Release calendarTop 250 moviesMost popular moviesBrowse movies by genreTop box officeShowtimes & ticketsMovie newsIndia movie spotlight
    What's on TV & streamingTop 250 TV showsMost popular TV showsBrowse TV shows by genreTV news
    What to watchLatest trailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb SpotlightFamily entertainment guideIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsEmmysToronto Int'l Film FestivalHispanic Heritage MonthIMDb Stars to WatchSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll events
    Born todayMost popular celebsCelebrity news
    Help centerContributor zonePolls
For industry professionals
  • Language
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Watchlist
Sign in
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Use app
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
  • FAQ
IMDbPro

I Could Go on Singing

  • 1963
  • Approved
  • 1h 40m
IMDb RATING
6.9/10
1.8K
YOUR RATING
Judy Garland and Dirk Bogarde in I Could Go on Singing (1963)
Jenny Bowman is a successful singer who visits David Donne to see her son Matt again, spending a few glorious days with him while his father is away in Rome in an attempt to attain the family that she never had.
Play trailer3:47
1 Video
26 Photos
DramaMusic

Jenny Bowman is a successful singer who visits David Donne to see her son Matt again, spending a few glorious days with him while his father is away in Rome in an attempt to attain the famil... Read allJenny Bowman is a successful singer who visits David Donne to see her son Matt again, spending a few glorious days with him while his father is away in Rome in an attempt to attain the family that she never had.Jenny Bowman is a successful singer who visits David Donne to see her son Matt again, spending a few glorious days with him while his father is away in Rome in an attempt to attain the family that she never had.

  • Director
    • Ronald Neame
  • Writers
    • Robert Dozier
    • Mayo Simon
    • Dirk Bogarde
  • Stars
    • Judy Garland
    • Dirk Bogarde
    • Jack Klugman
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.9/10
    1.8K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Ronald Neame
    • Writers
      • Robert Dozier
      • Mayo Simon
      • Dirk Bogarde
    • Stars
      • Judy Garland
      • Dirk Bogarde
      • Jack Klugman
    • 53User reviews
    • 15Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Videos1

    Trailer
    Trailer 3:47
    Trailer

    Photos26

    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster
    + 20
    View Poster

    Top cast68

    Edit
    Judy Garland
    Judy Garland
    • Jenny Bowman
    Dirk Bogarde
    Dirk Bogarde
    • David Donne
    Jack Klugman
    Jack Klugman
    • George
    Aline MacMahon
    Aline MacMahon
    • Ida
    Gregory Phillips
    • Matt
    Russell Waters
    • Reynolds
    Pauline Jameson
    Pauline Jameson
    • Miss Plimpton
    Jeremy Burnham
    Jeremy Burnham
    • Young Hospital Doctor
    Eric Woodburn
    • Verger
    Robert Rietty
    Robert Rietty
    • Palladium Stage Manager
    Gerald Sim
    Gerald Sim
    • Joe - Assistant Mgr. at the Palladium
    David Lee
    • Pianist
    Leon Cortez
    • The Busker
    Al Paul
    • Al Paul - Jenny's Makeup Artist
    Frazer Hines
    Frazer Hines
    • Schoolboy
    Jack Arrow
    • Backstage Parent
    • (uncredited)
    • …
    Sheila Aza
    • HMS Pinafore Audience
    • (uncredited)
    • …
    Hyma Beckley
    • Theatre Audience
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Ronald Neame
    • Writers
      • Robert Dozier
      • Mayo Simon
      • Dirk Bogarde
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews53

    6.91.8K
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10

    Featured reviews

    7ptb-8

    a good film.

    I had never seen this film until tonight (Feb 2008) and have never been a Judy Garland 'fan', even though I am aware of her life and genuinely admire and champion films like THE PIRATE and A STAR IS BORN; so it came as quite a surprise to me to see this 1962 Brit production in Cinemascope get quite bad reviews and be regarded as 'not a success'. In fact the Variety review of the time is particularly mean spirited. I thought Garland was excellent and natural, the production values while a bit cheap offer great stage scenes and Dirk Bogarde plays a believable past lover. It is rare to see adult Garland play opposite a teenage boy as she does in this strong film and those scenes are particularly moving. I COULD GO ON SINGING is a very satisfying film, and the British setting, the Palladium scenes and the teen drama well achieved and resolved. It is very disappointing to see the bad reviews or the carping when this film is clearly well intentioned, particularly to Garland's career in 1962. No wonder it was her last film, she probable felt kicked in the teeth again like in 1954 after A STAR IS BORN. As a 'formal drama' in a British style, it fits and succeeds. I guess if you also like STAR! and the theatrical movies of this type you will admire this film, as I do. In 2008 this film is quite a time capsule of era production and Garland, and for that we should be grateful.
    leslieadams

    Fine Film Legacy . . .

