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.
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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.
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.
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.
Did you know
- TriviaOfficially 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.
- GoofsThe 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?
- ConnectionsEdited into Chop Suey (2001)
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- The Lonely Stage
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- Runtime
- 1h 40m(100 min)
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- 2.35 : 1