In addition to being a successful actress, Garland was an extraordinary singer and Grammy-award winner.
By the time she was 13, she had signed her first movie contract.
How did one of Hollywood’s brightest stars dim so soon?
Garland told Barbara Waltersin a 1967 interviewthat her mother was a “mean” stage mother.
“She was very jealous because she had absolutely no talent,” she said.
So I’d go out and sing."
The studiotreated her harshly.
Concerned about her weight, the studio monitored Garland’s eating.
Food would often be taken away from her, leaving her in a constant state of hunger.
She would remain insecure about her body image for the rest of her life.
Yes, this marked just one ofthe horrific ways Old Hollywood studios abused actors.
He claimed the way the studio treated her “had a damaging effect” on Garland.
“I think it lasted forever really,” he said.
She was given amphetamines to keep her energetic and sleeping pills to calm her down.
“If Garland was in trouble, or you thought she might be, put her on pills.
Speed her up, slow her down.
Run her like a clock.”
From the time she was 16, Garland was repeatedly propositioned for sex.
Garland claimed abuse at the hands of at least one other studio executive, whom she didn’t name.
Judy Garland was unlucky in love
Desperate forlove, Judy Garlandmarried five times.
In 1941, at the age of 19, she married composer David Rose.
Her mother and the studio tried to stop her, concerned about how marriage would affect Garland’s image.
Garland and Rose eloped in Las Vegas, but their marriage was short-lived.
They divorced in 1944.
The following year, Garland married her second husband, director Vincente Minnelli.
They had a daughter together, Liza, but this marriage was also short-lived.
Minnelli and Garland divorced in 1951, a decision partially influenced byMinnelli’s attraction to other men.
They divorced in 1965.
Garlandclaimed Luft was abusiveand hit her, although Luft denied this.
Deans remained loyal to Garland’s memory and never remarried.
Though they later married, at the time Garland became pregnant they were married to other people.
Luft was only thinking of her career, but later regretted his decision.
and he explained it all to me," said Luft.
“If she was happy, she wasn’t just happy,” said Minelli.
“She was ecstatic.
And when she was sad, she was sadder than anyone.”
According to Minelli, Garland would veer from “excessive love bouts” to screaming at her children.
Her ex-husband Sid Luft painted a picture of Garland’s emotional instability in his book,Judy and I. Luft thought he could help his wife manage heraddiction, something that is often widely misunderstood.
“I wasn’t thinking of Judy as a clinically ill person,” he said.
“I was worried something awful had happened to the delightful, brilliant woman I loved.”
After being fired from MGM in 1950, the singertried to take her own life twice.
“What demons inhabited her soul just when life seemed so rich and productive?”
wrote Luft inJudy and I(viaPeople).
Luft noted his wife’s erratic behavior after another attempt.
while she was “bleeding profusely.”
“Why do people insist on seeing an aura of tragedy around me always?”
“My life isn’t tragic at all.
I laugh a lot these days.
At myself, too.
Lord, if I couldn’t laugh at myself I don’t think I’d be alive.”
By 1967, Garland’s optimism was waning.
She admitted inMcCall’s(viaParade) that her life had been a hard one.
“Do you know how difficult it is to be Judy Garland?”
she asked the magazine.
“And for me to live with me?
She was singing in bars for just $100 a night.
Friends claimed that she had seemed to be in a good mood the night before she was found dead.
She had also recently married Mickey Deans, her fifth husband.
According to theLos Angeles Times,Garland was thrilled with the marriage.
The actress also suffered nervous breakdowns.
According to her obituary inThe New York Times, Garland was under psychiatric care from the age of 18.
None of the treatments Garland underwent, including electroshock therapy and psychoanalysis, seemed to help her much.
“And she would do it in the car, going over there.
She’d say, ‘Now, what’s a good dream?
What can I say I dreamt?’
And she said, ‘But he always looks so bored.
I mean, I can’t stand it if he’s bored.”
While the shows sold out, the critics were far from kind.
“It is all immaculate and meaningless,” wrote Palmer.
“The shoddy, tarnished world that created her has emasculated her.
The heartbreak from her ill-fated comeback may have contributed to the further deterioration of Garland’s mental health.
According to her daughter Liza Minelli, the world wore her mother down.
“She let her guard down,” she toldTimein 1972.
“She didn’t die from an overdose.
I think she just got tired.”
Her daughters, Lorna Luft and Liza Minelli, faced many of the same struggles as their mother.
In 2015, Minelli entered rehab and not for the first time.
Minelli had previously entered at least two other rehab facilities and attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
“My whole life, this disease has been rampant,” she toldThe Guardian.
“I inherited it, and it’s been horrendous, but I have always asked for help.”
“I only do [drugs] at night.’
