Judy Garland (10th
June 1922 to 22nd June 1967)
In July 2013 while on holiday
in London for a few days I walked from Hyde Park down into Chelsea. A short
walk away from the buzzing Sloane Square I found a quiet, short, cobbled
dead-end street with a few houses on it. It seemed a little sorry for itself
and I wasn’t sure I’d got the right place. Surely such a legend would rent
somewhere a little less threadbare? This was it though. I’d watched a short
television programme about Judy's pitiful death at a house here. I’d paused the
documentary and printed the screen when it showed the mews house where she’d
died. It was before me now. In the documentary it looked empty and unloved and
it didn’t look much better now.
I took a few photos. People sat outside a café on
the main road looked on and must have thought I was daft saluting away at the
camera but they probably didn’t know a legend’s life flickered out here.
In 1969 Judy was 47 and her health was
deteriorating. That year she’d done her last concert in Copenhagen and married
her fifth husband musician Mickey Deans around the corner at Chelsea Register
Office. They were renting this house on Cadogan Lane. On Saturday 21st
June 1969 they argued. Judy stormed out and – this being nothing new - her
husband went to bed. The next morning he took a telephone call for Judy but he
couldn’t find her. When he found the bathroom door was locked he assumed the
worse. Knowing what he’d find he climbed out on to the roof and looked into the
bathroom window. He saw Judy was sat on the toilet motionless. Her head was
slumped forward and her hands were on her knees. He climbed in through the window
and found blood had dribbled from her mouth and nose. She had been dead for
about eight hours.
At the inquest the coroner said the cause of
death was "an incautious self-overdose" as there was no solid
evidence to suggest suicide. The autopsy showed drugs had been ingested over a
long period of time rather than in a single dose. She was taken to New
York City where about 20,000 people lined the streets for hours to enter the
funeral chapel to pay their respects. After the funeral she was interred in a crypt
in the community mausoleum at Ferncliff Cemetery in New York. It was noted that
on the day Judy died a tremendous tornado tore through Kansas where Dorothy was
once blown away to Oz.
As I stood outside the dowdy house I wondered if
any of Judy’s three children had walked across these cobbles to see where their
mum died. There’s not much to see but it had been worth visiting to see where a
legend’s life tapered to an end.
In 2019 I visited again and found the original house had been
demolished and replaced (please scroll down the see the update.)
Update August 2019
I visited the house again in 2019. It had been demolished and replaced
but there was plaque outside. Three flutes for bouquets hadn't reaped a single
flower there but I'm not surprised as you'd only go up that street if you lived
there or knew about Judy.
I took a few photos from Pont Street and a man approached.
"Are you the man delivering 250 fat balls for birds?" he asked. No
made him walk away without a word. A bronzed couple on rented bikes stopped to
work out where Hyde Park was. They had American accents so I asked if they were
American or Canadian. Their bronze was from a Californian sun and they were on
holiday. As you can't get much more American than Elvis or Michael Jackson or
Judy Garland I pointed out the house where she'd died and they couldn't quite
believe it. "Aww, this surrre is meant to be isn't it?" the woman
said, "Us herrre and you herrre." I gave her my card and said she can
look up Ava Gardner's place of death. "In American you'd be what's called
a nerrrd," she said (I've been called much worse) and they set off not
heading in the direction of Hyde Park. They've been in touch since and I now
clog up their emails with my wordy newsletters every week or two.
The original house being
demolished...
