The Auteur as Ghost Star

Abstract This chapter interprets director Vincente Minnelli as a different kind of costar for Judy Garland, one who was as given to camp as Mickey Rooney, but who turned that dimension into a kind of loving, liberating frame in their six filmic collaborations across the 1940s: Babes on Broadway (1941; “ghost theater” sequence), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Clock (1945), Ziegfeld Follies (1946), Till the Clouds Roll By (1947; “Look for the Silver Lining” and “Who”), and The Pirate (1948). In part, Minnelli freed Garland from not only Busby Berkeley’s frame-breaking style of camp, but also from song itself, as her performances in the middle films from this series aim increasingly for a kind of actorly realism. Notably, however, this more actorly element is itself framed by an overarching camp sensibility, emerging directly out of camp in their first collaboration and never quite escaping its gravitational pull, as camp reasserts itself with a vengeance in their final collaboration. Indeed, this reassertion of a strong, self-aware camp sensibility makes this film crucial to Minnelli’s status as an auteur.