Another moment of Show Biz History on the Game Show Network's rerunning of hoary but wonderful What's My Line? episodes. Last night, they ran the broadcast of 3/5/67, which featured two mystery guests. The first was Jacqueline Susann, authoress of the best-selling novel, Valley of the Dolls, which was (at that moment), "soon to be a major motion picture." Her appearance was probably a trade-off; that is, the game show took her in order to also get the second mystery guest, Judy Garland. Ms. Garland was then signed to play Helen Lawson in the movie — a humiliating role, some said, since the novel's ingenue (the role played in the film by Patty Duke) was partially based on Judy and her legendary struggles with drink and drugs.
Nevertheless, Garland accepted the part of the older singing star based sorta/kinda on Ethel Merman. The night of 3/5, she was in New York to attend the wedding of her daughter Liza to singer Peter Allen — gosh, how could that marriage not have worked? — and was soon to begin filming Valley of the Dolls.
What's My Line? producer Mark Goodson later described that night's episode as the closest they ever came to invoking the emergency, no-mystery-guest procedure, which was for him to fill that function. Garland showed up late for the live telecast, started drinking, then disappeared. Panicked, Goodson donned his tuxedo and was literally standing in the wings, chalk in hand, ready to enter as the mystery guest when Judy suddenly appeared. She was tipsy and Goodson briefly considered bumping her — but she barged on-stage and gave a performance that did little to counter anyone's image of her as unreliable and alcoholic. Just before she exited, discussing the upcoming film, she quipped that her character was the only one in the book who didn't drink or take pills. Ha-ha, very funny, what a great joke.
Less than two months after the game show appearance, Garland was fired from the movie after three days of non-productive filming. She died a little over two years later. It was, like the death of so many rock stars and folks like John Belushi, a death that surprised no one in the slightest. I'm not sure if those are more or less tragic than the ones that no one saw coming…