Judy Garland's legacy and the Benin Bronzes
The History Hour
BBC
4.4 • 879 Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A compilation of this week's Witness History episodes. Gerald Clarke, the author of Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, speaks to Max Pearson about the legacy of the stage and screen actress who died in 1969.
We also look at how a chance encounter led to the return of two of the looted Benin Bronzes, ancient artworks which were among thousands stolen from Benin City by the British Army in 1897.
And we head back to 2008, when a nine-year-old boy tripped over a fossil that would lead to one of the most important discoveries in the history of human evolution.
Contributors:
Author Gerald Clarke John Kelsch from the Judy Garland Museum Production assistant Rosalyn Wilder Retired police officer Tim Awoyemi Matt Berger who discovered the Australopithecus sediba fossil Hedayat Matine-Daftary, grandson of Mohammed Mossadeq
(Photo: Judy Garland during a press conference in 1963. Credit: Central Press/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I was working in a coffee shop in Boston to like help pay rent while I was training for the trials and so people kept joking |
| 0:06.3 | They're like oh yeah she just took a two hour coffee break and when in ran the Olympic trials |
| 0:10.4 | Farithon on the podium is back with more Olympians and Paralympians sharing their journeys to the top. |
| 0:17.6 | On the podium from the BBC World Service, listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:22.8 | Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Max Pearson, the past brought to life by those who were there |
| 0:35.5 | This week the boy who found a missing link in human evolution and wasn't put off by the conventional wisdom |
| 0:41.1 | In the early 2000 one of the biggest paleontologists in the world |
| 0:45.6 | put out an article saying there are no more hominid fossils in Africa to discover, we found them all |
| 0:51.0 | stop exploring pretty much. And that hurt the industry a lot because |
| 0:55.4 | when one of the top scientists says that you pretty much believe him. |
| 0:58.7 | Also the campaign for the return of the Benin bronzes looted by the British in 1897. |
| 1:04.8 | Those bronzes were unlawfully taken. |
| 1:08.1 | They were looted. |
| 1:09.5 | They were stalling. |
| 1:10.7 | And that is why there has been a lot of outcry emotionally they want it back. |
| 1:16.0 | Plus behind the scenes of Judy Garland's stellar career. |
| 1:20.0 | As a child she was used and abused as an awful lot of people around that time were. |
| 1:27.6 | Some of them withstood it better than others. |
| 1:31.1 | That's coming up in the podcast and indeed for the first part we're going to be |
| 1:34.5 | focusing on the film that made Judy Garland's name The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy may have been the central |
| 1:40.8 | character but her Ruby slippers play a crucial role in the film, becoming |
| 1:45.2 | among the most treasured film memorabilia of all time. |
... |
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