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Judy Garland Biography
Who2 Biography:Judy Garland, Actor /
Singer
- Born: 10 June 1922
- Birthplace: Grand Rapids, Minnesota
-
Died: 22 June 1969
(sleeping pill overdose)
- Best Known As: Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz
Name at birth: Frances Gumm Judy Garland's performance as
Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939) won her a special Oscar and
gave her a theme song for the rest of her life: "Somewhere Over the
Rainbow." As a teenager Garland appeared in a series of cheerfully
fluffy movies with fellow teen star Mickey
Rooney, including Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) and Babes
in Arms (1939). In the 1940s she was a song-and-dance star in movies
like Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). She married director Vincente
Minnelli; their daughter Liza
Minnelli became a star in her own right. (Garland eventually
married five times.) In the 1950s Garland began touring as a singer and
became famous for her emotional, high-energy live performances.
Throughout her last two decades she struggled with addiction to
prescription drugs and alcohol, while continuing to perform like a
determined trouper on Broadway and in cabarets. She finally died of an
overdose of prescription sleeping pills at age 47; her last husband,
Mickey Deans, found her dead in their bathroom. UPI later reported that
the coroner ruled the cause as "incautious self overdosage of the
sleeping drug Seconal." She was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in
Hartsdale, New York.
Garland's five husbands were: composer David Rose (1941-44), Vincente
Minnelli (1945-51), manager Sid Luft (1952-65), actor Mark Herron
(1965-67), and restaurant manager Mickey Deans (1968 until her death).
She had one child with Minelli (Liza Minelli) and two with Sid Luft:
Lorna Luft (b. 1952) and Joseph Luft (b. 1955)... Though not gay
herself, Garland somehow became an enduring icon for the gay community,
and the term "Friend of Dorothy" became pop culture shorthand for a gay
man... See also our profile of Dorothy's dog Toto...
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was a hit for Hawaiian musician Israel
Kamakawiwo'ole in the 1990s.
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:Judy
Garland
(born June 10, 1922, Grand Rapids, Minn., U.S. — died
June 22, 1969, London, Eng.) U.S. singer and film actress. Born into a
family of vaudeville performers, she made her stage debut at age three.
She toured with her sisters until making her debut in a short film, Every Sunday (1936). She was a hit in Broadway
Melody of 1938 and starred as a wholesome girlfriend in nine films
with Mickey
Rooney, including Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938). She
became an international star as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz
(1939). Among her other musical hits were Meet Me in St.
Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), and Summer
Stock (1950). Her sweet but powerful voice and emotional range made
her a legendary concert performer. After record-breaking engagements at
the London Palladium and New York's Palace Theatre, she returned to the
screen in triumph in A Star Is Born (1954), and she was
acclaimed for her role in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).
Her life was troubled by broken marriages and a reliance on drugs, which
led to her early death. Her daughters, Liza Minnelli (by Vincente
Minnelli) and Lorna Luft, followed her to the musical stage.
For more information on Judy Garland, visit Britannica.com.
Biography:Judy Garland
Judy Garland (1922-1969) starred in films, musicals, and
on the concert stage. A superstar who never lost her waif appeal, she is
best remembered for her performance in The Wizard of Oz and for the
song "Over the Rainbow." Judy Garland, born Frances
Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, began her show
business career before she was three years old. By age six she was a
veteran performer, appearing with her two older sisters in a vaudeville
act. Mistakenly billed as "The Glum Sisters" in 1931, the sisters at
the suggestion of a fellow performer changed their stage name to Garland
(the name of a then-prominent drama critic). Shortly thereafter, at her
own insistence, she changed her first name from Frances to Judy (after a
popular song of the day). In 1935 the head of MGM
(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) was induced to hear her sing. Enthused, he signed
her to a contract. There was some uncertainty at the studio on how to
utilize her talents. A year passed before she made her first MGM film, a
two reeler. Her first appearance in a feature did not come until 1937,
when she was loaned to Twentieth Century-Fox. That same year at an MGM
party for its star Clark Gable she was a hit singing a specialty number,
"Dear Mr. Gable" adapted from the well-known standard "You Made Me Love
You." As a result she and the song were incorporated into the 1937
feature Broadway Melody of 1938. Again she earned accolades. MGM
quickly put Garland into more films, each spotlighting her in song. In
her next film - Thoroughbreds Don't Cry (1937) - she was cast with
Mickey Rooney, with whom she subsequently appeared in eight films. MGM
paired them in some of the Andy Hardy films, a series starring Rooney as
an "average" American teenager. The duo was also winning in movies of
the "c'mon kids, let's put on a show" type, including Babes in Arms
(1939), Strike Up The Band (1940), Babes on Broadway (1941), and Girl
Crazy (1943). Her most memorable film role (and the one which catapulted
her to stardom)
came in 1939 with The Wizard of Oz. She won a special Oscar as "best
juvenile performer of the year." The film also provided her with the
song ("Over the Rainbow") with which she was identified until her death. During
the 1940s she graced a number of outstanding musicals, including Meet
Me in St. Louis (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946), and Easter Parade
(1948). She was superb
in a non-singing role in The Clock, a sentimental
drama about a young girl and a serviceman
on leave. Garland's personal life, however, was less successful.
