Judy Garland in OTK's

I first stumbled across this picture back around 1999 in a book at the public library (remember those?).  I checked out the book and scanned the picture for TBC (this isn't that scan).
This picture struck me as completely incongruous and ran counter to every notion I had about Judy Garland. It still does.  I thought of it for the first time in years as I was trying to illustrate a point about rare bootage in a previous post.  That's when I remembered it was a promo shot from Babes on Broadway(1941)-


Keep your Ruby Slippers! In this brief moment from Babes on Broadway (1941) Judy channels her inner Sarah Bernhardt wearing a pair of over the knee boots.


A few random thoughts.
It was a completely different world in 1999 when I first tried to find this movie.  If it wasn't at your local video store(on VHS!), you could only hope it would show up on AMC sometime.  This was before Netflix, Video On Demand or huge libraries of movies as close as your nearest torrent tracker.  From "I wonder if I can find this now" to sitting on my hard-drive took less than an hour.

It was a completely different world in 1941 when this movie was made. The grand finale is a  deeply offensive  minstrel show.  It takes a lot to shock me, but 15 solid minutes of Judy Garland shuckin' and jivin' in horrific black face did it. I cannot image this movie would air without disclaimers.

Thanks to a wasted day back in April, I know that this is a tribute to Sarah Bernhardt's famous turn as L'Aiglon.