Just call her Judy
Vera Ormsby, known as Judy to many because of her resemblance to actress Judy Garland, is shown with a photo of herself at 18. She made appearances at the Highland Theater when Garland’s films were shown.
Photo: Kathleen Folkerth
By Kathleen FolkerthCOPLEY — Her medical records and other official documents may have the name Vera Ormsby on them, but most people know her as Judy.
That’s because 86-year-old Ormsby was known in her younger years as a look-alike of singer and actress Judy Garland.
“That’s all everyone ever calls her,” said granddaughter Julie Modlik, of Copley.
“No one calls me Vera,” Ormsby said.
Ormsby, a resident of Bath, has spent the past few months at Sumner on Ridgewood as she recuperates from some heart problems. Because her real name is on all her charts and records, she admits that she doesn’t always know the staff is talking to her when they do call her Vera.
Ormsby said people first starting calling her Judy when she worked as an “elevator girl” at the O’Neil’s department store in Downtown Akron in the late 1930s. The cushy job required nothing more than Ormsby to ride in the elevator and look pretty.
“We were one spoiled bunch of babes,” she said. “We had our hair and nails done every week and wore corsages.”
The brunette also did some modeling locally, appearing in the 1940 catalog for Firestone Radios.
She also loved going to the movies. Her favorites were all the Garland movies as well as “Gone With the Wind.”
Ormsby recalled going to the Liberty Theater in Akron, where she said tickets were a quarter or less. But she especially loved the Highland Theater in Highland Square, the neighborhood in which she grew up.
“It was beautiful,” she said. “I thought it was even prettier than the Loews [later known as the Akron Civic Theatre], even though it had stars on the ceiling.”
It was at the Highland Theater that she was “discovered” as a look-alike for Garland.
“I was going into the movies at the Highland when the manager saw me and asked if I’d be a hostess,” she said. Even though it didn’t pay, she agreed to appear during the premiere of a Garland film and greet movie-goers.
“I wore a long dress and a fur coat,” she said. “I thought I was really something.”
She said she got her share of attention from the boys there. But her heart was with Robert Ormsby, a fellow graduate of Buchtel High School, whom she married in 1942.
After their marriage, he joined the Navy and headed off to the Pacific. She moved in with his parents and got a job in the billing department of Gun Mount, which was a division of Firestone.
Once her husband returned from World War II, she quit working. Their son Robert Jr. was born in 1947, and they moved to a home they built in Bath in 1948. Robert Ormsby owned the Akron Plating Co., which is today run by the couple’s son.
The couple got their share of press, thanks to elaborate parties they had poolside at their home. Ormsby still has all the clippings in a scrapbook.
But the Ormsbys didn’t have any idle retirement years. After their son’s wife died, the couple stepped up to help raise their two granddaughters, Modlik and Jennifer Sevald, of Fairlawn.
Ormsby’s husband died 14 years ago.
“He was one of the best fellows there ever was,” she said.
She appreciates the attention today of her son and his wife, granddaughters and three great-grandchildren.
Ormsby doesn’t watch movies today now that her eyesight is diminished because of macular degeneration. She doesn’t think today’s movies are too hot anyway.
“The movies used to be special, nice stories,” she said. “There was none of this fighting and swearing and all that.”
Even though she hasn’t been to the movies in years, she said she was saddened to see news reports about the possible demolition of part of the Highland Theater, where she spent many hours in her youth. The theater’s owner, Ted Bare, has a permit for the demolition.
“I don’t want that torn down,” she said. “It means a lot to me.”
She still has a soft spot in her heart for Garland, who died in 1969 at age 47 of an accidental drug overdose.
“I loved her voice and I loved to watch her act,” Ormsby said. “It’s too bad she ended up like she did. I don’t think I’ll end up like her.”