She married music arranger David Rose in 1941, but that marriage ended
long before the 1945 divorce. That same year she married director
Vincente Minnelli, who guided Garland in some of her most notable films,
including The Pirate (1948). Daughter Liza Minnelli (later a star in
her own right) was born in 1946. This second marriage also faltered and
was over well before the 1951 divorce. All during the 1940s she was
plagued by a lack of self-confidence, strained by incessant
work, hampered by weight problems. She became heavily dependent on
pills and in the the end broke down, her first known suicide attempt
coming in 1950. Once an admirable trouper,
she became during the 1940s a problem artist. The filming of In
the Good Old Summertime (1949) was repeatedly delayed, as was
Summer Stock (1950). A pattern had been set which would increasingly debilitate
her. She was replaced in a number of films and finally was fired by MGM
in 1950. Sidney Luft, a dynamic promoter who later became her
third husband (1952), started Garland on a career on concert stages. She
was a smashing success at the Palladium in London, at the Palace
Theatre in New York City, and elsewhere. The magnificent film A Star Is
Born (1954) capped her comeback, and she earned an Oscar nomination. But
faltering health, increasing drug dependency, and alcohol abuse led to
nervous breakdowns, suicide attempts, and recurrent
breakups with Luft, by whom she had two children, Lorna (1952) and
Joseph (1955). The Lufts finally divorced (1965) after years of legal
wrangling. Notwithstanding her troubles, Garland undertook a
highly successful concert tour in 1961, which was capped by an
enthusiastically received concert at Carnegie Hall: the live recording
of that event sold over two million copies. That same year she won an
Oscar nomination for best supporting actress for her dramatic
performance in the film Judgment at Nuremberg. She had another
non-singing role in the British film A Child Is Waiting (1963). Her last
film role was in another British film, I Could Go On Singing (1963).
Garland had made an auspicious
television debut in 1955 on the Ford Star Jubilee and had done well in
other guest appearances. Unfortunately, her long awaited television
weekly series did not fare well, and CBS cancelled the variety show
after one season (1963-1964). Garland's personal and professional
life continued to be a series of ups and downs, marked by faltering
performances, comebacks, lawsuits, hospitalizations, and suicide
attempts. After divorcing Luft she married Mark Herron, a younger, inconsequential
actor with whom she had travelled for some time; the marriage lasted
only months. Mickey Deans, a discotheque
manager 12 years her junior, whom she married earlier that year, found
her dead in their London flat on June 21, 1969. Death came from an
"accidental" overdose
of barbituates. She is buried in Hartsdale, New York. Judy
Garland was a superstar who, as one critic pointed out, "managed the
considerable feat of converting herself into an underdog."
Despite all the lows in her life she remained immensely popular and had
a waif
appeal that was never entirely lost. Further Reading There
are biographies of Judy Garland by Anne Edwards (1975) and Christopher
Finch (1975). There is an overview of her films and career by Joe
Morella and Edward Z. Epstein (1970). More personal points of view are
to be found in Mickey Dean's memoir (1972) and in Mel Tormé's less than
kind recollection
of working with Garland on her television show.
Columbia Encyclopedia:Judy Garland
Garland, Judy, 1922-69, American singer and film
actress, b. Grand Rapids, Minn., originally named Frances Gumm. She
sang in her father's theater from the age of four as one of The Gumm
Sisters; she later toured in vaudeville. Beginning her film career in
1935, she endeared herself to the public in the Andy Hardy film series
and in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Her later films include Meet
Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), A Star is
Born (1954), and Judgment at Nuremburg (1960). Her first
husband was the director Vincente Minnelli. Their daughter Liza Minnelli, 1946-, b. Hollywood, Calif., is also a
singer, dancer, and actress. She made her Broadway debut in Flora,
the Red Menace (1965; Tony Award). Minelli has appeared in a number
of films, including The Sterile Cuckoo (1969), Cabaret
(1972; Academy Award), New York, New York (1977), and two Arthur
films (1981 and 1988). She has performed in solo nightclub appearances
and has also been seen frequently on television, most notably in a
televised concert with her mother at the London Palladium (1964) and in Liza
with a Z (1978; Golden Globe). Garland's second daughter, Lorna Luft, 1953-, is also an actress and singer who
has appeared in films, on stage, and in various performance venues. In
addition, she wrote Me and My Shadows, a Family Memoir (1998).Bibliography See biographies of Garland by M.
