Under the Rainbow: An Intimate Memoir of Judy Garland, Rock Hudson and My Life in Old Hollywood

by John Carlyle, Robert Osborne (Foreword)

Actor John Carlyle got his big break in 1954. New to Hollywood, the twenty-three-year-old Carlyle was cast as the assistant director of the movie-within-a movie in George Cukor’s A Star is Born. Although Carlyle’s scene was later cut from the film — and his star status subsequently never materialized — the job brought him in touch with Judy Garland, who up until her death fifteen years later was Carlyle’s friend and sometime lover.

Under the tells the story of this rocky but beloved relationship. No longer the great star who first enthralled Carlyle as an adolescent, Garland — like many former headliners in the 1960s — lived an often desperate, hand-to-mouth existence that was eased only by pills and liquor. She turned to Carlyle for support, even with the hope of marrying the openly gay actor. He politely declined the opportunity of matrimony, but remained constant in his adoration of the star for the rest of his life.

The author takes us on a rare, behind-the-scenes tour of gay Hollywood, with an intimate, often hilarious, star-studded memoir of the decline and end of old Hollywood.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, LGBT, Autobiography, Media Tie In, Biography

325 pages, Hardcover

First published September 11, 2006

Reviews

[Beth Newman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I confess I was hesitant to read 'Under the Rainbow' for fear it would be yet another account of painting the great Judy Garland in a poor light. The selling point (or rather, the checking out point from my local library) was a beautiful forward written by Mr. Robert Osborne.

I'd never heard of John Carlyle before - a struggling actor from Hollywood's Golden Age. His reflections on Hollywood during that time are incredibly interesting, complete with a 'who's who' among the movie-making elite (Rock Hudson, Marilyn Monroe, Heddy Lamar, and of course, Miss Judy Garland).

Mr. Carlyle's relationship with Miss Garland, though relatively brief, sheds light on the 'smoke and mirrors' that was (and still is, most likely) the entertainment industry. His account of Miss Garland is a sympathetic one. It's a marvelously well-written musing of 'what might have been' and 'what should have been'.

If you're a die-hard Judy fan such as I, you won't find any new information here about her. If classic movie-making is of interest to you, 'Under the Rainbow' is definitely worth the read.

[Michelle Bacon · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Carlyle was an actor hopeful that had an obsession with Judy Garland from the moment he saw her the big screen singing her heart out as she skipped her way down the yellow brick road. At 17, he takes the leap to pursuit his acting dream and moves to Hollywood. He befriends Judy Garland through mutual acquaintances which makes his obsession more intense. BUT, John is gay. Did that get in the way of his relationship with Judy Garland? No. He had such a love affair with her that he also started to indulge in pills and alcohol to get him through the struggles of trying to be a big-time actor in Hollywood.
The book does not have any photographs of any of the people he talks about in the book. The only photo is on the cover. His story kinda bounces around and doesn't really have a flow to it and I didn't know of some of the people he mentioned only their first names. It was like he expected you to know who he was talking about.
This is indeed not how I wanted this reading year to kick off, so I'm hoping it only gets better from here. I can understand why this book was only selling for a penny tho.

[Mediaman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a lot of potential--an unknown, gay, pretty rich-boy Hollywood actor is Judy Garland's last lover, friends with Rock Hudson, and has had sex with hundreds of men including some big names. But this writer died before the book found a publisher and his friends (including Robert Osborne) released it before it had a proper weeding-out of the extremely boring sections about his lazy life or inclusion of real stories beyond Garland. What starts strong ends up deadly dull as Carlyle rambles on about his many cats, who takes care of the cats when he's gone (why do we need to know that?), insignificant jobs (often unpaid), his working-class residences or what he eats.

Carlyle was born with a gold spoon in his mouth and his Baltimore father did nothing but spoil the good-looking kid. John's expectations of everything being given to him without having to work for it reflects the current entitled generation long before it was popular. As a teen he told his dad he was gay and wanted to go into acting; both were welcomed with open arms and bad habits supported financially.

Carlyle drifts through life meeting famous people simply because of his regal looks. His talent appears to have been minimal and he was one of the majority of movie/TV performers that don't really make it in Hollywood. But he certainly knew many who did and lived most of his life alongside the famous studios and hangouts.

