Under the Rainbow

Actor John Carlyle got his big break in 1954. New to Hollywood, the twenty-three-year-old Carlyle was cast as the assistant director of the movie-within-a movie in George Cukor's A Star is Born. Although Carlyle's scene was later cut from the film — and his star status subsequently never materialized — the job brought him in touch with Judy Garland, who up until her death fifteen years later was Carlyle's friend and sometime lover. Under the Rainbow tells the story of this rocky but beloved relationship. No longer the great star who first enthralled Carlyle as an adolescent, Garland — like many former headliners in the 1960s — lived an often desperate, hand-to-mouth existence that was eased only by pills and liquor. She turned to Carlyle for support, even with the hope of marrying the openly gay actor. He politely declined the opportunity of matrimony, but remained constant in his adoration of the star for the rest of his life. The author takes us on a rare, behind-the-scenes tour of gay Hollywood, with an intimate, often hilarious, star-studded memoir of the decline and end of old Hollywood.