Tormé (1970), her husband M. Deans (1972), and G. Clarke (2000).
Artist:Judy Garland
Biography
Singer/actress Judy Garland had a varied career that began in
vaudeville and extended into movies, records, radio, television, and
personal appearances. She is best remembered as the big-voiced star of a
series of movie musicals, particularly The Wizard of Oz, in which she
sang her signature song, "Over the Rainbow." But unlike most other film
stars of her era, she also maintained a career as a recording artist,
and after her movie-making days were largely over, she was able to
transfer her stardom to performing and recording, culminating in her
Grammy-winning number one album Judy
at Carnegie Hall.
The third daughter of former vaudevillians running a theater in Grand
Rapids, MN, Garland made her stage debut singing "Jingle Bells" during
the holiday season when she was two years old. Soon after, she joined
the singing group formed by her two sisters. Early on, her surprisingly
mature voice caused her to dominate the group. Her family moved to
California in the fall of 1926, where the sisters found occasional work
on-stage and on radio, even appearing in several film shorts in 1929 and
1930. In the summer of 1934, they toured in the Midwest, where George
Jessel suggested they change their name from the Gumm Sisters to the
Garland Sisters; eventually, each sister also picked a new first name,
with Garland choosing hers for the Hoagy
Carmichael/Sammy Lerner song "Judy."
The Garland Sisters broke up in the summer of 1935 upon the marriage of
Garland's oldest sister, Mary Jane. Soon after, Garland successfully
auditioned for the MGM film studio, and she was signed to a
contract that fall. Within weeks, she made her network radio debut on
The Shell Chateau Hour. The movie studio did not have immediate plans
for her, but her career did advance in another area. She had made test
recordings on two occasions in 1935 for Decca Records; finally,
in June 1936 the label recorded her singing "Stompin' at the Savoy" and
released it the following month as her debut single, although she was
not yet signed to a term contract with the label.
Garland made her feature film debut in the musical Pigskin Parade, on
loan to the 20th Century Fox studio, in November 1936. She
finally made an impression at MGM when she sang a version of "You
Made Me Love You" with special material written by Roger Edens that
transformed it into a tribute to film star Clark Gable, at Gable's
birthday party on February 1, 1937. The performance was re-created in
Broadway Melody of 1938, released in August. After attending a preview, Decca
president Jack Kapp finally decided to sign Garland to a recording
contract, and the label soon released her studio versions of "Everybody
Sing" and "Dear Mr. Gable: You Made Me Love You" from the film.
Garland made four more films (Thoroughbreds Don't Cry, Everybody Sing,
Listen, Darling, and Love Finds Andy Hardy) and a couple more singles
through 1938, but she didn't achieve major stardom until the release of
The Wizard of Oz in August 1939. Glenn Miller had jumped the gun on the
film by recording "Over the Rainbow," and the song was already a hit
before the movie was released. But Garland's recording for Decca also
became popular, and her success was sealed by the release of Babes in
Arms shortly after The Wizard of Oz. At the 1939 Academy Awards in
February 1940, she was presented with a miniature Oscar for her
outstanding performance as a screen juvenile. In March, Decca
released her first album, Judy Garland Souvenir Album, a three-disc,
six-song set combining the "Dear Mr. Gable: You Made Me Love You" single
with her current singles "In Between" (from Love Finds Andy Hardy) and
"Figaro" (from Babes in Arms).
Garland appeared in three films in 1940, Andy Hardy Meets Debutante,
Strike Up the Band, and Little Nellie Kelly, and she scored a Top Ten
hit with her recording of "I'm Nobody's Baby," featured in the first of
them. Her December recording session for songs from Little Nellie Kelly
was conducted by David
Rose, whom she married on July 28, 1941. She appeared in another
three movies that year, Ziegfeld Girl, Life Begins for Andy Hardy, and
Babes on Broadway. Her only film released in 1942 was For Me and My Gal,
also starring Gene
Kelly, who paired with her on a recording of the title song that
became a Top Ten hit. In 1943, she starred in Presenting Lily Mars and
Girl Crazy, and made a guest appearance in Thousands Cheer. She also
made her concert debut during the year, appearing on July 1 with the
Philadelphia Orchestra under André
Kostelanetz at an open-air performance at the Robin Hood Dell
in Philadelphia reported to have attracted 30,000 listeners, and toured
service camps in support of the war effort.
