A Nostalgic ‘Babes’ Brings Back Memories of Judy Garland

Shawn Daywalt doesn’t set out to do an impression of Judy Garland, but her performance in the nostalgic musical “Babes” is so resonant of Garland that you could easily confuse the show with that classic 1939 movie, “Babes in Arms.”

The production at the Cast Theatre is a touching salute to juvenile contract players shooting a movie at a studio such as MGM in 1942. The show has been a hit at its Hollywood venue since November, and Daywalt is a major reason. Her big, limpid green eyes, her tenderness and expressive light soprano voice animate a character who’s loosely inspired by the teen-age Garland.

“At the first cast meeting for ‘Babes,’ ” Daywalt said, “we did watch the movie ‘Babes in Arms’ with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.” The director (Michael Michetti) told her that he wanted her “to be honest and sincere like Judy--but not to copy her,” she said.

“My character in the show is innocent and insecure, because now she’s growing out of her adolescence after she’s made a career of being a child star. The other kids on the movie lot ridicule her for growing up. And I can personally identify with that, because when I got into my 20s, I couldn’t play an adolescent anymore, and that was frightening.”

Daywalt, 27, quit UCLA in 1983 after two years in the theater arts department “because I wanted to sing and dance full time. It was that simple. I wanted to go to New York and live like those girls in that romantic Greenwich Village basement in that play ‘My Sister Eileen’ or like Cornelia Otis Skinner in ‘Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.’ I didn’t make it to New York. Times change, you know. So I stuck to my career here. I had supportive parents, and that helped.”

What’s remarkable about Daywalt is her diversity. She’s not only a trained ballerina and actress and a singer of Broadway and pop material, but she’s a diva, a professional opera singer with a four-octave soprano range.

Her operatic repertoire includes Puccini’s princess in “Turandot” and Verdi’s doomed courtesan Violetta in “La Traviata.” She sang last season with the company of Opera Pacific at the Orange County Center for Performing Arts, and two or three days each week she makes a 45-minute drive from her apartment in West Los Angeles to Long Beach to perform operas with a bus and van troupe for elementary and high school students. The opera program, called “Overture,” is funded by the American Lung Assn. under the sponsorship of Opera Pacific.

When she’s trying to land a commercial acting or singing stint, Daywalt said she’s hesitant to plug her opera background because of her perceived feeling that film and TV casting people “will think me less capable if they see me as coming from opera. I’m proud of the fact I’m an opera singer and a ballerina. But in my experience as a working actress, when casting people regard me as an opera singer I see it in their eyes--they’re thinking, ‘Oh, she’s grandiose.’ I just keep opera in my career separate from everything else.’ ”

There’s a moment in “Babes” when Daywalt finally sheds pinafores for the fashions of a young woman outgrowing her baby fat and her nervous need to pop pills. It’s here that Daywalt’s vocal talent soars. You almost can imagine her singing Puccini in the plaintive, torchy song emblematic of her character’s flowering maturity titled “What a Woman Can Do.” (Integral to the show’s charm is its original musical score by Brian Shucker.)

At the heart of Daywalt’s impact is a fragility and an understated decency that make her role of the actress, called Wendy Garrick in the movie within the play, linger in your imagination.

Discounting her operatic roles and a stint in the chorus of the musical “Oklahoma” last summer at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, “Babes” is a rare opportunity for exposure. It’s also a chance to find an agent. She has been surviving on sheer talent. Her boyfriend, David Loomstein, is a writer at Disney Studios, and she herself knows the industry after toiling in it for seven years, but is now without an agent--which is as strong a commentary on Hollywood-as-a-tough-town as any example that comes to mind.

She’s a member of three actors unions, “but even a hit show doesn’t necessarily set you up,” she said. “I know I’m good, but nobody’s asked me to sign on the dotted line.

“ ‘Babes’ has given me more than I could have dreamed,” she said. “Professionally, the show has been a big step, but I hope it does more than it’s done and has a life after the Cast Theatre, which speaking on behalf of all nine of us in the cast, it deserves.”

Raised and educated in Laguna Beach, Daywalt studied ballet as a youngster. Despite a curvature of the spine, she continued dancing until she turned 17, when she had surgery to correct her impairment. The operation was successful, but her professional future as a ballerina was murky, so she redirected her energy to singing and acting.

After her second year at UCLA, in 1983 she won what seemed like the pot of gold to a university student--$1,000 to be exact--for placing first in the competitive Carol Burnett Acting Awards on the Westwood campus. As a sign of her multiple talents, she wrote her own winning monologue, which she called “Little Mary.” Explained Daywalt: “It was a musical comedy aria based on a jilted opera singer.”

Now, seven years later, the comparatively seasoned actress says: “The Burnett award is a nice thing to have on your resume.” She pauses, lifts those green eyes to the Hollywood sun and adds, “There are a lot of Carol Burnett winners out there.”

“Babes” is at the Cast Theatre, 804 El Centro Ave., Hollywood, at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 and 7 p.m. Sundays through Feb. 24. Tickets $15. For information, call (213) 462-0265.