Judy Garland, Mystery Sleuth

Cash-ins, of course, are nothing new, and in 1945 Judy Garland was able to add another item to her resume. Well, sort of. In Judy Garland and the Hoodoo Costume, the former Dorothy Gale became an unwitting mystery sleuth. The author, Kathryn Heisenfelt, is more mysterious than her books and her books are all kinds of improbable. It’s likely for that reason they’re mostly forgotten nowadays, and that might be a good thing, except that once they’re discovered it’s hard not to be curious about them and why they exist.

First of all, though, let’s peek into Judy Garland and the Hoodoo Costume. Just a peek, though. We gotta give the book a little bit of dignity, at least, since it is a mystery story.

Judy, on a break from MGM, is in some northern state (Minnesota, maybe?) delivering a package for a friend to Doris, a friendly costumer. Doris asks Judy to deliver a dress to a woman named Frederica, who lives with two nice older ladies. They tell Judy Frederica is taking care of her aunt, who’s very sick, and one of the ladies, Grace, tells Judy privately that she thinks there’s something fishy going on. Would Judy be a dear and take the box with the dress to Frederica? Judy’s uncertain but agrees, thinking it’ll be a quick trip, in and out.

Our heroine arrives at the mansion where Frederica is staying, and almost immediately gets sucked into a hostage situation. Every sound causes the heart to skip a beat, and whether or not Judy and Frederica make it out is in doubt. Never mind that it’s highly unlikely that MGM would have allowed one of their most bankable stars to go missing, but whatever.

No, Judy doesn’t get to sing . She does, however, have to pretend to be a spirit for some reason, which the book portrays as being super stressful.

Errrr, this is Judy Garland we’re talking about, right? Yeah, no, not really. No one likes being forced into performing, but one would think Judy would flex her considerable genius somewhere.

Hoodoo Costume is kind of interesting, but any interest is overshadowed by how generic it is. Again, the heroine doesn’t read anywhere close to Judy Garland. In addition to the lack of musicality, she’s got none of Judy’s biting wit or comedic chops. The book never mentions a single one of her films, just that she’s Judy Garland the Movie Star. The illustrations kinda look like Judy did in the mid-forties, although her bangs are a little high. Other than that, it’s not Judy, just Judy’s name dropped into into a vaguely Nancy Drew-like template. Whether it all works or not, and it mostly doesn’t, is merely a footnote.

Judy Garland and the Hoodoo Costume was one installment in Whitman’s Authorized Edition series, which, like Hoodoo, featured movie stars such as Shirley Temple, John Payne, Van Johnson, and Deanna Durbin as protagonists in their own novels. Well, not so much them as their names and maybe a slight acknowledgement of their movie star status.

How did these books sell? We don’t know. DId the studios care? We don’t know. There’s not a lot of press about them. It’s doubtful any of the stars who were inserted into the Authorized Series knew very much or cared about their names adorning cheap hackneyed fiction, either, although Ann Rutherford autographed her book for a fan in 2006.

Full disclosure: I once found about half a dozen of these novels at the Antique Trove. First editions, fairly good condition, albeit no dust jackets. One was the Judy Garland novel. Ann Rutherford was also in there. I think a couple of them featured Deanna Durbin. I still kick myself for not buying them, but not too much because I don’t know where I would store them. Still, finding them was educational.

What’s much tougher to find is information about the author, Kathyrn Heisenfelt. According to LibraryThing, Heisenfelt lived from 1903 until 1978, and Wiki claims she was a journalist and playwright from Minnesota. However, there’s no way to verify that because almost every site that mentions Heisenfelt only talks about her publishing history. No photos, no biographical details, nothing. Was this author’s name really Kathryn Heisenfelt? Did she even exist? Who knows.

It’s more likely that “Kathryn Heisenfelt” is a pen name for someone, probably a team of someones.  The few sources on Whitman Publishing say the Authorized Editions were written by a team of writers, and very quickly, because for the most part, multiple “Authorized” books came out every year between 1941 and 1947.

If Kathryn Heisenfelt was a real person, she would have been stupid busy, as she had thirty titles to her credit, some releasing in the same year. Not even Steinbeck could write books that fast.

As the old saying goes, though, “Haste makes waste,” and Whitman’s dash-off method of publishing meant corners were naturally cut, plus these books are often weird and forced. In 1942’s Ginger Rogers and the Legend of Scarlett Cloak, Fred Astaire’s most famous dance partner is a switchboard operator in a hotel who decides she needs to contribute to the war effort.

Things also got icky. Jane Withers and the Swamp Wizard has Jane getting accused of murder after a girl falls into quicksand, and the girl’s friend hiding the death by manufacturing a shriek that keeps everyone away from the swamp. Ew.

Some of the phone-ins were just laughable. Like the illustrations in Ann Sheridan and the Sign of the Sphinx, for instance. Notice anything?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Whitman Publishing is still around today, and while their most famous product is the Trixie Belden series, they mostly specialize in coin and stamp collector’s guides, and once upon a time they even manufactured card games. It’s no surprise that the books aren’t talked about much nowadays and kind of a shame, because the curiosity factor is off the charts.

A new Cooking With the French Chef post is on the way tomorrow. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…

---

~Purchases made via Amazon Affiliate links found on this site help support Taking Up Room at no extra cost to you.~

If you’re enjoying what you see on Taking Up Room, please subscribe to my Substack page, where you’ll find both free and paid subscriber-only reviews of mostly new and newish movies, documentaries, and shows. I publish every Wednesday and Saturday. You can also subscribe to my Club 15 Tier, which gives you at least one extra Taking Up Room post every month for a small fee.