Judy Garland

Judy Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and died on June 22, 1969. Over four decades, she worked as an actress, singer, and vaudeville performer, known for her wide artistic range and strong contralto voice across musicals, comedies, and dramas. Her life, caught between public adoration and private hardship, turned her into a lasting cultural figure.

She started performing at age two with her two older sisters in a vaudeville act called The Gumm Sisters. At 13, in 1935, she signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), first playing supporting roles in ensemble musicals like *Broadway Melody of 1938* (1937) and *Thoroughbreds Don't Cry* (1937). Her big break came as Dorothy Gale in *The Wizard of Oz* (1939), which brought her worldwide fame. She went on to star in MGM musicals such as *Meet Me in St. Louis* (1944), *Easter Parade* (1948), and *Summer Stock* (1950). She also took on dramatic parts in *A Star Is Born* (1954) and *Judgment at Nuremberg* (1961), both earning her Academy Award nominations.

Her music career took off with her signature song "Over the Rainbow" from *The Wizard of Oz*. Between 1939 and 1962, she released 11 studio albums. *Meet Me in St. Louis* (1944) and *Miss Show Business* (1955) hit the top ten on 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 her the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. That same year, she became the first female recipient and youngest honoree of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. She struggled with prescription medication dependency, which harmed her physical and mental health, and died from an accidental barbiturate overdose at age 47.

Several of her performances are preserved in the National Film Registry and the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. Six of her recordings are in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Her awards include one Golden Globe, two Grammys, the Academy Juvenile Award, the Special Tony Award, and three Emmy nominations. In 1997, she received a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her the eighth-greatest star of classic Hollywood cinema.

Garland was the youngest child of vaudevillians Ethel Marion Milne and Francis Avent Gumm, born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Named after both parents, she was baptized in an Episcopal church. Her parents met and married in Wisconsin before settling in Grand Rapids, where they ran a movie theater that featured vaudeville acts. She had Irish, English, Scottish, and Huguenot ancestry. Called "Baby" by her family, she first performed at age two, joining her sisters Mary Jane and Dorothy Virginia onstage at her father's theater during a Christmas show to sing "Jingle Bells." The Gumm Sisters performed there for several years, with their mother on piano. After rumors that Francis Gumm was homosexual, the family moved to Lancaster, California, in June 1926, where he bought and ran another theater.

In 1928, the Gumm Sisters enrolled in a dance school run by Ethel Meglin, whose troupe was called the Meglin Kiddies. They appeared in the troupe's Christmas show and made their film debut in the short *The Big Revue* (1929), performing "That's the Good Old Sunny South." They followed with two Vitaphone shorts in 1930: *A Holiday in Storyland*, featuring Garland's first on-screen solo, and *The Wedding of Jack and Jill*, then *Bubbles* (1930). Their last on-screen appearance was in the MGM Technicolor short *La Fiesta de Santa Barbara* (1935). After years touring vaudeville as the Gumm Sisters, they performed at Chicago's Oriental Theater with George Jessel in 1934. He suggested a more appealing name after "Gumm" drew laughter. One story says Jessel took the name from Carole Lombard's character Lily Garland in the film *Twentieth Century* (1934); another says the sisters chose it after drama critic Robert Garland. Garland's daughter Lorna Luft said her mother picked it when Jessel remarked they looked "prettier than a garland of flowers." Jessel later said he sent a telegram to actress Judith Anderson containing the word "garland," and it stuck. By late 1934, the trio had become the Garland Sisters.