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her humble, barefoot beginnings. During a staged press conference, “the glamorous, amorous lady” sings the praises of her forthcoming biopic, “Madame Crematante”—a paean to the inventor of the safety pin.
    Upon hearing the piece, which one critic would later pronounce “as wholesome as a slug of absinthe,” Garson demurred. It was just as well, as by now the musical content of the sketch required the services of a legitimate showstopper. Enter Judy Garland. As Arthur Freed noted, “Judy loved doing sophisticated parts like ‘The Interview’ sequence . . . but mind you, that particular number was not one of her biggest successes, except with a certain group.” Of course, the group that Freed was referring to was the most fanatical and fiercely devoted component of Judy’s fan base—the gay men who were instrumental in forming the Garland cult. As biographer Christopher Finch observed, “Hard core Garland aficionados swooned over Madame Crematon [ sic ]. This was the Judy they had hoped for, the Judy of their most cherished dreams—a camp Madonna.” 6
    Film historian David Ehrenstein recalled attending a screening of Ziegfeld Follies at a Greenwich Village retro house, and as the title card announcing Garland’s sequence appeared, the audience became especially attentive. “I remember there were these two guys sitting next to me and one of them said to the other, ‘Okay, here comes “The National Anthem.”’ It’s hilarious and it’s deeply hip at the same time. . . . There’s this wonderful combination of intense sophistication and naiveté of material in the Freed Unit musicals.” 7 And more than a touch of lavender. The handsome newsboys who receive Our Lady of Culver City on bended knee and dance into the star’s sanctuary, linked arm in arm, could be charter members of Garland’s own fan club.
    Dancer Bert May, who plays one of the reporters in Garland’s sketch, made one of his first film appearances in Ziegfeld Follies : “I was only a teenager
and here I am in a movie with Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Judy—I like to say I started at the top and worked my way down.” ab May remembered that it was actually Chuck Walters who staged and choreographed Garland’s “Interview.” Though Walters had carefully planned the sequence, Freed decided that Minnelli should shoot it. “Every bit of action in that number was mine. I almost cried,” Walters revealed. 8 It wouldn’t be the last time that Minnelli and Walters would “collaborate” on a picture.
    Vincente and Judy were reunited for “The Interview”—but only while the cameras were rolling. After Meet Me in St. Louis , there had been a romantic detour. “Judy had left me,” Minnelli remembered. “She’d been seeing another man before we started going together. He was tortured and complicated and very much the intellectual. She simply gravitated back to him.” Of course, the deep-thinker in question was Joe Mankiewicz. Minnelli may have worshipped Garland’s star quality, but Mankiewicz was able to completely relate to Judy as a woman: “I remember her as I would an emotion, a mood, an emotional experience that is an event.” 9

    The Clock : Minnelli directs Garland in MGM’s version of Central Park, 1944. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST

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    Dada, Dali, and Technicolor
    AS MARRIAGE RUMORS SWIRLED, Minnelli began preparing his next film, Yolanda and the Thief . This would be a lavish musical based on a whimsical fable by Madeline creator Ludwig Bemelmans and Jacques Thery that had appeared in the July 1943 issue of Town and Country . The story concerns a slick swindler who sets his sights on an outlandishly wealthy but spiritually attuned heiress. The con man gets closer to Yolanda’s fortune by posing as her guardian angel. In some ways, the plot resembled Fred Astaire’s “This Heart of Mine” vignette from Ziegfeld Follies , and that sequence may have given Freed the idea to cast Astaire as Yolanda ’s suave