Judy Garland: Her Life in Photos

June 10 marks the 100th birthday of Judy Garland — and anyone who’s seen films like “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) or “A Star is Born” (1954) is automatically a fan.

To many fans, she was a blazing talent and that was enough. But others became as fascinated with her personal life as with her performances. She was like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and a few others: It was hard to separate sad stories of her personal life from her work.

Her life was more melodramatic and complex than any script she performed, with an overbearing stage mother and callous Hollywood execs, all of whom supplied her with drugs to keep her energy up. Her life alternated great joy with tales of rehab, personal and professional disasters, but always with a Dorothy Gale optimism that she could smile and overcome it.

On June 18, 1967, she completed a week-long stand at Westbury (N.Y.) Music Fair and Variety summed up, “She has become an object of veneration of a kind that will probably not be seen again for a long time. Audiences hung on every sound, cheered every good note that she sang, talked to her with adulation … The men and women here seemingly wanted to make up for the hurt to her dignity and her bankroll.”

When she died in 1969, at age 47, Variety reported that 22,000 people stood in line, some for more than four hours, to get a glimpse of her at New York services. “Surprising to most of the press was the fact that the thousands of mourners were a cross section of every conceivable age and type … Judy Garland seemingly represented something to each of them. As part of his eulogy, James Mason said, ‘Judy’s greatest gift was that she could wring tears out of hearts of rock.’”

