American singer, actress, television host, dancer and vaudevillian. During 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, a Golden Globe Award, a Special Tony Award, and was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her live recording Judy at Carnegie Hall (1961).
Garland was the third and last daughter of Frank and Ethel Gumm of Grand Rapids, MN. Her father was a singer and manager of a movie theater. According to a biography by David Shipman, “Judy Garland: The Secret Life of an American Legend,” 1993, Judy’s father was bisexual. Garland’s mother resented his flings and according to Garland, “took great delight in telling rooms full of people” about her attempt to prevent the birth of her third child.
Garland made her debut as “Baby Gumm” at two-and-a-half years of age. By 1926 the family moved to southern California to promote the career of their song-and-dance trio. George Jessel introduced the trio one night and suggested they change their name to the Garland Sisters. Frances took the name “Judy” from a Hoagy Carmichael song.
At age 12, Garland was billed as “the little girl with the leather lungs.” This was the era of child actors and MGM Studios put her under contract at 13. During her 16 grueling years with MGM Garland made 28 pictures and worked though exhaustion, breakdowns, divorces, drugs and suicide attempts. Her biographers replay the stories of uppers and downers, the stage mother from hell, the lascivious studio executives and malevolent managers, the boyfriends and gay husbands; all the fearful and pathetic ups and downs of a sorrowful life.
At 13, Judy suffered the sudden and traumatic death of her beloved dad, who went to bed one night with a cold and died in the night of meningitis. She eventually became completely estranged from her mom; they never reconciled.
She was fired by the studio due to her excessive behavior and lateness which added costs to her films. During her MGM days she took appetite-suppressing amphetamines to keep her weight down as well as Seconal prescribed by the studio doctor. She needed pills to wake up and pills to fall asleep which became a vicious lifelong cycle. Her films included “Broadway Melody,” 1937, “Meet Me in St. Louis,” 1947, “Easter Parade,” 1948 and “A Star is Born” in 1954.
Garland had five marriages; two daughters and one son. Vincente Minnelli was her second husband with whom she had Liza, born 12 March 1946, 7:30 AM, Hollywood. Third husband Sid Luft and father of Lorna (1952) and Joey (1955) managed her stunning live performances.
Judy Garland worked for nearly forty-five of her forty-seven years. She made thirty-two feature films, did voice-over work for two more, and appeared in at least a half dozen short subjects. She received a special Academy Award and was nominated for two others. She starred in thirty of her own television shows (the programs and Garland herself garnering a total of ten Emmy Award nominations) and appeared as a guest on nearly thirty more. Between 1951 and 1969, she fulfilled over 1,100 theatre, nightclub and concert performances, winning a special Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for the first of three record-breaking Broadway engagements at the Palace. She recorded nearly one hundred singles and over a dozen record albums; “Judy at Carnegie Hall” received an unprecedented five Grammy’s in 1962 (including Album of the Year) and has never been out of print. Her radio work encompassed several hundred broadcasts, and she sang at countless benefits and personal appearances for the military. Earlier, between the ages of 2 and 13 – and prior to signing her MGM contract in 1935 – she fulfilled hundreds of live vaudeville and radio dates with her two older sisters. Her last concert was in Copenhagen on 25 March 1969.
Into her adulthood, she was plagued by alcohol and substance abuse, as well as financial instability; she often owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. Her life-long addiction to drugs and alcohol ultimately led to her death in London on 22 June 1969 from a barbiturate overdose at age 47.
Link to Wikipedia biography