Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress, singer, and vaudevillian whose career spanned four decades. She is known for her artistic range and strong contralto voice, working in a variety of genres including musicals, comedies, and dramas. Her career and personal life, marked by both public fascination and private struggle, made her a cultural icon.
Garland began her career at the age of two, performing with her two older sisters as a vaudeville act called The Gumm Sisters. In 1935, aged 13, she signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and was initially cast in supporting roles in ensemble musicals such as Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937) and Thoroughbreds Don't Cry (1937). She achieved international recognition for her portrayal of Dorothy Gale in the musical film The Wizard of Oz (1939). She followed this with leading roles in MGM musicals including Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), and Summer Stock (1950). She expanded her range with dramatic performances in A Star Is Born (1954) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), both of which earned her Academy Award nominations.
Garland's music career was kickstarted with her signature song "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz. She recorded 11 studio albums between 1939 and 1962. Her albums Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and Miss Show Business (1955) peaked in the top ten of the U.S. Billboard 200, while Judy (1956), Alone (1957), and The Garland Touch (1962) reached the top 40. Her live album, Judy at Carnegie Hall (1961), made Garland the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Also in 1961, she became the first female recipient and youngest honoree of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. Garland developed dependencies on prescription medications that affected her physical and mental well-being. She died from an accidental barbiturate overdose at age 47 in 1969.
Several of Garland's performances are preserved in the National Film Registry and the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress, and six of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Her numerous accolades include one Golden Globe Award, two Grammy Awards, the Academy Juvenile Award, the Special Tony Award, and nominations for three Emmy Awards. In 1997, she was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her the eighth-greatest star of classic Hollywood cinema.
Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. She was the youngest child of vaudevillians Ethel Marion Milne (1896–1953) and Francis Avent Gumm (1886–1935). She was named after both of her parents and baptized at a local Episcopal church. Her parents had met and married in Wisconsin and then settled in Grand Rapids, where they operated a movie theater showcasing vaudeville acts. She was of Irish, English, Scottish, and Huguenot ancestry.
"Baby" (as she was called by her parents and sisters) shared her family's flair for song and dance. Her first appearance came at the age of two, when she joined her elder sisters Mary Jane "Suzy/Suzanne" Gumm (1915–1964) and Dorothy Virginia "Jimmie" Gumm (1917–1977) on the stage of her father's movie theater during a Christmas show to sing a chorus of "Jingle Bells." The Gumm Sisters performed there for the next few years, accompanied by their mother on piano. Following rumors that Francis Gumm had homosexual inclinations, the family relocated to Lancaster, California in June 1926. Francis Gumm bought and operated another theater in Lancaster.
1928–1935: The Gumm/Garland Sisters
In 1928 the Gumm Sisters enrolled in a dance school run by Ethel Meglin, proprietor of the Meglin Kiddies dance troupe, and appeared with the troupe at its annual Christmas show. Through the Meglin Kiddies, the sisters made their film debut in a short subject called The Big Revue (1929), in which they performed a song-and-dance number called "That's the Good Old Sunny South". This was followed by appearances in two Vitaphone shorts the following year: A Holiday in Storyland, featuring Garland's first on-screen solo, and The Wedding of Jack and Jill. They next appeared together in Bubbles (1930). Their final on-screen appearance was in an MGM Technicolor short entitled La Fiesta de Santa Barbara (1935).
The trio had toured the vaudeville circuit as "The Gumm Sisters" for many years by the time they performed in Chicago at the Oriental Theater with George Jessel in 1934. He encouraged the group to choose a more appealing name after "Gumm" was met with laughter from the audience. According to theater legend, their act was once erroneously billed at a Chicago theater as "The Glum Sisters".
Several stories persist regarding the origin of their use of the name Garland. One is that it was originated by Jessel after Carole Lombard's character Lily Garland in the film Twentieth Century (1934), which was then playing at the Oriental in Chicago; another is that the girls chose the surname after drama critic Robert Garland. Garland's daughter Lorna Luft stated that her mother selected the name when Jessel announced that the trio "looked prettier than a garland of flowers". On a TV special filmed in Hollywood at the Pantages Theatre premiere of A Star Is Born on September 29, 1954, Jessel stated:
I think that I ought to tell the folks that it was I who named Judy Garland, "Judy Garland." Not that it would have made any difference – you couldn't have hid[den] that great talent if you'd called her "Tel Aviv Windsor Shell", you know, but her name when I first met her was Frances Gumm and it wasn't the kind of a name that so sensitive a great actress like that should have; ... and so we called her Judy Garland and I think she's a combination of Helen Hayes and Al Jolson and maybe Jenny Lind and Sarah Bernhardt.
A later explanation surfaced when Jessel was a guest on Garland's television show in 1963. He said that he had sent actress Judith Anderson a telegram containing the word "garland" and it stuck in his mind.
By late 1934 the Gumm Sisters had changed their name to the Garland Sisters. Soon afterward, Frances changed her name to "Judy," inspired by a popular Hoagy Carmichael song. The group broke up by August 1935, when Mary Jane "Suzanne" Garland flew to Reno, Nevada, and married musician Lee Kahn, a member of the Jimmy Davis orchestra playing at Cal-Neva Lodge, Lake Tahoe.
1935–1938: Early years at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
In September 1935 Louis B. Mayer asked songwriter Burton Lane to go to the Orpheum Theater in downtown Los Angeles to watch the Garland Sisters' vaudeville act and to report back to him. A few days later, Garland and her father were brought for an impromptu audition at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in Culver City. Garland performed "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart" and "Eli, Eli," a Yiddish song written in 1896 and regularly performed in vaudeville. The studio immediately signed Garland to a contract with MGM, presumably without a screen test, though she had made a test for the studio several months earlier. The studio did not know what to do with her; aged 13, she was older than the traditional child star but too young for adult roles.
Her physical appearance was a dilemma for MGM. She was only 4 ft 11+1⁄2 in (151 cm) and her "cute" or "girl-next-door" looks did not match the glamorous persona then required of female leading performers. She was self-conscious and anxious about her appearance. Garland went to school at the studio with actresses such as Ava Gardner and Lana Turner—"real beauties," said Charles Walters, who directed her in a number of films. "Judy was the big money-maker at the time, a big success, but she was the ugly duckling ... I think it had a very damaging effect on her emotionally for a long time. I think it lasted forever, really." Her insecurity was exacerbated by the attitude of studio chief Mayer, who referred to her as his "little hunchback."
During her early years at MGM, she was photographed and dressed in plain clothing or frilly juvenile gowns and costumes to match the "girl-next-door" image created for her. She was also asked to wear removable caps on her teeth and rubberized discs to reshape her nose.