British playwright Peter Quilter's 'End of the Rainbow' had an unwieldy path from a London Fringe show about a boozy singer not named Judy to a biopic that could earn Renée Zellweger her second Oscar
Tracie Bennett starred in 'End of the Rainbow' at New York’s Belasco Theater in 2012.
Playwright Peter Quilter wrote a show in London that wasn't about the famed singer, but after audiences pointed out the similarities, he did a new take.stars Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland in her final months in 1968 as she mounts a comeback with a series of London concerts. It's the first big-screen attempt to depict Garland's reckoning, 50 years after her death.
Returning to the play with Garland in mind, he was shocked that no one had written a stage show about her. "When I first wrote [], I sent it to various people, including the National Theatre, which wrote back and said, 'Oh, Peter, it's a good play, but no one is interested in Judy Garland.' " Butwent on to prove otherwise: after a successful premiere in Sydney, the show ran at the West End and on Broadway, earning Tracie Bennett Olivier and Tony noms.
Garland never seems in control of her own path, though she desperately wants to be. It's a theme in the song she's most associated with, which Zellweger performs in the finale. "She's reflecting on that song that has followed her all her life and it's about thinking, 'What is over there?' and 'Should I get there?' " Edge says of her iconic "Over the Rainbow.
This story first appeared in a January stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine,
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