1963's "I Could Go On Singing" would prove to be Judy Garland's final film, and what a shame.Here, Garland plays Jenny Bowman, a famous performer who comes to London with a manager (Jack Klugman) and an assistant (Aline McMahon) to do concerts and goes to see an ex-beau, Dr. David Donne (Dirk Bogarde) with a faux medical problem. He knows she has an ulterior motive. The two of them had broken up, but later, Jenny gave birth to their son. The newlywed David and his wife adopted the child because Jenny couldn't really handle carrying for a new baby and having a career. Matt never knew and believed that both David and his wife were his adopted parents. Jenny claims that now that David's wife is dead, she just wants to see her son (Gregory Phillips). Once she sees him, she wants to spend time with him - it spirals out of control.Despite its soapy plot, "I Could Go ON Singing" manages to be very effective for two reasons: Judy Garland and Dirk Bogarde, both of whom lift this film up from the maudlin. Bogarde is an uncredited writer on this film, contributing a lot of Garland's dialogue, as the script needed work before she could take the role; he often participated in screen writing on his films.Garland plays her role as a brilliant talent who is a needy woman, but one who also is used to getting her way and knows what she wants. Despite an outer fragility, she knows how to stand up for herself. As an entertainer, she is second to none - magical, warm, exciting, passionate, and fun. Garland sings the title song plus "By Myself," "It Never Was You", and "Hello, Blue Bird," all beautifully performed. Garland looks petite and wonderful as well.During the scene in the hospital, in which David comes to see Jenny after she sprains her actor, the director, Ronald Neame, realized as the camera was rolling that the scene had passed out of the movie and into real life. Garland was no longer Jenny but Garland. There was an incredibly intense atmosphere in the room, so instead of yelling cut, doing another take, and repositioning the camera, he let the scene go on. Normally a scene like that would take all day to film. Bogarde realized that Neame wasn't going to stop and even altered his dialogue to respond to her. The result is an incredibly moving, very personal scene.Bogarde gives a low-key performance and is perfect opposite Garland, very British, attempting to keep his emotions even -- a very generous actor who was also helpful to Neame in keeping Garland going. There were a great many difficulties on the set, including an incident where a plate of food went flying through the air as Judy demanded director Henry Hathaway. In the end, they all made it through, and the result is successful.We have lots of examples on the screen and in recording of Judy Garland's tremendous talent and brilliance. "I Could Go On Singing" is a look at a character very close to Garland and gives a good sense of the real woman. Art imitates life, or did life imitate art - with Garland, one never knows.

This is the second of the two movies that Garland shot in 1963, the last, as it turned out, she would ever make for though she lived another six years the only singing she did for a camera was for television. As much as anyone and perhaps more than most Judy Garland was one of those performers you either love or detest and if you love her you'll love this glorified soap in which she gets to sing some classy numbers, throw the odd tantrum and break a heart or two. There's a wonderful shot of her standing in the wings at the Palladium and visibly coming alive as the band plays her intro. Unfortunately Dirk Bogarde invites comparisons with the other English actor with whom she co-starred and it really wasn't wise of Bogarde - who actually wrote (sans credit) one of the big emotional scenes - to pit himself against James Mason. In some ways this movie is similar to the other one, A Child Is Waiting, she shot that same year; same raw emotion, same fine acting but only one had songs. Though often dismissed this is, in fact, superior to such titles as In The Good Old Summertime, which she made at MGM in 1949 and no real Garland fan, gay or straight, will want to miss it.

Judy Garland is magnificent playing herself; sorry, playing Jenny Bowman, an American singer of a certain age, in London for a series of concerts at the Palladium. The movie is a mostly mediocre tale of mother love but as a showcase for Garland, both as actress and as a performer, (her scenes at the Palladium were probably as close as the movies ever came to capturing her on-stage persona), is it exhilarating and indelibly moving. By the time she gets around to her drunken 'I can't be spread so thin' speech all traces of the character have been wiped clean and it's Garland, raw and emotional, up there on the screen. She was never to make another film, which is probably just as well. With this you can say she went out on a high.Co-star Dirk Bogarde fights a losing battle, (and he gets some terrible lines to say). He's a prissy, fussy stuffed shirt and you can never believe that he and Garland could ever have been romantically involved. There is also a wonderful turn from that great and perpetually undervalued actress Aline MacMahon as Garland's dresser-cum-secretary-cum-companion. But it's Garland's show. The panavision frame can hardly contain her.

To be honest, I am not REALLY a Judy Garland fanatic, even though I ought to be. I found her TV show extremely entertaining when I saw them on DVD, and, well, how can one NOT be entertained by the Wizard Of Oz? And I've seen snippets of her here and there. I begin this review of 'I Could Go On Singing' saying this and defending my uh, un-Judy Garland obsessiveness, and then say that I found this movie incredibly entertaining! It's as if they got her to play herself during the last portion of her life, what, being a total singing diva, and let the audience go home happy. In this movie, she plays a famous singer who meets up with an old flame (played low-key to the hilt by Dirk Bogarde) to try to meet up with her son who she abandoned long ago, soon after meeting, she wants to keep him! But Bogarde says no! Oh no! What is she to do? Yes, that's pretty much the plot. But who cares when you get to see La Judy in action, singing, bitching and chewing everyone up and spitting everyone out? This is nothing but fun, and well, not Kramer Vs. Kramer. I really would recommend this to anyone, because this could entertain anyone, Judy fan or not (I tell you I'm not!!!!)