Rock Hudson's name graces the cover and the subtitle of this book but that is disturbingly misleading. There aren't more than six or eight paragraphs about Hudson, and those say nothing. Carlyle's main failure here is that he doesn't reveal any details about trips with Hudson, meeting Frank Sinatra, being naked with Rudolph Nureyev in a bathhouse (alluded to in the book but the dancer didn't even make the index!), his love of Hedy Lamarr, or famous names he worked with in a few productions. John's agent was Henry Willson, the notorious gay hearthrob-maker, but Carlyle just makes a few snide remarks instead of confirming raunchy stories. The author also mentions his lifelong correspondence with Joan Fontaine in a few pages tossed in at the end but none of this is satisfying.

The book should really have just focused on his relationship with Judy Garland, who is included in about one-fourth of it. Just when you think you've read all you need to know about the over-biographied movie star, Carlyle shares a lot of the quirks of their unusual love story and I found I understood Garland more than in the other tomes about her.

And if ever you doubted whether a very openly gay man can have a robust, full-on long-term sexual affair with a woman after he has spent 20 years bedding men then you need to read this. It's certainly politically incorrect based on modern LGBTQ propaganda, but refreshing to read of the pleasure he gets and gives to a very famous aging singer. And once he breaks it off he returns to the gay bathhouses, only to later be equally sexually attracted to a female dinner theater co-star. Today we might conclude he is bisexual, but he makes it a point to insist multiple times in the book that he was "gay" and "homosexual" while sexually fulfilling (and being fulfilled by) Judy Garland.

One of my problems with the book is he is too much of a gentleman and doesn't tell anything about the hundreds of men he had sex with. At least with Garland he reveals in a paragraph a bit of the ecstasy, and at one point the two even talked marriage, but his concerns about her addictions (and his own) made him choose to reject the woman he spent years with as her closest lover.

It's startling to hear that he called Garland one morning, her sleeping husband answered and went to find her only to discover the star's body dead in the bathroom. Carlyle was devoted to her until the end. It was shortly after her death that he joined AA but in later years called himself a "controlled alcoholic" when he and his male partner returned to drinking.

He withholds his emotions when he writes about his large consumption of alcohol and drugs. The irony is that this was a man who never really lived his life in the closet sexually but spends most of it hiding his other addictions and refusing to allow anyone else to provide solutions. He thinks he doesn't need them when everyone from his parents to his famous friends enable his vices and allow him to live an elitist lifestyle he didn't work for. AA doesn't exactly get a ringing endorsement in this memoir and Carlyle makes clear he has no faith in God. Maybe he should have taken others concerns more seriously.

John's editor-friend tried to cut out superfluous sections but it's not nearly enough, and nothing could be done to expand the stories the author fails to tell. If only Carlyle were alive to rewrite. He could have done it--he's such a good writer that his humorous twists of phrases and subtle teasing about his life only whet our appetites for more. He simply left too many secrets on the other side of the rainbow.

[Russell Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a sucker for show biz stories. Whether the subject matter is music, dance, theater, or movies, I’m all in. And if that story is a true story, then I almost salivate as I read. I love to explore these worlds, especially when they are peopled by luminaries. John Carlyle’s Under the Rainbow, his autobiography, called to me for it promised life in 1950s and 1960s Hollywood. The cover vows to tell of his friendship with Rock Hudson, his affair with Judy Garland, and it makes it clear that Carlyle was a gay man. Intriguing, indeed. And yes, there is plenty of name-dropping. Carlyle really did know Hudson, Noel Coward, Joan Fontaine, and a host of others. And he really was Garland’s paramour. But late in the book, Carlyle explains his Hollywood survival skills were effective because he was choosing “much of the time, to be shallow.” And therein lies the problem, for me, with this book. Carlyle grew up a relatively wealthy child of Baltimore, Maryland. He was a trust fund baby. He purports to have had an interest in theater, and thus he pursued his dream. His friends, Hollywood historian and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne, Chris Freeman, and actor Taylor Negron—who wrote introduction, forward, and afterward for the book—certainly make it clear that Carlyle was a charming man, fun to be around, and an accomplished actor. But Carlyle’s own writing is somewhat stilted and aloof, so we don’t truly get to know and like the man. His is a tale of insecurity (for he wanted to be a star, not just a working actor,) money woes, drugs, and alcohol. Yet never did I feel like I cared about any of this. I wanted to slap him and tell him to quit playing and get on with doing something with his life. The most extended celebrity segment is his affair with the terribly insecure, incredibly talented, and drug-addled Garland. I’m not sure I wanted that much detail about this idol’s waning days. I found the book quite tedious as Carlyle tells of his childhood, early manhood, and latter days, all the while introducing us to his best friends, most of whom I had never heard of and could not connect with. What happened here, in my opinion, is that his friends decided, after his death, to honor him, whom they loved and appreciated dearly, by getting his book published. The editing consisted of masking some names to prevent lawsuits and making judicious cuts. Unfortunately, with Carlyle not around to be asked to “punch it up here, rewrite there,” there was no way to make the manuscript any better than he left it. He writes well; his subject matter is lacking. And the best tributes to him are contained not within the pages of his own words but in the pages that his friends provided to introduce and conclude the book. A Hollywood historian might find this book valuable, a die-hard Hollywood fan, steeped in history already, might find worth, but a reader like me, who simply likes to delve into the lives of stars like Hudson, Garland, and the like, found it lacking. And I’m sad about that, for this is a man’s work that he can’t defend.

