Miss Show Business

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On Saturday September 24, 1955, Judy Garland starred in her first television special on the CBS network, inaugurating The Ford Star Jubilee. The live 90-minute program featured several other acts, qualifying it as a variety show, but it was really a Garland showcase. The 33-year-old entertainer had been major film star and carved out a second career as a concert performer. The Ford Star Jubilee gave a national audience a chance to find out what all the fuss at the London Palladium and the Palace had been about; Garland re-created much of her stage show. Two days after the broadcast, Capitol Records released Miss Show Business, which, while not billed as a soundtrack to the TV program, featured studio recordings of much the same group of songs. Roger Edens, who had been working with Garland since the start of her movie career, penned considerable special material, including the opening choral number, "This Is the Time of the Evening," and lengthy musical introductions to the two major set pieces, a movie medley and "Judy at the Palace," a medley of vaudeville songs; his adaptation of the traditional song "A Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow," which Garland had sung in the 1940 film Little Nellie Kelly, was also included. The medleys are a good indication of the sources of the music: either Garland was singing songs from the movies, most of them from her movies, or she was reviving vaudeville songs, many of them associated with Al Jolson. This was the repertoire she had been performing in concert to great acclaim for several years. It all concluded with an overwrought rendition of her signature song, "Over the Rainbow," on which she was sobbing by the end. This made for an affecting performance that deservedly became a big seller. ~ William Ruhlmann