A Star Is Reborn

Do you really want more?'' wondered Judy Garland. It was April 23, 1961, and the 38-year-old star had been on the Carnegie Hall stage for over two hours. She had torn through 28 songs, joked about frogs in her throat and French hairdos, and taken bow after bow. She'd been to ''San Francisco,'' through ''Stormy Weather,'' and gone ''Over the Rainbow.'' Of course they wanted more. Henry Fonda was yelling ''Bravo!'' Leonard Bernstein was spotted crying. ''It was like a revival meeting,'' recalls her musical director, Mort Lindsey. Garland's daughter Lorna Luft, then a mere 8 years old, remembers the crowd: ''They were losing it — standing on their chairs and screaming.'' Eventually, Garland confessed she was running out of songs. ''Just stand there!'' someone shouted.

Yet, 17 months earlier, Garland could hardly stand at all. Hospitalized with acute hepatitis — likely owing to years of amphetamine, tranquilizer, and diet-pill abuse — she was told she could never work again. Not that she had never heard that before. In 1950 — after 15 years and more than 30 films — The Wizard of Ozstar was unceremoniously dumped by MGM, and her marriage to second husband Vincente Minnelli (with whom she had daughter Liza) was unraveling. So Garland found a new husband, Sid Luft, and embarked on a vaudeville tour. She triumphed in 1954's A Star Is Born, and gave birth to Lorna and Joey Luft. Call it Comeback No. 1. She was written off again in the late '50s, but rebounded with a bigger, better one-woman show that premiered at London's Palladium in August 1960 and hit Carnegie Hall eight months later. Call it Comeback No. 2.

''She used to say, 'Every time I go to the powder room and return, they say I've made a comeback,''' says biographer John Fricke. Her upswing continued with 1961's Judgment at Nurembergand a TV show, but was soon followed by divorce, financial peril, and husbands No. 4 and 5 (Mark Herron and Mickey Deans). But she kept performing, though her voice would never again be Carnegie-perfect. Even at her final concert in March 1969, Fricke maintains, ''the critics fell down and the audience stood up and cheered.'' That was just three months before her barbiturate-induced death.

Still, it's the Carnegie legend that looms largest. In 1998, Lorna Luft hosted Carnegie Hall Celebrates the Music of Judy Garland, two celebrity-filled evenings of songs and memories. The show was re-created for this year's ratings-magnet ABC miniseries, Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows. And the Grammy-winning Judy at Carnegie Hall album has recently been reissued. ''All you have to do is make people listen to Carnegie Hall,'' Fricke says. ''...And all they want is more.'' They always did.