Judy Garland’s Last Film
Ronald Neame directed Judy Garland’s last motion picture, ‘I Could Go On Singing’ in 1963. While it’s not a great film, 'I Could Go On Singing’ did have some electrifying moments - when Judy was on stage and what I consider to be one of the greatest continual scenes of all time, the emergency room scene.
The character she played, Jenny Bowman, was clearly based on Garland herself, a troubled singer with substance abuse problems and an erratic personal life that spills over into her professional life.
The on-stage scenes were filmed at the London Palladium, sight of one of Garland’s most thrilling triumphs. "3 stars...Judy Garland is back on screen in a role that might have been custom-tailored for her particular talents. A new song, I Could Go On Singing, provides her with a little clowning, a chance to be gay, a time for wistfulness, an occasion for tears. She and Dirk Bogarde play wonderfully well together, even though the script itself insists on their being mismatched..." - Dorothy Masters, The New York Daily News
In this interview, Ronald Neame talks about the struggles of working with Garland who apparently wasn’t easy to work with, but then that was her reputation at the time.
From the BBC obituary of the director in 2010: Ronnie Neame needed all his experience in dealing with Judy Garland whose last movie, I Could Go On Singing, he directed. "When she liked me, which was half the time, she called me 'Pussycat'", he recalled. "Then she'd come on the set in a filthy mood, having been missing for three days, and try to have me fired."
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Here’s that emotional emergency room scene:
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Ronnie Neame directed The Prime of Jean Brodie, Scrooge, The Odessa File, and The Poseidon Adventure.
