months before the premiere of “The Sterile Cuckoo,” in 1969, Minnelli’s Oscar-nominated performance at age 23. She performed this scene in one take:

“I knew that character so well and I really tried to get that part, and thank God I did,” Minnelli said.

In 1972, she shifted into a higher orbit, and credits a Frenchman. “Charles Aznavour changed my life. He changed my entire life.”

Aznavour, who some call the greatest entertainer of the 20th century, taught her how to deliver a song.

“Because I wasn’t a good singer. I was not,” Minnelli said. “And I knew, because my mom was the best in the world. But I went to see Charles Aznavour, and he sang a song, but it wasn’t his voice that got me. What got me was why he was singing it. I just thought, ‘That’s what I wanna do!’ He told that story through the song.”

Azenvour even helped shape her Oscar-winning performance in Bob Fosse’s film version of “Cabaret.”

Pauley said, “I love that thing you [did with your hands].”

“I did it, I learned it from Aznavour,” Minnelli said.

Fosse noticed, too. She recalled: “And I did that, and he went, [SLAPS KNEE]. I thought, ‘Ooh, it’s good! Maybe I can add something to it that he’ll like even more.’ And that’s where that came from.”

Fosse also directed TV’s “Liza With a Z.” Dressed by Halston, and wearing that iconic pixie cut, she brought the house down.

Pauley asked, “At the end of it, the show is over, and there’s a shot offstage now, and the look on your face is, it’s uncertain, it’s not happy, it’s not joyful … I don’t know what it is?”

“It’s usually – and I say it to Michael – we go off, and we’re just in the mood, and everything, and we’ll stop and I’ll say, ‘Was I all right?’ It’s that simple: Was I all right?”

If she was born to the spotlights, there was the dark side, too, following her mother down the road to addiction. There were also failed marriages and miscarriages, all captured by the prying eye of the paparazzi.

Minnelli is currently working with Feinstein as executive producer of an upcoming album called “Gershwin Country,” and producing his new tour, celebrating Judy Garland’s 100th birthday this year.

At 75, Liza Minnelli doesn’t perform in public that often, so this is something special …

WEB EXTRA: Liza Minnelli and Michael Feinstein perform “I Love a Violin”:

“When I’m singing to an audience, I’m not singing to an audience, I’m singing to you,” she said. “What I wanna say to the audience is, ‘Have you ever felt like this? ‘Cause it’s what I’m going through now.’ I just want people to know I’ve been through what they’ve been through.”

For more info:

Follow Liza Minnelli on Instagram

“Gershwin Country” featuring Michael Feinstein (Craft Records), available March 1

Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Steven Tyler.

Rufus Wainwright to Bring Judy Garland 100th Birthday Concerts to City Winery

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Rufus Wainwright will celebrate Judy Garland’s 100th birthday with a special series of concerts at City Winery in New York and Chicago this June.

Rufus Does Judy at City Winery in New York will take place June 5, 7, 8, and 10; the Chicago shows will be June 16 and 17. There will be two concerts per night which, in total, will re-create the entirety of the Judy at Carnegie Hall album. Early shows will take viewers from “When You’re Smiling” to “San Francisco,” while late shows will go from “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” to “Chicago.” There will be additional suprise numbers during both sets.

Wainwright will have a four-piece band that includes Mark Hummel (musical director on keys), Pete Donovan (bass), Brian Koonin (guitar), and Steve Bartosik (drums). All guests are required to be vaccinated, and masks are required throughout the building.

For more information and tickets, click here.

How old was Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz?

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Judy Garland was only 17 years old in her breakout role in The Wizard of Oz, a role that set the tragic trajectory of her life in motion.

Overview

Judy Garland is a legendary and iconic actress, whose rise to fame took place in the 1930s. This is despite her early introduction to the world of entertainment as part of the sister vaudeville act, Gumm Sisters, when she was just two-and-half years old.

Her breakout role was as the title character, Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. A film that is still as popular and relevant as it was when it was first released back in 1939. When she landed the role she was 16 years old, and at the time of the film’s release she was 17 years old.

Judy Garland’s early life

Born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, Judy Garland was the youngest of three girls. She and her sisters followed in the footsteps of their vaudeville professional parents as the Gumm Sisters, under the direction of their mother and manager, Ethel.

The Gumm Sisters had some early success from appearing in several short films after moving to California in 1926. In 1934, the Gumm Sisters transformed to the Garland Sisters, seeking a more Hollywood name. Judy, who at the time was referred to as Baby Gumm, ditched the “Baby” for a more mature “Judy.”

How old was Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz?

Even as part of the Garland Sisters, Judy was already tapped as the star between her and her sisters. Therefore, when she eventually did sign with MGM in 1935, a year after the Gumm Sisters changed their name to the Garland Sisters, her star quality was undeniable.

However, after signing with MGM, the studio tried to position her as “the girl next door.” This resulted in her needing to have her teeth capped in order to fit the image better.