Garland's film work became less frequent after 1943, tending to average a
single major release each year. Meet Me in St. Louis, her next movie,
was released in December 1944, directed by Vincente Minnelli, whom she
married on June 15, 1945, just after her divorce from David
Rose. Her recording of "The Trolley Song" from the score became a
Top Ten hit, as did her album of songs from the film. She followed with
another Minnelli-directed film, The Clock, in May 1945, her first
non-singing dramatic role. In June, she joined Bing
Crosby on a recording of the novelty "Yah-Ta-Ta Yah-Ta-Ta (Talk,
Talk, Talk)," her first Top Ten hit with a song not featured in one of
her films. Lyricist Johnny
Mercer got the jump on all competitors in scoring a hit with his
song "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" (written with composer Harry
Warren) from Garland's upcoming film, The Harvey Girls, taking it
to number one in July. But Garland's version, released in September, was
also a Top Ten hit. The film appeared in January 1946.
Garland gave birth to a daughter, Liza
Minnelli, on March 12, 1946, and cut back on her work schedule,
though she made guest appearances in two other 1946 films, Ziegfeld
Follies and Till the Clouds Roll By. The latter, a biography of Jerome
Kern, marked the birth of MGM Records and with it the
soundtrack album, its aural equivalent reaching the Top Ten. Although
Garland remained nominally signed to Decca, the rest of her
record releases through 1950 were MGM soundtrack recordings.
Garland returned to filmmaking full-time with The Pirate, released in
June 1948, followed quickly by Easter Parade, co-starring Fred
Astaire, in July, and then by a guest appearance in Words and Music
in December. The last, a biography of Richard
Rodgers and Lorenz
Hart, produced a number one soundtrack album. At this point,
Garland's relationship with MGM began to unravel. Decades of diet
pills to control her weight, amphetamines to give her energy, and
barbiturates to help her sleep -- reportedly given to her by her mother
early on and later by the studio -- had resulted in addiction and
emotional instability inconsistent with the grueling demands of making
lavish movie musicals. At the same time, the studio, losing audiences to
television and facing a severing of its relationship with the Loews'
theater chain, was more dependent on big-budget films and more
constrained financially. Cast in a second Fred
Astaire film, The Barkleys of Broadway, Garland was fired from the
production and suspended by the studio for her erratic behavior. She was
then reinstated and made In the Good Old Summertime, released in the
summer of 1949. By then, she had been fired from Annie Get Your Gun and
suspended a second time. She was again reinstated and made Summer Stock,
which was released in the summer of 1950 and produced a Top Ten
soundtrack album. But when she was fired from Royal Wedding and
suspended a third time, on July 17, 1950, she made a halfhearted suicide
attempt that got into the papers and substantially changed her image
from the ingenuous child of The Wizard of Oz to a tragic Hollywood
casualty. In September, MGM formally canceled her contract. She
divorced Minnelli on March 22, 1951.
Garland turned from the movies to the concert stage, accepting an offer
from the London Palladium to appear for four weeks starting on
April 9, 1951. It was the beginning of a major comeback. Returning to
the U.S., she re-opened the Palace Theatre in New York as a live
venue for what was scheduled to be a four-week engagement on October 16,
1951; it stretched to 19 weeks, finally ending on February 24, 1952, at
a reported gross of $750,000. As a result, she was given a special Tony
Award "for an important contribution to the revival of vaudeville." On
June 2, 1952, she married her manager, Sid Luft. She gave birth to Lorna
Luft on November 21, 1952.
Garland and Luft formed a production company and signed with Warner
Bros. Pictures to produce a remake of A Star Is Born. It opened in
October 1954, resulting in an Academy Award nomination for Garland. The
soundtrack album, released by Columbia Records, was a Top Ten
hit. Garland gave birth to a son, Joey Luft, on March 29, 1955. She
toured the West Coast in July, and in September starred in a live,
90-minute television special tied in to her debut Capitol Records
album, Miss Show Business, which reached the Top Ten. The show brought
her an Emmy nomination for Best Female Singer. There was another
30-minute TV special in April 1956, a four-week engagement at a Las
Vegas hotel in July and August, and a two-month return to the Palace
in September, during which Capitol released the chart LP Judy.
