Judy Garland's ex-lover John Meyer recalls the star's final tumultuous months: 'She was on a combination of Ritalin and vodka'
A New York City pianist, John Meyer was smitten when he first met Hollywood star Judy Garland in 1968 at a Manhattan studio of her mutual friend. Meyer was 28 years old then. The meeting changed his life forever, Meyer told People magazine on Wednesday, while adding that Garland was far from the star what people had grown up watching and listening to.
“She had a suitcase, a little black dress, a pair of fishnet stockings and a pair of heels,” the now-79-year-old recalled. “That was about it. And a mink.”
The night they met, Meyer began playing a song written by him titled 'I Like to Hate Myself in the Morning and Raise a Little Hell Tonight'. According to him, the song made an unforgettable impression on Garland.
"She liked the song and she liked me,” Meyer said of the former child star. “When our friend left the room, she pointed to herself and then to me and mouthed the phrase, ‘I’m with you'. Just like that.” He claimed that the pair later moved into his parents' New York City apartment.
"There was a spare bedroom in the back and I took her there and she said, ‘Great, I’ll move in here'," he said.
Garland allegedly owed millions of dollars to the IRS and her agent had embezzled much of her earnings. The 46-year-old, at the time, was divorced from her fourth husband, Mark Herron, broke and homeless, according to the outlet. She had also been recently kicked out of New York’s St. Moritz Hotel, where she was living with her two young children, for not paying the bill.
Garland reportedly met Meyer two months before a five-week concert series in London at the Talk of the Town nightclub in 1969. However, before she flew to London, Meyer said he booked gigs at local clubs for her where he played the piano.
“She was broke, literally had nothing but a five-dollar bill in her purse,” he claimed. “I called the owner of a club and said, ‘I could get Judy Garland to sing for you for $100. Cash. And cab fare. I became her manager, her agent, her lover, her companion, the shoulder that she could lean on. It was amazing. Her reality was that she would rely on the kindness of strangers.”
“Her big overriding motivation was ‘love me',” he continued. “And she made people prove it in all her relationships. She would escalate the levels of commitment until you were staying up with her for 36 hours a day. She’d keep moving the goalposts, until the person just had to drop and then she could say, ‘You deserted me, see'," the pianist said, alleging that the singer was also on a combination of Ritalin and vodka.
“One time, I was making her a very nice dinner,” he said. “She didn’t want to eat by the way; she didn’t like to eat in front of people. And she began to sing ‘It Never Was You’ and she held out her arms to me and I put down the saucepan and I almost fainted. Can you imagine Judy Garland two inches away from your ear?”
He also shared the moments of laughter between the two of them.
"When she would talk about ‘The Wizard of Oz', she’d say, ‘The munchkins were a bunch of horny little guys and they were not above pinching my ass. And she made jokes about Toto’s bad breath," he said. He also talked about the fun the pair had in the bedroom and how the star was into roleplay.
“We did a lot of role-playing,” he told the outlet. “We’d do scenes back and forth and we’d make up our own improvs. She’d say, ‘Tonight, you be the professor and I’ll be the student.’ It was a lot of fun. That was more important to her than the actual sex.”
Their relationship, however, came crashing down when she flew to London.
However, their relationship ultimately came crashing down. Meyer claimed that she abandoned him and teamed up with Mickey Deans, a nightclub manager in London she first met when he “delivered her a box of uppers".
The pianist said that he saw Garland for the last time in January 1969: "She gave me a cursory kiss goodbye, ‘So long Johnny'."
The singer and actress died on June 22, 1969, at age 47 from an accidental drug overdose. Crowds of over 15,000 lined up through the night at Frank E Campbell Funeral Home in Manhattan to say goodbye to her, according to People, and Meyer was among them.