Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2000 | 8:05 a.m.
Drugs and alcohol short-circuited the life of one of America's most beloved entertainers.
But an electrician who once pulled her from the flames of a burning bedroom was powerless to save her from herself.
"I tried, but it was no use," Harry Rubin said. "I knew how she was going to die before she died. She was better off."
Judy Garland's tortured life came to an end because of a drug overdose in London on June 22, 1969. She was 47 years old.
Throughout most of the 1950s Rubin was her shadow, an assistant who was constantly at her side, on-call 24 hours a day. He rode her roller-coaster life with her until he decided he didn't want to be around when the ride failed to come out of its race downward.
"I finally had enough and quit in '59," said Rubin, 73, who moved to Sun City Summerlin with his wife, Rita, about five years ago from Southern California.
Rubin's name appears prominently in numerous books written about Garland, among them "Get Happy," by Gerald Clarke, "Judy," by Gerold Frank and "Judy Garland," by David Shipman. He said a publisher once made him an offer to write his own story about Garland, but he never got around to it.
Following World War II, Brooklyn-born Rubin moved to Los Angeles and became an electrician, eventually going to work for the Fish Electric Co.
"The company was known as the 'electrician to the stars.' It had an office in Beverly Hills, where I worked my way up to superintendent," he said.
One of his duties was public relations. "I was a good B.S. artist," Rubin said.
He also bid on jobs and supervised work crews. In March 1953, one of those crews was at the home of Garland and her husband, producer Sid Luft. The couple were in pre-production on the film "A Star is Born."
"My boss was friends with Luft," Rubin said. "They (Luft and Garland) bought a real castle from film producer Hunt Stromber, who had had it shipped from England in sections. It had an English pub inside and a private wing for the kids (Liza Minnelli and Lorna Luft) and their nanny.
"It was being remodeled. I had six men on the job and I would periodically go by to check on them. I came by one day and smelled smoke."
Rubin said he traced the odor to Garland's room.
"Apparently she had fallen asleep smoking a cigarette and set fire to the drapes," he said.
When he entered the room he found Garland unconscious in the middle of the floor. Flames almost surrounded her. He carried her out of the house and minutes later the fire department came and put out the blaze and an ambulance arrived and took her to the hospital.
"When she came back home later that day she asked me to go to work for her," Rubin recalled. "I was going through a bad divorce at the time and I figured, why not?"
He didn't have a title or duties, just a job.
"She said she hired me to be her rabbit's foot, to bring her good luck," Rubin said. "They gave me an office and I would just hang around. There was an ice cream store across the street and I put on about 20 pounds."
He was one of Garland's eight employees, which included maids, cooks and gardeners.
"One of the things she liked about me was that I didn't pamper her, when everyone else did," Rubin said.
His pal Boggie
While an electrician may not be the most exciting of jobs, Rubin parleyed his trade into several memorable years of rubbing elbows with Hollywood's elite. Garland was a lightning rod for celebrities.
Neighbors included such celebrities as Humphrey Bogart, Bing Crosby, Lana Turner and Art Linkletter. He met countless others at parties. Garland had a long-running affair with Frank Sinatra, who, according to biographers, was one of a fleet of boyfriends.
"There weren't many stars I didn't meet," Rubin said.
He became pals with Bogart at a party thrown by Luft and Garland.
"He didn't like Luft," Rubin said, "but he liked his parties.
"The first party I went to, Bogart was there. There was a bartender but when it got busy I got behind the bar and I asked Mr. B. if I could pour him another drink. He said, 'Who are you?' and I introduced myself. He called across the room and said, 'Hey Judy, here's that Brooklyn bum you hired.'
"Bogart was a little guy. I grabbed him across the bar and pulled him up to me and whispered in his ear what I would do to him if he wasn't careful."
The next day Rubin was walking down the street to his office when Bogart pulled up next to him in a new sports car and invited him to lunch. After that they were friends until Bogart died of cancer four years later, in 1957.
Rubin said he saw Bogart on the day he died.
"I belonged to a men's club that did charitable work for children," he said. "Bogart had a film vault and he would let me borrow pictures to show the kids. I was returning one the same day he died."
The last vision he has of Bogart is of him sitting in a wheelchair under a skylight in a hallway, with the bright sun rays bathing him in light.
Rubin also became acquainted with film star Rita Hayworth and her husband, Aly Khan, with whom Garland also allegedly had an affair.
"Rita used to bring her kids over to play with Judy's kids all the time, or I would pick them up and bring them over," Rubin said.
Garland had two children when Rubin began working for her, daughters Liza Minnelli (born in 1946) and Lorna Luft (born in 1952). A son, Joey, was born in 1955. (Rubin said he has no contact with any of them anymore.)
