Judy Garland, Jim Bailey and me

The effect Garland had on her concert audiences is well documented. “Bedlam superimposed upon bedlam,” was how one reviewer described the audience after a typical concert in which fans no longer seemed to know where they were or why or who, they just lay down in the theatre aisles, feeling. Judy undid people with her dazzling emotional charge. Yet surely sincerity and authenticity of sentiment must be, by their very nature, almost impossible to recreate?

Bailey tells me about the origins of his act. As a struggling teenage performer in Hollywood at a party one night he heard himself singing Over the Rainbow at the piano as Garland. The room went quiet for he sounded so like her people were shocked. Then he began to study her, her music and her facial and hand and arm gestures from her films and 1960s television shows, her make up, her nervous habits and he was invited to portray her in a friend’s revue.

Word spread fast of Bailey’s powers. “One night Judy’s press agent was in the audience and said: ‘I’ve just got to bring Judy in’.” The next Friday night the owner came in and said: ‘Judy Garland’s sitting out front.’

“ ‘Well . . . I can’t do it!’ I was petrified but they announced me — ‘Miss Judy Garland’ — and out I went and there she was. She was wearing that Garbo black velvet hat and the coat with the fox collar. I’m out there doing Judy. And then after a while she gets up and climbs onto the stage and puts her arms round me and says: ‘I never knew I was that pretty!’ And there was some music on the piano and she said: ‘Obviously you know that,’ and it was Bye Bye Blackbird, so we sang together. And do you know what she said to me when the curtain went down? She said: ‘Would you please call me, I’m so lonely,’ and then she came into the dressing room and said ‘Let me show you how to do the lower lip, darling, it’s not quite right.’ And then when she left I saw she she left the lipstick brush. I thought, well, I’m sure she has others. I still use it . . .”

It’s not the first time Bailey has told these stories nor the last, I’m certain, but they’re awfully good. I tell him that his speaking voice is very close to that of Garland’s daughter Liza Minnelli.

“Liza was in Vegas, she was down the street at the Riviera and I was at the Flamingo in the lounge. I was on at 12 and 4am, she was on at 8 and 12 so she would come to the late show. She was really into it. I’m at the dressing table being made up as Judy. I heard a knock at the door and a ‘Mama?’. I knew exactly who it was. ‘Liza?’ I said. She said: ‘Mama, this belongs to you,’ and gave me Judy’s pearl cluster ring.

“They had had a kind of love-hate relationship. There was inner conflict between them. When I did Judy it was almost like Liza was trying to reconfirm their relationship through me. She was very kind, I was very sweet. Strange. Unfortunately people like to dwell on the dramatic and the negative with Judy. The woman had a full life. She laughed always, she always had fun, no matter what was going on. When I went to her house — the Rockingham house next to Phyllis Diller, who I also do — she saw me and said: ‘When you do that move with your arm in After You’ve Gone, I do it more like this.’ She was coaching me.

“She sat at the table and clapped — she loved all the little details the way I moved my hands, the gestures, all the specifics I had noticed. She wore a pink bugle-beaded gown, low in the back, long sleeves, a rounded bottom, slit up to the knee. It was a gown from her TV show. She took everything when she left the TV shows.”

Even the towels, I read.

“Even those. Anyway she said: ‘I’ve come from one of those Hollywood parties and I went up to Janet Leigh and she turned her back on me and walked away. Janet Leigh! So I tipped her drink down her back . . .”

If Judy Garland hadn’t existed would you have had to invent her? I suddenly ask. “How could I have done that? It wouldn’t have been possible!”

“You know I also do Barbra [Streisand]? I did Barbra for Barbra at a party at her Malibu home and afterwards she says: ‘You know, it was very interesting hearing you sing my notes’.”

It’s time for Bailey to begin his transformation, the three hours of make up that help him physically and psychologically to inhabit Garland’s persona. I am invited to sit in on this process. The dressing room is tiny and boiling hot. Bailey sits at table, Noel Cowardish, in a dove-grey dressing gown with white piping. He is overlooked by large mirrors studded with light bulbs and framed by many pictures of Judy, album covers, photographs, trinkets, keepsakes. A rail of replica Judy gowns sparkles with sequins.