    . . . to a great artist: Judy Garland. At the end of her fabulous, unparalleled career, Garland made this swansong. Under-appreciated at the time of its release, it now grows in stature, like fine wine aging.

    Medical experts warned Judy would never sing again in the early fifties before she made the astonishing "A Star is Born." Then she went on to her historic national concert tours, and fifteen years after "Star" she made "I Could Go on Singing."

    Defying all predictions about her career, Garland triumphed. True, it wasn't easy, for her or her fellow actors and crew. Somehow, though, she just kept bouncing back, overcoming the most formidable obstacles.

    Here she's supported by an excellent cast headed by Dirk Bogard in a very strong performance. Ronald Neame's direction is on-target, though the script is a bit uneven. Yet the film is looking better and better, and viewers are growing in their appreciation of this legacy of one of the 20th century's most talented and beloved artists.
    Doylenf

    Overlooked dramatic musical is a triumph for Garland and Bogarde...

    Judy Garland and Dirk Bogarde provide proof in I COULD GO ON SINGING that they could match each other for sheer power and intensity as far as their performing skills go. Although the film is obviously meant to capitalize on Garland's legend as a temperamental actress/singer with a devoted following, it is Dirk Bogarde's finest hour too. He never once fails to come to grips with what is sometimes an unsympathetic portrayal of a man caught up in a desperate love/hate relationship with a woman who bore his illegitimate teen-age son--and now has designs on getting him back. That's the plot, in a nutshell, and if it weren't for the power of the Bogarde/Garland performances--and some genuinely nice supporting work from Jack Klugman, Aline MacMahon and the boy (Gregory Phillips)--it all might have added up to a hill of beans.

    Credit goes to a sincere, straightforward screenplay with some tart dialogue for Judy that sounds as if it came from her own true life experiences. Indeed, there are backstage stories that Judy and Dirk worked on the screenplay to tighten the emotional force of the drama and punch up the lines a bit--and if so, they have succeeded brilliantly.

    Not only entertaining as a dramatic showcase for Miss Garland, it is also highly recommended for the musical interludes during which she performs at the London Palladium in great arrangements of material like "Hello, Bluebird!", "By Myself" and "I Could Go On Singing", among other melodies, all in full control of her "vibrato in search of a voice" equipment.

    As a swansong for the actress, it is incredibly moving and a tribute to both Garland and Bogarde. Bogarde is especially intense in his emotional scenes--reminding me somewhat of the brooding character he played so well in LIBEL (a courtroom drama with Olivia de Havilland). He had become a mature actor by that time and here he is even more impressive.
    7bkoganbing

    A Closing Symmetry

    Though she didn't and couldn't have known it, I Could Go On Singing became Judy Garland's farewell to the big screen. In this role she's perfectly cast in a role that bears a lot of resemblance to the real Judy Garland, a famous singer with problems of custody who wants the son she gave up for adoption years ago.

    Some twenty years before young medical student Dirk Bogarde, studying in America fell in love with singer Judy Garland just starting her career. That career is something she wanted more than him. But one thing couldn't be changed and that was the boy child Bogarde left with her.

    Bogarde marries a girl from Great Britain and later on Judy who can't manage a baby and a career gives him up to Bogarde who adopts his own son with his wife and raises him. Now his wife is dead and Judy's back to lay a claim on her son played by Gregory Phillips.

    Of course Bogarde has never told his son about his origin and therein lies the story. It's the kind of tale we've seen in hundreds of films and radio and television soap operas.

    But of course what makes I Could Go On Singing special is the singing of Judy Garland. Giving this film which title could serve as her epitaph is Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg who wrote the title song and who wrote her famous Over The Rainbow.

