Rainbow's End: The Judy Garland Show - Hardcover

Sanders, Coyne Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688090885 ISBN 13: 9780688090883

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1990

Synopsis

Judy Garland was at the pinnacle of her career when she signed with CBS to star in a multimillion-dollar weekly television series. The Judy Garland Show immediately became the most exciting -- and explosive -- event of the 1963-64 television season, unleashing a storm of controversy that had still not ceased at the time of publication.

The Judy Garland Show seemed sabotaged from the very beginning and became a single-season casualty. CBS plunged the program into chaos -- tampering with its format, hiring and firing staff members, and refusing to move the series away from NBC's Bonanza, then the top-rated show on the air. At the same time, Garland was locked in a high-stakes power struggle among network executives, show staff members, an estranged husband, and her managers, Freddie Fields and a pre-Indecent Exposure David Begelman.

Lavishly illustrated with dozens of rare, previously unpublished photographs, Rainbow's End -- written by a former television news journalist -- draws upon candid interviews with nearly one hundred key people involved in the day-to-day production of the Garland series: intimates within her personal entourage, backstage crew members, CBS insiders, choreographers, dancers, writers, producers, directors, and series regular Jerry Van Dyke, along with Norman Jewison, George Schlatter, Gary Smith, Mort Lindsey, and Bob Mackie.

Many of the great talents who appeared on the show share in this book their affectionate and often humorous reminiscences. Here also are Judy's three children, Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft, and Joseph Luft, who offer their loving, intimate, and uniquely insightful memories of The Judy Garland Show in rich detail for the first time.

Rainbow's End is the extraordinary on-camera and behind-the-scenes saga of the singer's last dazzling moment at the top that was The Judy Garland Show -- a so-called television "failure" that in later years was "rediscovered" and lauded with tremendous critical and popular acclaim.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The last major effort of Judy Garland's career was the Judy Garland Show , which aired on CBS for 26 weeks in 1963-64. Its commercial failure has often been attributed to the star's insecurity, her problems with substance abuse, and her difficulty in dealing with the pressures of producing a weekly series. In this well-researched, objective work, TV journalist Sanders portrays Garland as a demanding individual but blames the network for the show's demise. He describes network infighting and monumental ego battles and provides almost minute-by-minute details of how each show was put together. Garland fans will appreciate Sanders's senstive yet straightforward treatment of this troubled superstar--and look forward with interest to the release of the shows on videotape. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

This Garland book carves out a niche for itself in the mass of material about the singer with a specialized focus on her 1963-64 television series. Sanders, a former editor for The Hollywood Reporter , interviewed many Garland contemporaries and gleaned information from detailed fan publications to create an inside look at how a talented entertainer was forced into an inappropriate weekly format against Bonanza 's established Sunday time slot. The appendix has complete rundowns of each show: guests, songs and sketches, date taped, date aired, etc. For libraries with hard-core Garland fans or an interest in television/entertainment history.
- Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0688090885
• ISBN 13: 9780688090883
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416