On Saturday September 24, 1955,
Judy Garland
starred in her first television special on the
CBS
network, inaugurating
The Ford Star Jubilee
. The live 90-minute program featured several other acts, qualifying it as a variety show, but it was really a
Garland
showcase. The 33-year-old entertainer had been major film star and carved out a second career as a concert performer.
gave a national audience a chance to find out what all the fuss at
the London Palladium
and
the Palace
had been about;
re-created much of her stage show. Two days after the broadcast,
Capitol Records
released
Miss Show Business
, which, while not billed as a soundtrack to the TV program, featured studio recordings of much the same group of songs.
Roger Edens
, who had been working with
since the start of her movie career, penned considerable special material, including the opening choral number,
"This Is the Time of the Evening,"
and lengthy musical introductions to the two major set pieces, a movie medley and
"Judy at the Palace,"
a medley of
vaudeville
songs; his adaptation of the traditional song
"A Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow,"
which
had sung in the 1940 film
Little Nellie Kelly
, was also included. The medleys are a good indication of the sources of the music: either
was singing songs from the movies, most of them from her movies, or she was reviving
songs, many of them associated with
Al Jolson
. This was the repertoire she had been performing in concert to great acclaim for several years. It all concluded with an overwrought rendition of her signature song,
"Over the Rainbow,"
on which she was sobbing by the end. This made for an affecting performance that deservedly became a big seller. ~ William Ruhlmann