    Judy also sings By Myself which was sung and danced to by Fred Astaire in The Bandwagon. But a song I'm really glad she did was the Kurt Weill-Maxwell Anderson song It Never Was You. That song comes from the score of Knickerbocker Holiday and it didn't make the screen version. I'm glad that Judy Garland used it in this film, giving it the classiest interpretation possible.

    A passable enough drama, but great singing and the best epitaph possible for a career which was one of the brightest.
    7verna-a

    Surprisingly pleasing

    Caught this on daytime TV one day and found it surprisingly engrossing. The plot line could be corny, but instead it is a touching and believable story. The principals are excellent - Judy Garland is not my favourite performer but she is very likable here, and Dirk Bogarde presents with his usual charm a role which could easily be unsympathetic. The young man who plays the part of the son is fresh and appealing, providing an excellent foil to the two seasoned professionals who play his parents. The Englishness of the settings comes across strongly but is not overdone. The script is low key but interest never flags. I don't find the vocal numbers particularly appealing - Garland's mature voice is rather smoky, but she delivers with all the seasoned arts of a veteran. Touch of weirdness - Garland's hair! Whoever coiffed her for this movie should be run out of town. Over-teased and over-sprayed, it is somehow dishevelled also, and strangely one-sided at times. Not flattering!

    More like this

    For Me and My Gal
    7.0
    For Me and My Gal
    The Clock
    7.3
    The Clock
    Wife vs. Secretary
    7.0
    Wife vs. Secretary
    Girl Crazy
    6.8
    Girl Crazy
    A Dispatch from Reuters
    6.9
    A Dispatch from Reuters
    The Incident
    7.6
    The Incident
    Presenting Lily Mars
    6.8
    Presenting Lily Mars
    Summer Stock
    7.1
    Summer Stock
    A Child Is Waiting
    7.2
    A Child Is Waiting
    In the Good Old Summertime
    7.1
    In the Good Old Summertime
    There's No Business Like Show Business
    6.4
    There's No Business Like Show Business
    The Harvey Girls
    7.0
    The Harvey Girls

    Related interests

    Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)
    Drama
    Prince and Apollonia Kotero in Purple Rain (1984)
    Music

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Officially regarded as her final film before her death in 1969, Judy Garland filmed it immediately after making A Child Is Waiting (1963) though I Could Go on Singing (1963) was released first. At the time of filming, Garland was going through an ugly child custody battle of her own with her soon-to-be-divorced husband, Sidney Luft. The opportunity to make a film in England with Sir Dirk Bogarde, an actor and friend she had long admired, provided the perfect escape from her problems at home but unfortunately Garland carried her troubles with her across the Atlantic.
    • Goofs
      The elevator scene in the first third of the movie shows a continuous carpet between the elevator floor and the hallway floor, without a break for the moving elevator, indicating that it is not an actual elevator.

      At the same time, you can tell that the elevator operator is squatting toward the front of the elevator, waiting for the partition to rise to make it look like the elevator is coming up from another floor, and as the elevator leaves, you can tell the operator is not moving down with it.
    • Quotes

      Jenny Bowman: You think you can make me sing? Do you think you can - do you think George can make me sing? or Ida? You can get me there, sure, but can you make me sing? I sing for myself. I sing when I want to, whenever I want to, just for me. I sing for my own pleasure. Whenever I want - do you under stand that?

    • Connections
      Edited into Chop Suey (2001)
    • Soundtracks
      I COULD GO ON SINGING
      Music by Harold Arlen

      Lyrics by E.Y. Harburg

    Top picks

    Sign in to rate and Watchlist for personalized recommendations
    Sign in

    FAQ14

    • How long is I Could Go on Singing?Powered by Alexa

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • August 14, 1963 (France)
    • Countries of origin
      • United Kingdom
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • The Lonely Stage
    • Filming locations
      • Canterbury Cathedral, Cathedral House, 11 The Precincts, Canterbury, Kent, England, UK(School Location)
    • Production company
      • Barbican Films
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 1h 40m(100 min)
    • Color
      • Color
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    Sign in for more accessSign in for more access
    Follow IMDb on social
    Get the IMDb App
    For Android and iOS
    Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • License IMDb Data
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2025 by IMDb.com, Inc.