I Could Go On Singing (1963)

In her final film, Judy Garland lights up the screen with a "vibrant, vital performance" (New York Herald Tribune) as a singer torn between her career and motherhood. Co-starring Dirk Bogarde,this powerful and touching film boasts "excellent direction, winning vocal numbers" (The Film Daily) and the "incandescent magic" (The Hollywood Reporter) of one of Hollywood's brightest stars at her sensational best. When celebrated singer Jenny Bowman (Garland) asks her ex-lover David (Bogarde) to let her see their son, Matt, she is unprepared for the emotional consequences. Though Matt doesn't even know Jenny is his mother, their growing bond will force Jenny to make the most difficult choice of her life: between the rewards of motherhood, and the glamorous life of the stage.

A CLASSIC film for us Garland fans

"I could go on Singing"is like watching a reality movie.Alot of the film was method acting,and Garland re-wrote alot of the script.The last scene when she's being told she MUST GO OUT and PERFORM,and says,"The hell with them.I'm tired of being treaded like a piece of meat"
I could see why this movie wasn't at hit,but for a Garland fan,its a CLASSIC.
Judy was ridding a HUGE comeback in the 60's,with her Carnigie Hall performace,and 4 grammy awards for her #1Live album,and Oscar nomanation,and TV show,there was no stopping her.
I probally have seen this movie 10times,and still enjoy it.
December 22, 2008

Judy's last film

The reviewers here run the gamut -- some praise ICGOS as some of Judy's finest work; others are dismissive of her efforts and the film as a whole. It's true that the parallels between Jenny Bowman and Judy Garland are legion. Both were performers who understood their audience and their fans, who were loved by many, but still couldn't always come through for them.

I've read that the shoot was difficult...that Judy left town the moment shooting was done allowing no retakes and that they literally used every frame they had of her in the final film.

Yes, the film is melodramatic at times and yes, Yip Harburg let her down with the lyrics in the title song, but this film does provide some beautiful imagery of Judy in concert and gives us the closest approximation to what that was like. (Yes, her TV show is excellent, too, but that's in B&W video as opposed to full color here.)

The other songs were great. Her on-screen rendition of BY MYSELF, IT NEVER WAS YOU and HELLO BLUEBIRD are all superb and truly capture a great performer in concert. Even I COULD GO ON SINGING (the song) has a great message of hope and perseverance, if one can look beyond all the barnyard metaphors.

Judy was only 40 years old when they shot this film and it's really too bad that it marked the end of her film career. But, there's a heaviness and a weariness in her whole persona by then that makes her seem much older -- even if you can't place why. It's the sum total of how she was by the early 1960s -- and this was in a period that she was relatively healthy after convalescing in London for most of 1960 and then returning to the concert stage in 1961 in the fantastic tour which included her date with destiny at Carnegie Hall. She had also completed 3 other films just prior to this -- her Oscar-nominated turn in JUDGMENT AT NUREMBURG, a b&w drama for John Cassavettes, A CHILD IS WAITING and her first and only animated feature, GAY PURREE. She even did another television special for CBS which led to her series the following year. It was a level of professional activity she'd not seen since her MGM days.

Had she been healthier and not such a risk for the studios, she could have spent the 1950s and 1960s continuing to do great work on the movie screens, where she belonged. Alas, we'll never have ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, THE BARKELEYS OF BROADWAY or a host of other roles for which she should have and would have been considered (Mama Rose in the film version of GYPSY, for instance, or for the film version of Mame -- she was about 12 years younger than Lucille Ball!) Heck, think about it, had her life played out differently and had she been a healthy 45-year-old, she could have played Dolly Levi! Those are the coulda, woulda, shoulda lists -- almost unimaginable except to think about only in the most abstract ways had Judy been in good health and taken better care of herself from the 1940s onward.

I guess I'd rate this as something you must see if you call yourself a Judy Garland fan. She rises to the occasion and offers up the goods -- both in the on-stage musical numbers and in the very personal and up-close dramatic scenes. But, the film itself can't quite get out of its own way long enough to endure as much of anything beyond "Judy's last film." But for many of us, well, that's enough. November 22, 2008

"I Could Go On Singing"--The Best Judy Garland Film

To choose the best film of Judy Garland's stunning career--from the beginning of her juvenilia in 1936 to "I Could Go On Singing;" shooting finished in 1962, released in 1963; is a stiff assignment--but not for me. "I Could Go On Singing" would be my choice as her best film because of her perfection as an adult actress capable of acting the many difficult emotional settings in this film to reveal the character and to touch the audience with her dilemas. Her character believably faces her past, present, and future along with the various other characters in the film who must face them, too.

