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Judy Garland
From Outcyclopedia, the free and queer encyclopedia. Although the devotion many gays have had for her has become a stereotype, hence the term "Friend of Dorothy" to describe a male homosexual, the influence of Judy Garland on the gay community cannot be denied. Three of her husbands were known to be gay or bisexual, and her own father was also bisexual, a fact Judy herself suspected long before it was finally revealed to her years after his death. If the theories of some hold true, her own untimely death from a sleeping pill overdose in 1969 was also one of the sparks that ignited the flame of the Stonewall Riots, considered by many to be the true birth of the gay liberation movement. Judy Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June, 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, to Frances "Frank" Gumm and Ethel Milne Gumm. The Gumms were former vaudeville performers who owned a theater and often held shows featuring Frances' older sisters, Mary Jane "Suzy" Gumm and Dorothy Virginia "Jimmie" Gumm. At the age of two, Frances climbed up on the stage during a Christmas show and began to sing "Jingle Bells," and the audience was enthralled. She was quickly incorporated into the act, billed as Baby Gumm. Two years later, the Gumms were forced to relocate to Lancaster, California after Frank Gumm was caught in a compromising situation with a local teenage boy. He bought the local theater and the Gumm Sisters began performing to new audiences. In 1929 the Gumm Sisters began appearing in numerous short subject films, including Starlet Revue; A Holiday in Storyland; The Wedding of Jack and Jill; and Bubbles. Soon, they began touring the country. In 1934, the Gumm Sisters changed their name to Garland at the suggestion of George Jessel during a Chicago appearance. Frances changed her name to "Judy" after a popular Hoagy Carmichael song of the same name, and the following year the trio appeared as The Garland Sisters in a MGM short subject entitled La Fiesta de Santa Barbara. Judy was signed to MGM that same year, but her first film appearance as Judy Garland was in a film by 20th-Century Fox, Pigskin Parade. Although her musical gift was undeniable, MGM studio heads did not know what to do with the young starlet. At just under 5 feet tall, Judy had problems maintaining her weight, and received more than unkind remarks about this fact and what was perceived as an unattractive nose. While lighting and make-up were used to make her nose look smaller, Judy was put on a regimen of pills to control her weight. She was also prescribed stimulants to help her get through the gruelingly long hours of filming, and sedatives to help her sleep at night. Unknown to studio doctors, her mother had long ago put Judy on a similar pill regimen. Together with the personal and professional turbulence of her life, and some believe, manic depression, this reliance on pills which at the time were considered quite harmless would contribute to a dependency problem which played havoc with Judy's career and relationships, and eventually ended her life. While Judy's big break proved slow in materializing, she rapidly garnered a following with appearances on numerous radio programs, and a considerable following among younger film goers was developing thanks to appearances in youth oriented films including Love Finds Andy Hardy, with her friend Mickey Rooney. Her greatest critical attention during this time came with Broadway Melody of 1938, in which she sang the instant hit, "You Made Me Love You," and performed a dance number with Buddy Ebsen. MGM publicity soon began billing her as the "Little Girl With the Big Voice," and "America's Sweetheart." For Judy, the success proved bittersweet. Her father, to whom she was devoted, died just as her star was appearing on the horizon. When initial plans to cast Shirley Temple as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz fell through after Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck refused to loan her out, the enormous popularity Judy's radio and touring performances were creating convinced MGM head Louis B. Mayer to heed producer Mervyn LeRoy's suggestion to give the role to Judy. The role finally made her a major movie star. Everyone working on the film recalled working with her as a great pleasure. Composers Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg were especially impressed at Judy's powers of retention, as she could memorize a piece of music after hearing it played or reading the sheet only once. Oz's Wicked Witch, Margaret Hamilton, especially recalled Judy as a cheerful and pleasant young person, though she also recalled listening with concern to Judy's complaints that she had not had what she considered to be a normal childhood. Judy's own treatment by Mayer and MGM during filming alternated between dotage and cruelty. For her birthday she received her own dressing trailer, but was not allowed to keep the key. A huge birthday cake was presented to her, but during breaks she was fed only meager portions of food to maintain her weight, and was forced to wear a tight and uncomfortable corset and a wrap under her gingham dress which held her breasts in so tight that some of the mammary tissues were torn. Perhaps most cruelly, the song that would become her signature tune, "Over the Rainbow," was nearly cut from the picture. While some reports said MGM did not consider their star singing in a barnyard to be