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Aubrey Malone chronicles the troubled life of Judy Garland who would have been 100 this year
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Judy Garland entered the world 100 years ago as Frances Ethel Gumm. She didn’t remember that but she did remember her “second” birth – the one in the world of film. ‘I was born,’ she said once, ‘at the age of 12 on the MGM lot.’ In many ways the studio was her home. She had a troubled relationship with her mother. Her father died in 1935 when she was only thirteen.
Garland had a stellar career as a child, appearing with her siblings the Gumm Sisters in a succession of stage acts. She also appeared with her friend Mickey Rooney in films that gave American audiences the escapism they craved in a time of war. She took that success into adulthood but it came at a price. The studio denied her food in their determination to keep her thin. It was also responsible for her early introduction to tablets – both to suppress her appetite and to keep her energy levels up when she was called on to work beyond the level of any normal star. In some ways the Wizard of Oz star was never allowed to leave the yellow brick road. A part of her always remained Dorothy. Her pill-taking intensified as she grew older. So did the demands of the studios. Her moods fluctuated as such demands increased. All that mattered was to get the films out. Garland was the forgotten quantity. She married band leader David Rose in 1941 but divorced him three years later. She then married the director Vincente Minnelli. He’d directed her in one of her non-singing roles, The Clock. He was rumoured to have had gay tendencies. 10 Senior Times | July - August 2022 | www.seniortimes.ie
Wedding day with Vincente Minnelli. He’d directed her in one of her non-singing roles, The Clock. He was rumoured to have had gay tendencies. She learned she was pregnant on their honeymoon. This was the happiest time of her life. She stopped taking pills and stopped making films. Instead she busied herself around the house, engaging in the kind of behaviour of most women her age, behaviour that had been denied to her in her upside down life thus far.
