Discovery of Judy Garland
Lane is credited with discovering the 13-year-old Frances Gumm (Judy Garland). He caught her sisters' act at the Paramount theater in Hollywood which featured a movie and a live stage show. The sisters, Susie and Mary Jane, brought on their younger sister, Frances, who sang "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart". Lane immediately called Jack Robbins, head of the music department at MGM, and told her he'd just heard a great new talent.
Robbins told him to bring her in next day for an audition which Lane did. Robbins was knocked out by the little girl's voice (Lane played the audition piano for her), rushed upstairs and dragged Louis B. Mayer down to listen to her belt out some songs. Mayer was so impressed he ordered every writer, director and producer on the lot to hear her with the result that the audition, which began at 9 am, finished at 7:30 pm. But Frances (Judy) was signed, and that was the start of her great career. Because of circumstance, and contractual arrangements, Burton Lane didn't work with her again for seven years (Babes on Broadway), but it was definitely he who discovered her.
Read more about this topic: Burton Lane
Famous quotes containing the words discovery of, discovery and/or garland:
“Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“The discovery of Pennsylvania’s coal and iron was the deathblow to Allaire. The works were moved to Pennsylvania so hurriedly that for years pianos and the larger pieces of furniture stood in the deserted houses.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)