She did another three weeks in Las Vegas in May 1957 and that month
released her third Capitol LP, Alone,
which again was a chart item. She toured the U.S. through October, then
spent a month at the Dominion Theatre in London. She continued
to perform all over the U.S. in 1958 and 1959, and to record for Capitol
(Judy in Love and the concert album Judy Garland at the Grove in 1958,
The Letter in 1959). In November 1959, she was hospitalized for
hepatitis and advised to give up performing, but she returned to action
with a performance at the London Palladium in August 1960,
followed by more European dates through December and a new Capitol
album, Judy! That's Entertainment!, in October. She had a cameo in the
film Pepe, released in December. There were more European shows in
January and February 1961. Then, on April 23, 1961, she appeared at Carnegie
Hall in New York, and the show was recorded for a double-LP set. Judy
at Carnegie Hall was number one by September and a gold record
within a year; it won Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Solo
Vocal Performance, Female.
In December 1961, she returned to films with a dramatic role in Judgment
at Nuremberg that earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best
Supporting Actress. She starred in her first television special in six
years in February 1962, earning Emmy nominations for Program of the Year
and Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Variety. Her next
album, The Garland Touch, released in July, reached the Top 20. In
September, she returned to performing in Las Vegas, spending six weeks
at the Sahara, with additional dates through February 1963.
November saw the release of Gay Purr-ee, an animated musical film for
which she provided one of the character voices. In January 1963, she
starred in the dramatic film A Child Is Waiting. There was another
television special in March that brought an Emmy nomination for
Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Music. Its success led CBS
to offer her her own weekly variety series. In May, she portrayed a
troubled singing star in I Could Go on Singing, her final film
appearance. The soundtrack album reached the Top 40.
The Judy Garland Show premiered on Sunday, September 29, 1963,
programmed directly opposite NBC's Western drama Bonanza, the
second-highest rated show on television. As such, it never had a chance
to become a success, but it ran for 26 weeks, through March 30, 1964,
and earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Performance in a Variety
or Musical Program or Series. Capitol released Just for Openers,
an album of performances drawn from the series, on the day of the final
broadcast.
In May 1964, Garland undertook a tour of the Far East marred by illness.
In November, she returned to the London Palladium, performing
with her 18-year-old daughter, Liza
Minnelli. The performance was filmed and recorded. A special was
broadcast on British television in December, and a double album, "Live"
at the London Palladium, was released on Capitol in August 1965,
spending several months in the charts. Garland toured the U.S. during
1965. She married actor Mark Herron on November 14, 1965, just after her
divorce from Sid Luft became final. (She divorced Herron on April 11,
1967.) She was less active in 1966, restricting herself to a few live
and television appearances. But she worked extensively in 1967,
including a month-long return to the Palace that summer which
produced a new live album on a new label, Judy Garland at Home at the
Palace -- Opening Night, in the charts for ABC Records in
September. There were a handful of dates in the U.S. in 1968, the last
of them being a performance on July 20 at JFK Stadium in
Philadelphia. On December 30, she opened a five-week engagement at the Talk
of the Town nightclub in London. She married her fifth husband,
nightclub manager Mickey Deans, on March 15, 1969. In March, she
embarked on a trio of Scandinavian dates, the last of which was at the Falkoner
Center in Copenhagen on March 25. Three months later, she died of
an accidental overdose of barbiturates.
In the decades following her death, Judy Garland's troubled personal
life, which contrasted so starkly with the exuberance and innocence of
her film roles, has been the grist for numerous books and other
accounts, to the point that her career is sometimes viewed more as an
object lesson in Hollywood excess than as the remarkable string of
multimedia accomplishments it was. But even the salacious and
exploitative material is dependent on her star power and vocal
pyrotechnics to have any appeal. Garland herself, who was so attracted
to the backstage Hollywood story of A Star Is Born, performing it both
on radio and later on film, certainly understood the attraction of a
tragic image and may have used it deliberately. Nevertheless, the core
of her significance as an artist remains her amazing voice and emotional
commitment to her songs.
Garland's extensive work as a singer, including her appearances in films
and on radio and television, in addition to live performances and
studio recordings, makes her discography lengthy and chaotic. In the
'90s, her soundtrack recordings saw reissue through Rhino Records,
while MCA undertook a box set of her '30s and '40s Decca
studio recordings (The Complete Decca Masters [Plus]) and Capitol
compiled its own box of her '50s and '60s material, (The One &
Only). Beyond these lies a vast and ever-increasing sea of quasi-legal
releases that consumers should approach with caution. ~ William Ruhlmann
~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
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