Bailey begins the complex contouring and shading that will bring Garland’s features onto his own. His hands shake. I sit on a corner chair, not knowing if I am allowed to speak, for the atmosphere is so intense that I have a horror of breaking his concentration and ruining things. It’s too intimate. It reminds me of the time I was allowed to look through Garland’s own make-up trunk at her museum in Minnesota and saw all the little tricks and aids she used: the instant beauté Face Life in a packet, the wooden skewer she used for fluffing her hair, the bottle of smelling salts. Bailey takes out a small motorised, hand-held fan and raises it to the varnish he has applied over his eyebrows. I am literally watching paint dry but it is fascinating. There are occasional comments that come in Garland’s exact voice, such as “This lipstick has seen better days”.

I have such a strong sense that I want to help in some way that it’s almost overwhelming. I think of Dottie Ponedel, Garland’s charming and faithful make-up lady. When I’m asked for water I am overjoyed and race to get it. On my return the scent of Balmain’s Jolie Madame is everywhere. It is the smell of the 1940s, of shoulder pads and Old Hollywood. Judy called it Jolly Madam.

Jim’s, or possibly Judy’s, nervous energy crackles in the small dressing room. There’s a sort of tremulous exasperation crossed with excitement and the threat that at any moment she/he may snap. Bailey’s manager pops in regularly and says things such as: “You look wonderful, Judy.” He reassures constantly, saying “You have plenty of time. Relax, Judy, don’t panic.” There is a sense that the situation is very very delicate and unless everyone is super-nice something awful might happen.

Everyone now calls Jim Judy and refers to him as “her”. Bailey’s recreation of Garland’s personality is very powerful: he has her intonation, her coltish manner, her occasional stammer, the way she suddenly italicises a word out of the blue, and then there are very witty jokes just thrown away with a flick of the hands. It is not like someone acting. It’s almost insane.

The presence of some kind of star quality is slightly claustrophobic in this tiny room. We are all in thrall to it. How did that happen? I even hear myself telling the amiable Times photographer when he arrives to treat her more like a star. What’s more he does.

Although I’ve already talked to Bailey for an hour I am introduced to “Judy”. “She’s a writer.” “Ah, one of those. Are you going to write nasty things about me? They all do.” I shake my head vehemently.

I recall a Judy annecdote about a London journalist who was lovely to her in person but betrayed her in print, accusing her of having many chins, and I feel like apologising for this incident.

It is hard to make a good impression on this strange creature, who is brittle and witty and possibly spoiling for a fight. I feel oddly powerless and small and monochrome on her presence, but it’s quite an exhilarating feeling also.

We head into the auditorium. After quite a wait “Judy” comes out on stage in a black crepe gown that I’m familiar with — she wore it on The Jack Paar Show, when she was so funny and glamorous you can see the host fall in love with her right there and then.

I have my picture taken with her. I am standing, it hits me, with quite a credible version of someone I’ve heroworshipped all my life. She puts her arm round me. “We may as well pretend we like each other . . .” she wisecracks. The fumes of Jolie Madame make me feel faint. The sequins on her jacket catch the chiffon of my blouse. I’m not quite sure how or who to be. Then I realise she needs compliments. Of course!

I tell her how great she looks. “Really?” she purrs, so I say it again. She asks me where I bought my blouse. “Paris,” I whisper. She is impressed and I grin. I can’t speak.

Then she/he sings Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart with piano accompaniment and everyone roars with pleasure.Does Jim genuinely believe himself to be Judy? Everyone else seems to. It is all very strange and rather wonderful.

Jim Bailey as Judy Garland is at the Leicester Square Theatre, WC2 (0844 8472475), until June 14. Susie Boyt’s memoir My Judy Garland Life is published by Virago, £8.99