Because of the Wonderful Things He Does
A Few Thoughts on Love from Miss Judy Garland of ‘The Wizard of Oz’
Note: The following essay was written for ‘The New York Times’ in 1939 by Judy Garland as promotional material for her new film, ‘The Wizard of Oz.’
It was never published.
Dear Reader,
I must ask you to forgive me before anything else. I can’t imagine why anyone would think I could write an essay. And for The New York Times! What a thing to be asked. Why, everybody knows I’m just a fourteen-year-old farm girl who had the rotten luck to be caught in some weather.
But oh, did you know? Everybody who “knows” this is actually quite wrong. I am far older than fourteen, nearly two entire years older. I’ve never been to Kansas in my life, and my name isn’t Dorothy at all. Still, that does not mean I am qualified to write an essay, and so I expect this to be very poor, bordering on unpublishable hogswaddle.
I’m to address you, unlucky reader, on the subject of Love. Only, what could I know of love? Excepting, of course, what they told me to know: “The next time I go looking for my heart’s desire, I won’t look any further than my own backyard.” Isn’t that the most precious line? I had tears in my eyes the first four times I said it. Although, as…