The Gumm Sisters
Judy Garland started as a child performer, as part of a trio with her two older sisters under her real name, Frances Gumm. In an Aug 30, 1932, review of the stage show at L.A.’s Paramount Theater, Variety‘s reviewer enthused that the singing trio “socked with two numbers.” He singled out the selling point of the act: “the 10-year-old sister with a pip of a lowdown voice. Kid stopped the show.” After her vaudevillian parents realized that Frances was indeed the star of the show, she became a solo act, with her domineering mother controlling her career.
Pigskin Parade
Garland made her film debut in 20th Century Fox’s 1936 musical-comedy “Pigskin Parade.” She was the ninth-billed performer in the film, and the Variety review on Oct. 17, 1936, singled out her performance of the song “It’s Love I’m After” and her duet on “Balboa” with Dixie Dunbar. After this, Garland moved to MGM. The third-billed actor in “Pigskin Parade” was Jack Haley, three years before he reunited with Garland on “Wizard of Oz.” (And in 1974, Garland’s daughter Liza Minnelli married Jack Haley Jr.)
The Wizard of Oz
Garland made several terrific films, but this 1939 movie is the first among equals. Variety praised “the lavish scale of this filmusical extravaganza” and its “ingenuity and inventiveness.” The critic also found Garland “appealing,” a pretty subdued reaction to such a memorable performance. Garland won a special Oscar for her work, and Academy Awards went to Herbert Stothart’s score and “Over the Rainbow” for best song. That Harold Arlen-Yip Harburg tune became her trademark, and fans are still aghast at the tale of the MGM exec who wanted to cut the song in previews because it slowed down the action. The film was popular when it opened, but it cost so much (Variety reported it at $3 million) that it was in the red until it was sold to television; its regular showings on TV have made a lasting impression on multiple generations.
Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney at the Oscars
At the 12th Academy Awards, honoring the films of 1939, Garland received an Academy Juvenile Award for “The Wizard of Oz,” while her MGM stablemate and frequent costar, Mickey Rooney, was a best-actor nominee for “Babes in Arms,” in which the two costarred. Over the years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences handed out a total of 12 Juvenile Awards, from Shirley Temple (1934) through Hayley Mills (1960). After that, young thesps would compete in the four acting races, as Rooney had. In all, Rooney and Garland starred in 10 films together, including three “Andy Hardy” movies.
Meet Me in St. Louis
“Meet Me in St. Louis” is one of her most beloved films, though Garland resisted it and was unhappy during the filming. In 1944, she was 22 and wanted to play more adult roles, and she didn’t get along at first with director Vincente Minnelli. But their differences were resolved and he soon became her second husband (after music maven David Rose). Garland often had good instincts about material, but she was wrong about this one. Variety’s Abel Green wrote, “It holds everything for the film fan,” and he correctly predicted big box-office: It was the second-highest-earning film of the year, behind “Going My Way,” and MGM’s most popular musical of the 1940s. Audiences liked the family warmth and the songs by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, including “The Boy Next Door,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “The Trolley Song,” as well as Garland’s straw-hat-and-cane routine with Margaret O’Brien to the 1902 song “Under the Bamboo Tree.”
Strike Up the Band
Director Busby Berkeley was famed for his geometric, eye-popping choreography in WB musicals like “Golddiggers of 1935” and so MGM snapped him up, but he always clashed with Garland when he directed her. This 1940 musical was a followup to 1939’s successful “Babes in Arms,” which had teamed Berkeley and Garland with Mickey Rooney. That trio reunited for “Band,” which repeated the “Let’s put on a show!” format that inspired endless imitations and spoofs over the years. “Strike Up the Band” retained the title tune by the Gershwins but otherwise bears little resemblance to the 1927 stage version. Variety’s review exclaimed that the film was “smacko entertainment,” which was high praise indeed.
Annie Get Your Gun
The 1950 film was a career low point for Garland. MGM envisioned a big colorful musical based on the Irving Berlin stage tuner, which had starred Ethel Merman. On Feb. 2, 1949, Variety ran an item that Garland and Howard Keel would star in “Annie Get Your Gun,” but she butted heads with director Busby Berkeley and began to miss work. On May 16, Variety reported that top-level MGM execs met to map future of the film after Garland was suspended. Later, Variety reported that filming had begun May 4 and halted after 6 weeks, then would resume in September. (Betty Garrett and June Allyson were considered, but the role went to Betty Hutton.) In early 1950, Garland was suspended for not reporting to work on “Royal Wedding.” On Oct. 4, 1950, Variety reported that, after 15 years at MGM, she was now “a free agent at her own request.”
A Star Is Born
As producer, Sid Luft intended “A Star is Born” as a career rebound for Garland, after the humiliation and bad-mouthing from “Annie Get Your Gun.” The 1954 musical, a remake of the 1937 drama, featured a stellar team, including director George Cukor, scripter Moss Hart and costar James Mason. Variety said, “Miss Garland is splendid,” adding that her “way with a song makes sheer magic of ‘The Man That Got Away,’” a torch song by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin that became another of her signature songs. The three-hour extravaganza reminded Hollywood and the world of her talent, but it didn’t pay off as expected. She didn’t win the Oscar, losing out to Grace Kelly, and she only appeared onscreen in three more movies in the following 15 years. Even though Mason was playing a movie star on a downward spiral that’s contrasted with her rise, real life reversed the situation: He was also Oscar-nominated, his stock rose in Hollywood and was offered multiple films.
Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli
Liza Minnelli was born to showbiz power couple Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli. At age 3, she appeared in the final shot of her mother’s 1949 “In the Good Old Summertime”; she sang with her mother at the London Palladium in 1964 at age 18, and also appeared on her mother’s TV show, which ran 1963-64. Garland sometimes brought her three children — also including Lorna Luft and Joey Luft — onstage during concerts. Liza Minnelli was the most high-profile of the three, and later shared her mother’s problems with alcohol and drugs. Though she spoke often of her mother on chat shows, Minnelli refused to sing “Over the Rainbow” until 2002, as a tribute to Garland during the “Liza’s Back” tour. On Feb. 4, 2020, Marc Malkin wrote a Variety cover story on Minnelli today.
The Judy Garland Show
Garland and husband Sid Luft clashed with CBS over aborted plans for a series, with suits and counter-suits. As an attempted reconciliation, both sides agreed to drop their claims and create a new series. She signed a four-year contract, for 26 episodes per season, starting in 1963, but the variety show only lasted one season, a victim of poor ratings opposite NBC’s powerhouse “Bonanza.” Garland’s show changed formats several times, with comic Jerry Van Dyke and singer Mel Torme as regulars. It was cancelled in January 1964, even though they continued to tape seven more episodes. Her guest list was impressive, including Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll, Tony Bennett, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee and, of course, Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft and Joey Luft. On Oct. 6, 1963, the show featured two generations of stars: the veteran Garland and newcomer Barbra Streisand, including a duet of “Get Happy”/“Happy Days are Here Again.” As a bonus, Ethel Merman appeared and the trio sang “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” In 1970 Mel Torme wrote a negative portrait of Garland in his 1970 book “The Other Side of the Rainbow,” but Torme’s views were countered by Coyne Steven Sanders in his tome, “Rainbow’s End.”
Judy Garland's 1969 Wedding
After Garland divorced her fourth husband, Mark Herron, she married Mickey Deans in London, a marriage that only lasted three months. Her booking at London’s Talk of the Town nitery is at the center of the 2019 film “Judy,” a job that was both exhilarating and traumatizing for the performer. Variety reported on Jan. 29, 1969, that Garland was under doctor’s orders to rest and recover from the flu after being driven from the stage. She was more than an hour late for the start of her show and when she appeared without apology or explanation, “She was booed by irate customers, and the stage pelted with cigarette packs. She cut her act after 10 minutes and headed offstage.” After a string of similarly doomed performances, she played her final gig in March, 1969, the same month she married Deans.
Garland died June 22 in London, with her funeral held June 27, 1969. History was made the next days, when in the early hours of June 28, police raided the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan and attempted to arrest the gay patrons, who fought back. Because many of the rioters had attended Garland services hours earlier, some have concluded that the grief fueled their anger. The historic uprising was a fitting sendoff for Judy Garland, who always embraced gay audiences even before it was acceptable.

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Update: 2024-04-15