Judy: The tragic story of how Hollywood killed its greatest star

In one of Garland’s own quotes, David Lister finds her best epitaph: ‘In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people’

Garland was a star of the moment, as well as of memory (Alamy)

Some of those who went to see Judy Garland perform in London at the end of the Sixties came back marvelling. Partly, of course, they marvelled at the performance, the star still exuding charisma, the voice still full of emotion and longing, hitting the listener in the gut. But partly, too, they marvelled at what they saw in the audience. Grown men were crying.

The reason for that was that Judy Garland was not just a star of the moment. She was a memory, a memory of joy in a difficult and dangerous time. The Sixties, despite being thought of as an era in which everything was new, was still in touching distance of the Second World War. People who were middle-aged then had lived through the War. And it was during the War that the movies which featured Garland as their child star cheered up and gave hope to a generation.

She was – on screen – the epitome of innocence, exuberance, optimism, mixed with vulnerability and longing (most particularly, of course, in The Wizard of Oz in 1939) and with an incomparable voice to match. When she sang “Over the Rainbow”, one has to imagine now how that put a much-needed spring in the step of an audience also dreaming that there was a better world just over the rainbow.