For many people, the name Judy Garland is synonymous with the name Dorothy. After all, Judy played Dorothy in 1939's The Wizard Of Oz, and the movie has been celebrated and loved by each generation since.
Many people know that Judy Garland endured a difficult life after she became famous, but the truth is that her life was challenging pretty much from her birth in 1922 to her death in 1969. Judy wasn't always a perfect person, and people didn't always treat her well.
Somehow, Judy persevered. These 15 photos show a woman who was beautiful and flawed, dangerous and loving.
Judy Garland's parents Ethel and Frank weren't exactly thrilled when they found out she was on the way. In fact, Frank even reached out to a friend who was a medical student to find out if there were alternatives to having the baby. They were advised against pursuing any of those options, and Judy was born on June 10, 1922.
Judy's mother quickly took on the persona of stage mom, and Judy made her theatrical debut at the age of 2 ½. Judy later revealed that she felt the pressure to perform early on. "The only time I felt wanted when I was a kid was when I was on stage, performing."
The family moved to California in 1926, which turned out to help Judy's career as an actress.
Judy's mother signed her daughter up for a number of gigs and auditions that weren't especially wholesome of even appropriate for a child. Judy later told Barbara Walters that her mother applied a lot of pressure and threats.
"She would sort of stand in the wings when I was a little girl and if I didn't feel good, if I was sick to my tummy, she'd say, 'You get out and sing or I'll wrap you around the bedpost and break you off short!' So I'd go out and sing."
The family celebrated when Judy was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, now known as MGM, in 1935. But the situation quickly took a dark turn for Judy, as she was limited to diet of only chicken broth and cottage cheese (the studio felt she needed to lose weight), and given a series of medications that were meant to impact her energy levels so she could perform for longer periods of time.
Judy once explained that the pressure about her diet was impossible to escape. "From the time I was 13, there was a constant struggle between MGM and me — whether or not to eat, how much to eat, what to eat," she said. "I remember this more vividly than anything else about my childhood."
Curiously, though it's clear that Judy was beautiful, MGM chose to market her to filmgoers as a kind of girl-next-door, too-ugly-for-the-guy type of character. Journalist Helen Petersen once explained, "She didn’t look like the rest of those MGM stars … she becomes this kind of avatar for the rejected, not sexy enough, not pretty enough person."
Judy was married five times. Her first, at the age of 19, was to a composer named David Rose. David was actually still married when he proposed to Judy. They got married in 1941 and were divorced by 1943.
She then met director Vincent Minnelli in 1944 when they worked together on Meet Me in St. Louis, and they got married in 1945.
Judy's daughter, Liza Minnelli, was born in 1946. Sadly, Judy's career and her love life both suffered throughout the rest of the 1940s, and in the following decade she got divorced and released from her MGM contract.
Judy's third husband, Sidney Luft, directed her in A Star Is Born. They were married for 11 years, but their divorce was messy. Judy was awarded custody of the pair's children, Lorna and Joey.
Judy then married Mark Herron for a brief period before meeting her fifth husband, Mickey Deans. The last marriage was not considered a happy one by anyone's standards.
Judy's children definitely had nontraditional lives. Her oldest daughter, Liza, drew nearly immediate comparisons to her mother. Liza began performing with her mother when she was only 3 years old, and Judy often asked Liza to perform her dance from A Star Is Born.
Liza once explained: "I’d say, 'I don’t have a choreographer,' which made her laugh. She got such a kick out of it. It was like, 'Look what I made.' And I was so happy whenever she was happy."
When Liza decided to try out a career in the entertainment industry on her own, Judy supported her fully. She was also angry when reviews and reporters inevitably compared the two women.
Judy's second daughter, Lorna Luft, also went into the industry and made a career as a singer. However, she spent decades trying to avoid her mother's long shadow. Lorna explained to Good Housekeeping that one word in particular would set her off. "If there was a tiny word in any song that had the word 'rainbow,' I didn't want anything to do with it," she said. "I'd run for the hills. It wasn't until I was near my 40s that I thought, I've really gotta stop running."
In 1968, Judy attempted to make a comeback in London. Reviewers were not kind, with one writing that in her performance, "she evokes pity and sorrow like no other superstar … in her we see the broken remnant of a gaudy age of showbiz which believed that glamour was a good enough substitute for genius."
Judy died in 1969, and some believe she was just simply exhausted by continuing to live under the constant scrutiny that accompanied her life. In 1972, Liza said: "She let her guard down. She didn’t die from an overdose. I think she just got tired."
Liza added that her mother was never able to truly just be happy.
"She lived like a taut wire. I don’t think she ever looked for real happiness, because she always thought happiness would mean the end."
