An American actress and singer..Her career of 45 years has gained her international stardom in her roles in music and drama, and as a recording artist on stage. Born in Minnesota, Judy Garland’s fame began when she signed a contract with MGM in 1935. There, she performed at various studio functions and was soon cast in the musical short Every Sunday. She gained the attention of the studio executives with her voice, performing “You Made Me Love You” at a birthday party for actor Clark Gable. Eventually, she was teamed up with Mickey Rooney in a string of “backyard musicals,” and first appeared together in the 1937 Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry. After being a big sensation, the two paired up again for Love Finds Andy Hardy.
Judy Garland landed the lead role of Dorothy Gale in the 1939 Wizard of Oz. She was 16, when she sang the iconic “Over the Rainbow” in the film, which was a tremendous success. In the same year she played Patsy Barton in Babes in Arms, and received an Academy Juvenile Award for both her performances.
Judy Garland portrayed Betsy Booth in the family comedy Andy Hardy Meets Debutante. She was also in Strike Up the Band and played the lead in Little Nellie Kelly in 1940. She starred with Gene Kelly in the film For Me and My Gal, where she was made the successful transition from child star to adult actress.
One of her most successful films in MGM is Meet Me in St. Louis in 1944, directed by Vincente Minnelli. The two entered into a relationship together and were married on June 15, 1945. That same year, Judy Garland starred as Alice Mayberry in her first straight dramatic film, The Clock. The following year she starred in The Harvey Girls, where the Academy Award-winning song “On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe” was introduced.
While filming The Pirate in 1947, Judy Garland suffered a nervous breakdown. She was placed in a private sanitarium, and in July of that year, she made her first suicide attempt. She completed her final film for MGM, Summer Stock, in 1950. Due to her drug intake, she was unable to finish a series of films. Though she was cast as Annie Oakley in the film adaptation of Annie Get Your Gun, she failed to show up on the set and was suspended from the picture. In 1951, she divorced Minnelli and got engaged to Sid Luft. That same year she received a Tony Award for her contribution to the revival of vaudeville. In 1954, she filmed a musical remake of A Star is Born for Warner Bros., which was met with wide acclaim. Judy Garland was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress but won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical instead.
The Judy Garland Show was aired in 1962, but only lasted one season. With the decline of her TV career, she returned to the stage, even performing with her daughter, Liza Minnelli in 1964. Her health deteriorated by early 1969, and was found dead by her final husband, Mickey Deans, in the bathroom of their house.
In 1961 her record "Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall" garnered five Grammy Awards and remained at the top of Billboard's charts for two months.
The day she died, there was a tornado in Kansas.
Has a special variety of rose named after her. The petals are yellow (Garland adored yellow roses) and the tips are bright red. It took devoted fans almost nine years after her death to find a rose company in Britain interested in naming a rose officially for her, and the Judy Garland rose didn't appear in the US until 1991. Several JG rose bushes are planted outside of her burial crypt, and at the Judy Garland museum in Grand Rapids.
Had intense fears of flying, horses, and guns.
[when told by a reporter that she had a large gay following] I couldn't care less. I sing to people!
How strange when an illusion dies. It's as though you've lost a child.
Well, we have a whole new year ahead of us. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, and a little more loving, have a little more empathy, and maybe - next year at this time - we'd like each other a little more.
[MGM] had us working days and nights on end. They'd give us pep-up pills to keep us on our feet long after we were exhausted. Then they'd take us to the studio hospital and knock us cold with sleeping pills . . . Then after four hours they'd wake us up and give us the pep-up pills again so we could work another 72 hours in a row. I started to feel like a wind-up toy from FAO Schwarz.
Hollywood is a strange place if you're in trouble. Everybody thinks it's contagious.
[on her sadistic stage mother] She was the real Wicked Witch of the West.
I was born at the age of 12 on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.
I wanted to believe and I tried my damndest to believe in the rainbow that I tried to get over and couldn't. So what? Lots of people can't...
As for my feelings toward "Over the Rainbow", it's become part of my life. It is so symbolic of all my dreams and wishes that I'm sure that's why people sometimes get tears in their eyes when they hear it.
In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.
My mother had a marvelous talent for mishandling money - mine. When I was put under stock contract at Metro and had a steady income for the first time, we lived in a four-unit apartment building. I suggested to Mother that we buy it as an investment and rent the other three apartments. She hit me in the mouth and invested the money in a nickel mine in Needles, California, that has never been found. We never got a nickel back.
Some of the [midget] men used to tease me while we were making The Wizard of Oz (1939). They used to sneak under my dress! I told them if they ever went under there - and I found out about it - they were in big trouble!
[on daughter Liza Minnelli] I think she decided to go into show business when she was an embryo, she kicked so much.
[during her short stint as a cast member of Valley of the Dolls (1967)] The stage hands hadn't even built the set yet, and the press had me walking off it!
When you have lived the life I've lived, when you've loved and suffered, and been madly happy and desperately sad -- well, that's when you realize you'll never be able to set it all down. Maybe you'd rather die first.
From the time I was thirteen, there was a constant struggle between MGM and me - whether or not to eat, how much to eat, what to eat. I remember this more vividly than anything else about my childhood.
I'm a woman who wants to reach out and take 40 million people in her arms.
I have the unfortunate habit of not being able to have an affair with a man without being in love with him.
If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?
[of the MGM Studio school] The teacher, I think, was named Ma Barker.
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