In the years that would follow, she debuted her first song, Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart. Additionally, she featured in films such as Pigskin Parade in 1936, and Love Finds Andy Hardy in 1938, which are both roles Judy landed after her father died from spinal meningitis. It was when she was 16 in 1939 that she would land the role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, which she shot when she was 17.

Judy Garland’s life as part of MGM

While she enjoyed global stardom following the release of The Wizard of Oz, which propelled to legendary status at an early age, the realities of being a signed talent at MGM would affect the young star’s life. A reality which would impact her until her untimely death.

Whenever Judy would be filming, the studio would give her barbiturates for energy, and amphetamines to combat the hyper-active effects. Judy was also on a strict diet and given tobacco to suppress her weight in order to maintain her girl-next-door young look. During this period, these drugs were not illegal, hence the popularity and common use by film studios.

Judy Garland suspended by MGM

In the years that followed, while she was still under contract, Judy Garland worked on other musicals including Strike Up the Band in 1940, 1942’s Babes of Broadway, that marked her reuniting with fellow childhood co-star Mickey Rooney, and For Me and My Gal in 1943, which she did with film icon Gene Kelly.

In 1950, following the birth of her first child, Judy suffered a nervous breakdown and was subsequently suspended from her contract with MGM. However, by then her dependency on the addictive prescription drugs had already caused irrevocable damage to Judy.

Judy Garland’s untimely death

In 1951, Judy Garland began to work on reviving her career. She starred in her own Broadway show that won her a Tony award, and she also had played the lead role in an iconic film that has inspired multiple remakes, A Star Is Born in 1954.

In the 1960s, a career pivot took place, as she was more popular as a singer than as an actress following the release of her Grammy winning album, Judy at Carnegie Hall.

Thereafter, she had a successful run as a talk host for the Judy Show from 1963 until 1964. However, at the time of her death in June 1969 due to an overdose of pills, she was in financial troubles and already looked unhealthy in appearance.

Conclusion

Judy Garland’s rise to fame, like many that came before and after her, read as a cautionary tale of the less glamorous realities of being a star of the early 1900s in Hollywood. This is as after finding global stardom, she died due to addiction brought on by the studio she signed to.

After finding success at the age of 17 years old as Dorothy on The Wizard of Oz, the years of MCM prescribing highly addictive toxins and a rigorous death of tobacco to suppress her appetite resulted in her addiction. Judy would die in 1969 due to an overdose of pills in London.

Robert Allan Ackerman, Director of ‘The Reagans’ and ‘Life With Judy Garland,’ Dies at 77

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Robert Allan Ackerman, a director of film, TV and theater known for his work on the TV movie “The Reagans” and the miniseries “Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows,” has died. He was 77.

Ackerman died peacefully on Monday, Jan. 10, a rep announced Thursday.

Ackerman was a five-time Emmy nominee and two-time Golden Globe nominee. In his career he worked extensively with talent on screen and on stage such as Al Pacino, Ann Bancroft, Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Richard Gere, Richard Chamberlain, John Malkovich, Victor Garber, Farrah Fawcett, Kirstie Alley and Judy Davis.

“I love Bob. I loved being around him, his aurora, his steady peace,” Pacino said in a statement remembering Ackerman. “To work with him was joyous. He understood the language of theater art and communicated it with such ease. His gift was intangible and there’s no way of understanding how he created. When an artist has that special gift it is unexplainable, it just happens. When he stopped directing, he started writing again and his writing also had that same magic. He will be missed.”

Ackerman started his directing career in the late 1970s for the New York Shakespeare Festival and Public Theatre, directing several of Thomas Babe’s original works. Into the ’80s he directed Broadway productions of Martin Sherman’s “Bent,” starring Richard Gere and David Dukes, “Slab Boys” with Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Val Kilmer, and “Extremities” starring Susan Sarandon. He’d later direct Peter Allen in “Legs Diamond” and Pacino in Oscar Wilde’s “Salome.”

He would re-team with Sarandon for the 1994 film “Safe Passage,” as well as transition to other film and long-form TV projects. In 2001 he directed “Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows” starring Judy Davis and Victor Garber, which netted him a DGA Award and Emmy nomination, among others. He’d earn his second Emmy nomination for “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone” starring Anne Bancroft and Helen Mirren.

In 2003 he directed a TV movie intended for CBS called “The Reagans” starring James Brolin and Davis, but a month before the film was to air, the film was caught in controversy when conservatives criticized the portrayal of the Reagan family and felt what was intended to be a love story of Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan was too overtly political. Much of the criticism however was aimed at scenes from a leaked script that were edited, changed or did not make it into the final film, but the TV movie ultimately aired on Showtime rather than on CBS. Despite the controversy, Ackerman still received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Made for Television Movie.

Robert Allan Ackerman’s son Nicholas, who was a bassist for the New York rock band The Virgins, died in 2017. Ackerman is survived by his sister Suzanne Ackerman and his niece Jennifer Lehman Cashman.