[Gregory Broderick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure Pop Sugar if that is an accurate way to describe this book

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Carlyle's (born Carlyle Fairfax Posey) posthumous memoir begins with his childhood with his society, dysfunctional family in Baltimore, touches on his boarding school years, and lands, finally, in Hollywood, in the early 1950s, where he lived the rest of his life as an actor. He & Rock Hudson, (whom he seems to have barely known)-were both clients of the talent agent Henry Willson. Carlyle was an aspiring star who didn't make it. He acted in regional theatre and in television, when he could, relying on a modest trust fund. He wisely purchased two small houses in West Hollywood, where he lived and was a landlord for five decades. His one scene in 1954's A Star Is Born was cut from the film in the final release. Star's
"star," Judy Garland, nine years his senior, befriended him on the set. Although gay, he had the pretty-boy looks at 23 that Judy liked, and he adored her. In 1967, two years before her death, frantic and destitute, Judy turned to John for companionship and emotional support. They partied together and became lovers for awhile, according to Carlyle. During that tumultuous year, Garland lost her Brentwood house to bankruptcy, worked on, but was fired from, the film Valley Of The Dolls-and moved to Manhattan where she played the last of her three Palace Theatre concert runs. Carlyle remained in touch with Judy, though she moved on to other men, marrying one last time in 1969. It was a call from John in California that woke up Judy's husband in London the morning she died, prompting the latter to find her, sadly slumped over in the bathroom, dead from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. Carlyle continued boozing and acting, eventually getting sober and living with a male partner. His honest and low-key book is of some historical interest in gay or film studies and for Judy Garland fans. I'd say it was a missed opportunity for Carlyle to have written more widely about gay life in Old Hollywood where he lived for over 50 yrs. Michael Minor

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

It captures a glimpse of the West Hollywood neighborhood I live in that I hear from time to time when attending a neighbor’s dinner party when a few glasses of wine pour out stories from guests regaling of “old Hollywood”.

The book captures the feel of my Norman Triangle neighborhood with a quote in the beginning:

“The first time I saw John Carlyle was at dusk on Norma Place in Los Angeles in the early ‘60s, just as the sun had faded and night was about to take over. I had been visiting a friend who had recently moved to the area, not far from where I lived on Hammond. But where is my street was like thousand others in the area, Norma Place had personality. It was a street where one expected to see colorful, eccentric, theatrical people, a place where it was readily evident that you weren’t in Kansas anymore.”

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book; John Carlyle has some good stories about old Hollywood. Sometimes I am not sure how much is real or embellished, yet I somehow believe all his Judy Garland stories. I feel kind of bad for saying this, but the Judy Garland chapters were the best and the only time I could not put the book down.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone who wants to know a little more about Judy Garland should read this book. Carlyle was with her a lot during the troubled end of her life. It was very very sad. It was also very interesting to read a first hand account of what it was like to be a gay man in a time where you weren't allowed to admit it. Good read. Keep tissues handy.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far, this is a page turner. I love "Old Hollywood" and all its excesses.