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Get Happy! star Debbie Saloman |
A star is re-born… as Garland Gets Happy in Debbie’s show
AGED just 23, Debbie Saloman is incredibly young to be filling the shoes of a Hollywood legend.
But the writer and performer – whose one-woman show about the life and music of Judy Garland is playing at the King’s Head theatre in Upper Street, Islington, to packed houses – is unfazed by her youth.
Her Get Happy! production began life as a final-year university piece two years ago. It has since grown into a stage show which aims to set the record straight about the singer.
Ms Saloman, who lives part of the time at her boyfriend’s pub, The Mucky Pup, in Queen’s Head Street, Angel, and the rest at her parents’ home in Walthamstow, is on a one-woman crusade to redefine the legacy of the star of The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me in St Louis.
“Judy Garland is often portrayed in the media as pill-popping and miserable – it’s always ‘that poor woman’ – but she wasn’t like that at all,” she said. “Everybody who actually knew her said she was happy, loving and really funny. People need to be reminded of her talent and her fantastic sense of humour.”
Debbie was four when she first saw Garland in the film Easter Parade. “I was smitten,” she said. “Every time I went round to my nana’s house I’d demand to watch it. I used to sing like her to make my nana laugh.”
Later, in her final year at Salford University in Manchester, her performing arts course offered a choice: she could either write a 25,000-word thesis or put on a show. Get Happy! was the result.
Set in the early 1960s, after Garland’s near-fatal bout of hepatitis, the show finds the singer recovering in London, having been told she would never sing again.
Using anecdotes and Garland’s own witticisms, she recreates the period before and after the star’s triumphant return to the stage at the London Palladium.
Garland’s life was filled with tragedy. She had a string of failed marriages (five in total), a history of suicide attempts and a drug dependency problem.
She died at the age of 47, from an overdose of prescription medication.
Debbie’s celebration of the star has won plaudits everywhere, from theatres and weddings to drag clubs and Gay Pride events.
She has even sung with Garland’s pianist, Robert “Denny” Termer.
Now that she has spent so much time with Judy, does Debbie find herself growing into the character? “Well, we’re both short but I haven’t been married,” she laughs. “When Judy was my age she’d already had two husbands. I’d really liked to have met her though – you’d have had a great night out with Judy.” |
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