"I Could Go On Singing" was filmed after Miss Garland's historic "Carnegie Hall Concert" (1961), whose recording has never gone out of print. "I Could Go On Singing" was finished just before she began to work on the finest variety, or any other type of, television program that was ever broadcast on American television: "The Judy Garland Show" (1963-1964). "I Could Go On Singing" itself provided all the justification ever needed, artistically, for her to continue to make such fine adult, engrossing, dramatic films. However, she was never given another chance.

The innovative subject matter of "I Could Go On Singing," controversial, dealt with a popular singer who had, when younger, given her recently born son to its father, to whom she was not married, a London doctor, so that he could raise the baby because she was not able to manage both motherhood and marriage to the father of the child and, at the same time, to continue to attain her fast-approaching stardom. As the film begins, years later, Miss Garland's character returns to London to meet again the father of her son and to meet her son himself, now an adolescent.

Miss Garland received some of the best movie reviews of her career for "I Could Go On Singing." Later, the film was shown on television in December of 1967. Forty years old when it was filmed, Miss Garland was in some of her finest years, both as a singer and actress. Also, the film is an appropriate testament to her because, very unfortunately, she died barely six years after "I Could Go On Singing" was released.

Miss Garland's role as Jenny Bowman, the singer, allowed her to express the emotional turmoil of her character as a 1) mother who had never known her son until this trip to London which is 2) part of her ongoing and successful career as a star on European tour while 3) she had already realized that she had always loved the father of her child, especially because of two subsequent, and failed, marriages, and that 4) she still wants very much to marry the doctor and to establish herself with him and their son in the family she had not been able to institute when he was born.

Miss Garland's accomplishments in performing all these, and other, facets of her role were due to her relying on her own life to play the character's, like all great actresses, but she never played herself despite some similarities with her own life in the script of the film.

The poignant and highly layered hospital scene with Mr. Dirk Bogarde, who plays her former lover, puts Miss Garland to an emotionally difficult test as an actress and she succeeds. In fact, according to the director, Mr. Ronald Neame, in his autobiography, "From the Horse's Mouth" (2002), this was a "nonphysical love scene" where "Judy became so personally involved that the words took on a special meaning for her far beyond the character as written [by the scriptwriter]." In fact, Miss Garland and Mr. Bogard rewrote the dialogue for that hospital scene on the set because they had never liked the script's characterizations. Although they were both offered screen writing credit for it, neither accepted.

Although somewhat comparable to the Mr. George Cukor directed solo that Miss Garland achieved in "A Star Is Born" (1954), the hospital scene in "I Could Go On Singing" is, impressively, much less bathetic, and because of it, is utterly believable dramatically, as Jenny Bowman reveals her continued love for the doctor. Mr. Dirk Bogarde, with moving delivery and stage economy, reveals his own continued and deep love for her.

At end, I still think that the determined character of Jenny Bowman, as portrayed by Judy Garland, could and would, make her dream of love and family come true which would result in the utter happiness of Jenny Bowman, the doctor, and their son. Jenny would then be the wife and mother; the doctor would then be her husband, and their son would then be in his destined, and now whole, family.

Judy Garland played Miss Bowman as extremely persuasive, charming, seductive, likeable, and, unfailingly, persistent. After all, that is how how Jenny Bowman got to be the star she always wanted to be and deserved to be. Now, with the another chance to have the man she always wanted as her husband and to have her son restored to her in the family she found out subsequently would be her greatest happiness, Jenny Bowman would never give up on her dream without all her effort to make this dream come true and she would achieve it because this is what they all wanted, very evidently, in the film, especially Jenny.

I have given the DVD of "I Could Go On Singing" very often for gifts. I have been told by those who received it, "I never knew Judy Garland made a film like this. You never see such a good film like this today!"

### July 1, 2008

sad, sadder, saddest

What a shame this was the last movie Garland made and the 1st one singing on screen since "A Star Is Born". A paycheck is a paycheck,and so Judy needed the money. The parts are very miscast, the story line embarressing. "BlueBird" and "By Myself, Alone- shine. The title song- a joke. Lorna and Joey Luft appear on screen as over interested extras on a boat. Judy deserved better and the Oscar for "A Star Is Born" April 7, 2008

the lady still has it

"I Could Go on Singing" warrants most of the criticism & praise it's received - over-the-top soap opera with Garland edgy & brimming, her voice spilling over the lines like a none-too-carefully-wielded crayon in a coloring book, but the colors are vivid and the pleasures here are significant - even if they come more from incidentals than the central meat. Garland was just so SMART, innately: her intelligence and wit inform many lovely little asides and inflections - her speaking voice insinuates & encompasses with the musical dark flush of a viola. She's great to watch - even if the film itself is a pretty hoary flapping affair. However varying the quality of the material or its expression, you can't take your eyes off her. December 21, 2007

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