A road trip from Las Vegas took me along the Pacific coast to Vancouver, Canada then through the Northern Cascade Range of Washington, and the rolling plains of Montana and the prairies of North Dakota. After six-thousand miles, I arrive in Winnipeg.
I parked in the downtown business and arts district and minutes later stood at the box office of the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. From the program, I learned the twelve-day Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival was celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary with a hundred seventy-six performing troupes, and more than one thousand shows held at thirty-two venues.
I purchased one of the remaining tickets to “Ingénue” for nine dollars US and made my way to the one-woman show featuring Melanie Gall. She recounted the enduring friendship between Winnipeg native Deanna Durban – already the highest-paid actress in the world at the age of twenty-one – and Judy Garland. Through a monologue she wrote and fifteen beautifully rendered acappella scores, she offered the sold-out crowd a crystal-clear operatic voice and engaging narrative. Her rendition of Garland’s “Over the Rainbow” showered me with goosebumps.
Gall mentioned that Durban and Garland were both married at The Little Church of the West, a chapel situated on the Las Vegas Strip. I grew up in an apartment complex across the street and, along with my mischievous childhood friend, occasionally peeked inside the wedding sanctuary. Being so far away now, Gall’s reference to the wedding chapel imparted a welcoming sense of home: a connection to the gaming capital I least expected at a cultural event.
During the performance, Gall hadn’t mentioned any of the other Vegas ties Garland and Durban shared. For instance, in 1965 Garland brought her show to the New Frontier, a once-renowned hotel on the Las Vegas Strip where the Little Church of the West once stood.
As for Durbin, she was the highest paid actress in the U.S. and her fan club the world’s largest. At the age of twenty-six, she stepped away from the limelight and moved to Paris in the 1950s. Despite numerous offers to return to showbiz, including a blank check for a comeback in Las Vegas, she rejected them, stating, “I want to be remembered, please, as the girl who quit before the public quit her.”