{"id":32760,"date":"2013-06-10T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T15:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/?p=32760"},"modified":"2013-06-09T21:50:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-10T04:50:46","slug":"top-ten-judy-garland-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/top-ten-judy-garland-films\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Ten: Judy Garland Films"},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/span>hen I was younger, I went through a phase of wanting to celebrate my favorite stars’ birthdays by watching their movies. The only one I managed to very successfully was Judy Garland, whose birthday on June 10th I celebrated with marathon viewings several years in a row. To this day, June 10th never comes around with me thinking of Judy, one of the greatest entertainers of all time. At this point, I’ve seen all but a handful of her films, so let’s use Flickchart to see what my favorites are.<\/p>\n

Flickchart<\/a> is a movie ranking website that pits two random films against each other and asks you to choose which one is better, meanwhile building a list of your favorite films. I rank according to what I like the best, prioritizing personal preferences and emotional connections, so my Flickchart is in no way meant to be objective.<\/em><\/p>\n

10 – Ziegfeld Follies<\/em> (1946)<\/h4>\n

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In the 1940s, several of the studios had such impressive arrays of talent under contract that they liked to do films that basically just showcased them all. Musicals were great ways to do this, since they could just cram in musical numbers featuring different people. Ostensibly a recreation of the Follies<\/em> of Broadway fame, and starring William Powell reprising his role as Ziegfeld from 1936’s The Great Ziegfeld<\/em> in a very thin frame device, this is really just a series of sketches and musical numbers with no connecting material whatsoever. It’s a revue, pure and simple, something that never really caught on in film, despite a few attempts in the late 1920s. So calling this “a Judy Garland film” is a bit of a stretch, since she appears in one sketch and that’s it. But she’s pretty hilarious in it, and I do enjoy the movie as a whole, which is a pretty great excuse for a lot of solid singing and dancing, and some fair to middling comedy. Garland’s bit is “A Great Lady Gives an Interview,” a pastiche on an actress who thinks she’s all that (the role was apparently supposed to go to Greer Garson in a bit of self-parody, but I guess it hit a little too close to home and she refused to do it). It’s over the top, but Garland seems to be having a ball with it.<\/p>\n