Judy Garland

Judy Garland was an American actor, singer, and dancer. She attained international stardom and critical acclaim as an actor in both musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on the concert stage. Renowned for her versatility, she received a Golden Globe Award, a Special Tony Award and was one of twelve people in history to receive an Academy Juvenile Award.

Garland began performing as a child, with her two elder sisters, in a vaudeville group, The Gumm Sisters, and was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She appeared in more than two dozen films for MGM, including The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946), Easter Parade (1948), and Summer Stock (1950). Garland was a frequent on-screen partner of both Mickey Rooney and Gene Kelly, and regularly collaborated with director Vincente Minnelli, her second husband. In 1950, after 15 years with MGM, she was released from her contract with the studio amid a series of personal struggles that prevented her from fulfilling the terms of her contract.

Although her film career became intermittent thereafter, two of Garland's most critically acclaimed roles came later in her career: she received Academy Award nominations for her performances in the musical drama A Star Is Born (1954) and the courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). She also made concert appearances that attracted record-breaking audience sizes, released eight studio albums and hosted her own Emmy-nominated television series, The Judy Garland Show (1963–1964). At the age of 39, Garland became the youngest (and first female) recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the film industry.

Throughout her career, Garland recorded and introduced numerous songs including "Over the Rainbow", which became her signature song, the Christmas classic "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and the Saint Patrick's Day anthem "It's a Great Day for the Irish". She won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her 1961 live recording, Judy at Carnegie Hall; she was the first woman to win that award.

Garland struggled in her personal life from an early age. The pressures of early stardom affected her physical and mental health from the time she was a teenager; her self-image was influenced by constant criticism from film executives who believed that she was physically unattractive and who manipulated her onscreen physical appearance. She had financial troubles, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. Throughout her adulthood, she struggled with substance use disorder involving both drugs and alcohol; she died from an accidental barbiturate overdose in 1969, at age 47.

In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked her as the eighth-greatest female screen legend of classic Hollywood cinema.

Family life

Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. She was the youngest child of Ethel Marion Gumm (née Milne; 1896–1953) and Francis "Frank" Avent Gumm (1886–1935). Her parents were vaudevillians who settled in Grand Rapids to run a movie theater that featured vaudeville acts. She was of Irish, English, Scottish, and French Huguenot ancestry, named after both of her parents and baptized at a local Episcopal church.

Garland married musician David Rose on July 27, 1941. The couple agreed to undergo a trial separation in January 1943 and they divorced in 1944.

During the filming of Meet Me in St. Louis, Garland and director Vincente Minnelli had some initial conflicts, but they entered into a relationship and they got married on June 15, 1945. On March 12, 1946, daughter Liza was born. The couple got divorced in 1951.

On June 8, 1952, she married Sidney Luft, her tour manager and producer, in Hollister, California. On November 21, 1952, Garland gave birth to daughter Lorna Luft, who became an actress and singer. On March 29, 1955, she gave birth to son Joseph "Joey" Luft.

In 1964, while Garland was on tour in Australia, her tour promoter Mark Herron announced that they had married aboard a freighter off the coast of Hong Kong. However, she was not officially divorced from Luft at the time the ceremony was performed. The divorce became final on May 19, 1965, and she and Herron did not legally marry until November 14, 1965; they separated five months later.

In 1969, after her divorce from Herron was finalized on February 11, she married her fifth and final husband, nightclub manager Mickey Deans, at Chelsea Register Office, London, on March 15. (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Garland
• http://www.biography.com/articles/Judy-Garland-9306838
• http://www.notablebiographies.com/Fi-Gi/Garland-Judy.html
• http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biographies/judy-garland.html
• http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800018038/bio