dignified, others claimed that studio heads believed audiences did not want to see "that fat girl singing on the screen." The Wizard of Oz made Judy Garland a star, and she received a special Oscar for her rendition of "Over the Rainbow." The movie was quickly followed that same year by Babes in Arms. The following year she reunited with Mickey Rooney in Andy Hardy Meets Debutante and also in 1940 appeared in Strike Up the Band; Little Nellie Kelly; and If I Forget You. That same year, Judy suffered her first heartbreak when boyfriend composer Artie Shaw left her to marry Lana Turner. Lana and Judy co-starred in 1941 in Ziegfield Girl, by which time Turner's marriage to Shaw had ended in divorce after only a few months. In 1941 Judy entered her own first marriage, to composer David Rose. The year 1942 brought Judy her first adult role in For Me and My Gal, with Gene Kelly. It also brought the end to her status as the darling of MGM, as she found herself subjected to the grueling and unsympathetic direction of Busby Berkely. After appearing in Thousands Cheer; Girl Crazy; and Presenting Lily Mars; Judy in 1944 was cast in Meet Me In St. Louis, in which she was directed by Vincente Minelli. Judy's marriage to David Rose was by now on the rocks, largely because of her pill dependency. In 1945, after divorcing David, Judy Garland married Vincente Minelli, ignoring the many rumors of his bisexuality. Their daughter, Liza, named after a favorite George Gershwin song, was born in 1946. That same year, she reunited with Oz co-star Ray Bolger and St. Louis co-star Marjorie Main in The Harvey Girls, and made a cameo appearance in Ziegfield Follies, directed by Minelli. By 1950, Judy Garland's dependency on pills had resulted in increasingly erratic behavior, especially on the set. Shortly after the release of Summer Stock, she was fired from the title role in Annie Get Your Gun after collapsing during a musical number. The role went to Betty Hutton, and Judy was released from her MGM contract. The following year she divorced Minelli, and left Hollywood for New York, where she met producer Sid Luft. Luft married Judy in 1952, and orchestrated a comeback for her, organizing many hugely successful concert tours. A daughter, Lorna, was born in November of 1952. In 1954, Sid produced a remake of A Star is Born, with Judy recreating the role of Vicki Lester originated by Janet Gaynor in the 1937 version. James Mason co-starred as Normain Maine. Though the movie was favorably considered by critics and gained Judy an Oscar nomination, it met with limited box office success. Audiences in the decades since its release have come to recognize the film as a classic, and many consider it to be Judy's finest performance. Through the rest of the 1950s, Judy concentrated on her singing career, touring around the world and recording many hit albums. Her second child with Sid, Joey Luft, was born in 1955. Towards the end of the decade, Judy's weight ballooned and she was diagnosed with hepatitis. She also began to suffer financial difficulties, for which she blamed Sid. They soon separated. In 1961, Judy Garland returned to films with a riveting cameo performance as Irene Hoffman Wallner in Judgement at Nuremberg. The following year, with new managers, she was signed to host a special, The Judy Garland Show, with guests and friends Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. The special led to a regular series on CBS, which though critically praised was canceled after only one year because of the crushing competition it received from being scheduled opposite Bonanza. Judy was also audited by the IRS and bankrupted by the judgments against her. In 1964, while still married to Sid Luft, she married Mark Herron, a minor actor, in a Buddhist ceremony whose legality was never resolved. The marriage ended in 1967, not only because of Judy's discovery of Herron's affairs with other men but also because she blamed his inept management for her failure to make a second comeback. Judy was by now essentially homeless, living with show business friends and often sneaking out with her three children in tow to avoid paying hotel bills. Her marriage to Sid Luft officially ended in 1965, though he continued to support her financially. Judy married her fifth husband, British nightclub owner Mickey Dean, in 1969. Three months later, and just one month after her forty-seventh birthday, Dean found Judy on the bathroom floor of their London flat, dead from a barbiturate overdose. Apparently, she had awoken in the middle of the night and gone into the bathroom to take a pill in an attempt to go back to sleep, unaware that a previous dose was still active in her system. Judy was buried in Hartsdale, New York, where over 22,000 people filed past her casket during her wake. Just five days later, a routine police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York's Greenwich Village turned violent as its patrons and those of neighboring gay bars began to riot and protest against years of police harassment and anti-gay discrimination. The close proximity of the event to Judy's death and the cult following she was known to have among gay men, especially those members of the drag community who were among the Stonewall's chief patrons, has led many gay historians to cite her death as one of the catalysts of the riots and thus of the birth of the gay liberation movement. Considering that persons already under emotional stress can be easily provoked to violent action, the theory is not by