Judy Garland was a few hundred thousand dollars in debt. It was the early 1960s, and she was still paying off taxes from the early 1950s. Enter wily David Begelman, a talent manager who brokered a deal with CBS for Garland to host a weekly television show and draw a weekly television paycheck, allowing the always-troubled, often performance-averse singer to pay down her debts and gain a measure of financial security. Judy was ready for some financial security, and she pulled herself together and buckled down to make it work. Many of her performances on the series qualify as personal-best renditions of the classics she's still known for. The Judy Garland Show was the actress' final public flowering, a last-gasp, Camelot-era incarnation that ended soon after Kennedy was shot (right after his assassination, Garland broadcast "Battle Hymn of the Republic" across the nation's airwaves).
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