Two months after Rubin went to work for Garland, Moss Hart finished the script for "A Star is Born" and to celebrate gave the star a new Chrysler, which she gave to Rubin.
On the day shooting was to begin, Garland refused to be driven to the Warner Bros. lot by the studio's driver. Rubin was sent to find out what was wrong.
"She was in one of her moods, throwing a tantrum. When I came to take her to work she got rude with me so I threw her car keys at her and said I quit," Rubin said. "Nobody ever told her off before and she loved it. She said, 'Okay, I'll go if you drive me.' "
He became her driver, bodyguard, road manager and anything else she needed.
"Whenever she fired someone, I got the job," Rubin said.
A star is shorn
"A Star is Born" is considered by many critics to be one of Garland's best works. The 1954 film, which co-stared James Mason, earned her an Academy Award nomination for leading actress.
Garland gave birth to her son, Joey, and was in the hospital the night the winners were announced.
"Everyone was prepared for her to win the Oscar," Rubin said. "She was on the third floor of the hospital. A scaffold had been built outside up to the window. Cameramen were on the scaffold, ready to take her picture if she won.
"There were only three people in the room with her -- me, the president of NBC and Luft. The curtains were drawn and my job was to open them as soon as her named was announced."
But the name that was read that night in 1955 was Grace Kelly, who won for "Country Girl."
"Judy went bananas. She cussed like a truck driver," Rubin said.
Not long after that, Garland went on a year's tour of one-night singing engagements. "Everyone loved her. She sold out everywhere," Rubin said.
One of his duties was to be waiting in the wings during her show with a tray that held a glass of vodka, an ammonia capsule and a toothbrush.
The toothbrush was to take off the black makeup applied to her teeth for a tramp routine. The ammonia was to make her alert and the vodka gave her the energy to go on.
"I would break the capsule under her nose, she would drink the vodka and as she started to run back on stage I would slap her on the butt," Rubin said.
Garland constantly used drugs, Rubin said. Among them, Nembutal, Seconal, Demerol and Dexamyl.
"I tried to get her off them, but she had been an addict for years," Rubin said. "When she was 8 years old she had a severe weight problem, and they started giving her diet pills. Then she couldn't sleep, so they gave her pills to help her sleep."
Someone always had pills available if she couldn't get a prescription.
Rubin said she sometimes raided the medicine cabinets of friends' homes and took their pills. He said she once went to the home of a woman who had muscular dystrophy.
"Judy stole all her pills," Rubin said.
The electrician stepped into Garland's life just as it was making its downhill turn.
"One night we were driving through a seedy neighborhood in L.A. and she wanted to stop at this bar we passed, a real dive," Rubin said. "I told her if we went in there we were taking our lives in our hand. I was going to have to fight our way out."
But it was difficult to dissuade Garland when her mind was made up.
"We went in and sat at the bar. The place was filled with really decrepit people," he said. "Judy didn't like to sing off stage, but she sang in the bar that night."
Rubin said Garland attempted suicide many times during the years he worked for her. "She didn't really want to die," he said. "She just craved attention."
In 1957, he said, Garland had a week-long engagement in Washington, D.C. They were staying at the Sheraton hotel.
"She came out of the restroom in her nightgown, her arms outstretched and her wrists bleeding," he said. "She said, 'Look what I did.' "
Rubin and Luft threw a robe over her and rushed her to the hospital.
Her storybook life was turning into a nightmare.
"She and Luft would fight all the time. Periodically, he would beat her up. But she would hit him, too. One night he was drunk and I did a number on him. I beat him up. The next day Judy called me and wanted to know what happened. She couldn't remember. She thought she had beat him up."
Rubin said he had enough and quit. "It became unbearable," he said.
Rubin owned a performance theater in San Diego for about six years and then returned to the construction industry, retiring in 1985. He and his wife lived in a retirement community in Southern California until they moved to Las Vegas.
He frequently came here with Garland, who sang at the Sands, the New Frontier and other venues.
"I always liked Judy, but I was never that impressed with celebrities in general," he said. "It doesn't take long to figure out what most are made of. Half of the time they're bored. A lot of them are just nice people."
After Rubin left Garland's employment they remained in touch. He had not seen her for about a year before she died in London.
During the 10 years between the day he quit and the day she died, Garland married two more times. She had a total of five husbands.
She had countless affairs with celebrities, including Sinatra, James Mason and others. Rubin said he even had an affair with her.
"It was never serious," he said. "I was like an island of safety, at least that's what her psychiatrist told me.
"But with Judy, the more she depended on you, the more she was going to make your life miserable."
At the time of her death she was $4 million in debt. Rubin said, "She couldn't deal with her stardom."
archive