any means an outrageous one. Judy's own fanatic appeal to gay men has itself been the subject of debate and theorizing. Facing their own trials and tribulations in the decades before Stonewall, many gay men identified with her own turbulent life. As the entertainment industry allowed many gay men, at least those working behind the scenes, to be more open than they could while working more mundane jobs, they could not help but become familiar with and grow to respect and admire the woman many had come to call "The World's Greatest Entertainer" and "Miss Show Business." The stereotype of all gay men being Judy Garland fans is not entirely accurate. Most of her gay fans are men who remember her performances of the 50s and 60s, and the following among younger generations is more towards The Wizard of Oz, with Judy getting caught in the fallout. Still, she is far from unknown or forgotten in the community. As to her personal problems, even greater debate remains. Her children and friends all deny allegations she was alcoholic, noting that she rarely drank more than a single glass of wine and in fact had to quit drinking when her hepatitis was diagnosed. They also emphasize that she was dependent on pills, but not addicted to them. Audio tapes for her unpublished autobiography, tentatively titled Ho-Hum, give the impression that she suffered from clinical depression, though her friends and loved ones deny she ever suffered from mental illness. In The Making of the Wizard of Oz, Aljean Harmetz quotes one psychoanalyst, Dr. John Lindon as theorizing that Judy suffered from "a severe disturbance of ego identity," unable to differentiate from the show biz persona of Judy Garland and the real person of Frances Gumm. Like many stars, especially former child stars, she felt "dead when (she was) not working" and her constant drive to perform even when ill was not just because she needed the money but also because she needed the love and approval that her audiences could give her. Harmetz also claims Judy "found it necessary to invent and reinvent her past ... to suit her needs and anxieties," citing the notorious Jack Paar Show appearance where she claimed that the actors playing the Munchkins "were drunks" and that Bolger, Haley, and Lahr were "old hams" trying to upstage her. Lorna Luft and Liza Minelli, however, have countered that their mother's sense of humor consisted of tall tales and exaggerations, and she never expected the things she said about being in Oz to be taken seriously. Most attempts to explain Judy Garland's problems throughout her life and in her last years seem inspired by the popular myth that her death was a suicide, despite the emphatic declarations by Mickey Deans, Sid Luft, Lorna Luft, and Liza Minelli and most importantly the conclusions of the coroner that her overdose was entirely accidental. Far from being driven to self-destruction, Judy was an exhausted workaholic who was the victim of happenstance. An inadvertent overdose of a prescribed medication, taken when her judgment was partly impaired by insomniac fatigue, and whose effects were heightened by her body's weakened state from years of illness and exhaustion, was the true cause of her death. Her other problems were the result of years of being driven by her mother, MGM, and especially herself to never stop giving her fans all she could, and even more than she could. Perhaps the best and most succinct explanation for what happened to Judy came from Ray Bolger shortly after her death, "she just wore out." Select Filmography
Judy Garland was also originally cast to play the part of Helen Lawson in Valley of the Dolls (1967), but was replaced by Susan Hayward. Songs
Popular songs closely identified with Judy include: Biographies Recommended books on Judy Garland include: The television films Rainbow, based on Christopher Finch's book, and especially Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows, based on Lorna Luft's book about her mother, are also highly recommended and are available on video and DVD. Trivia: A rose is named for Judy Garland, developed by a master gardener in the UK. Several are planted outside the Judy Garland Birthplace and Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. External links: Internet Movie Database: Judy Garland Meglin Kiddie's Judy Garland Tribute Judy Garland Photograph Catalogue Judy Garland: The Little Girl With the Big Voice Judy Garland: The One and Only Judy Garland - Destroyed by Drugs at Rainbow's End Judy Garland at the Town and Country Judy Garland's Historical Significance British Film Institute- Judy Garland Biography Friends of Dorothy Yahoo group Entry revised 9 February, 2005. All text is available for use under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (see Copyrights for details). DISCLAIMER: This is not an adult site, and does not contain any pornographic images or material. Any references to sex or other adult material or behavior is made from a purely academic standpoint. Images used on this site are credited whenever possible, and any whose copyright status is in dispute will be gladly removed or credited upon request. Not all persons listed on this site are or were openly homosexual, but reasonable conclusions about their sexuality may and has been made from diaries, letters, and other writings and accounts made by them and/or those who knew them. Several others are heterosexual and are included here for the impact, whether positive or negative, they have made on queer culture and history. |
