Husband Vincente Minnelli, Mark Herron, Mickey Deans
Queer Places:
University High School, 11800 Texas Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90025, Stati Uniti
Hollywood High School, 1521 N Highland Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90028, Stati Uniti
8850 Evanview Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90069
Omni Parker House, 60 School St, Boston, MA 02108, Stati Uniti
Dakota Apartments, 1 W 72nd St, New York, NY 10023, Stati Uniti
Ferncliff Cemetery, 280 Secor Rd, Hartsdale, NY 10530, Stati Uniti
Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was
an American singer, actress, and vaudevillian.[1]
During a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years, Garland attained
international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a
recording artist, and on the concert stage.[2][3]
According to Alan Royle, Katharine
Hepburn’s more serious female relationships included Judy Garland for
several years.
Respected for her versatility, she received a juvenile Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Special Tony Award, and was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her live recording Judy at Carnegie Hall (1961). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in A Star is Born (1954), and received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).
Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.[9] She was the youngest child of Ethel Marion Milne (1896–1953)[10] and Francis "Frank" Avent Gumm (1886–1935). Gumm was a vaudeville performer and a closet homosexual who had a string of affairs with other men.
As a child, Garland began performing in vaudeville with her two older sisters, and later signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She made more than two dozen films with MGM, nine of which with Mickey Rooney, and is perhaps best remembered for her performance as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Her other most notable film roles with MGM include appearances in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946), Easter Parade (1948), and Summer Stock (1950). Garland was released from MGM in 1950, after 15 years with the studio, amid a series of personal struggles and erratic behavior that prevented her from fulfilling the terms of her contract. Her film appearances diminished, but she would thereafter go on to receive two Academy Award nominations. She also made record-breaking concert appearances, released eight studio albums, and hosted her own Emmy-nominated television series, The Judy Garland Show (1963–1964). At age 39, Garland became the youngest and first female recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the film industry. In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the 10 greatest female stars of classic American cinema.[4]
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Dakota Apartments
Despite profound professional success, Garland struggled largely in her personal life from an early age. The pressures of adolescent stardom affected her physical and mental health from the time she was a teenager; her self-image was influenced and constantly criticized by film executives who believed that she was physically unattractive. Those same executives manipulated her onscreen physical appearance.[5] Into her adulthood, she was plagued by alcohol and substance abuse, as well as financial instability; she often owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. Her life-long addiction to drugs and alcohol ultimately led to her death in London from a barbiturate overdose at age 47.
Garland was still in her teens when she experienced her first serious adult romance with bandleader Artie Shaw. She was deeply devoted to him and was devastated in early 1940 when he eloped with Lana Turner.[55] Garland began a relationship with musician David Rose and, on her 18th birthday, he gave her an engagement ring. The studio intervened because, at the time, he was still married to actress and singer Martha Raye. They agreed to wait a year to allow for his divorce to become final. During that time, Garland had a brief affair with songwriter Johnny Mercer. After her breakup with Mercer, Garland and Rose were wed on July 27, 1941.[56] "A true rarity" is what media called it.[8] The couple agreed to undergo a trial separation in January 1943 and they divorced in 1944.[57]
During the filming of Meet Me in St. Louis, Garland and Vincente Minnelli, rumored to be gay, had some initial conflict between them, but they entered into a relationship and married on June 15, 1945.[52] On March 12, 1946, daughter Liza was born.[53]
Writer Matthew Tinkcom pointed to the "Great Lady" sequence in Ziegfeld Follies (1946) in which Judy Garland, parodying a star, enters with an entourage of obviously gay male admirers who dance with themselves as much as with her. Ziegfeld Follies was directed by Vincente Minnelli. Indeed, there is a definitive "queer read" to much of the director's work.
Garland divorced Minnelli in 1951.[89] On June 8, 1952, she married Sidney Luft, her tour manager and producer, in Hollister, California.[90] 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 Joey Luft.[91]
Garland's 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.[133] The divorce became final on May 19, 1965,[127] and she and Herron did not legally marry until November 14, 1965; they separated five months later.[134] During their divorce, Garland testified that Herron had beaten her. Herron claimed that he "only hit her in self defense".[135]
By early 1969, Garland's health had deteriorated. She performed in London at the Talk of the Town nightclub for a five-week run[142] in which she was paid £2,500 per week,[108] and made her last concert appearance in Copenhagen during March 1969.[143] After her divorce from Herron had been finalized on February 11, she married her fifth and final husband, nightclub manager Mickey Deans, at Chelsea Register Office, London, on March 15.[144]
Garland had a large fan base in the gay community and became a gay icon.[166] Reasons given for her standing, especially among gay men, are the admiration of her ability as a performer, the way her personal struggles mirrored those of gay men in America during the height of her fame, and her value as a camp figure.[167] In the 1960s, a reporter asked how she felt about having a large gay following. She replied, "I couldn't care less. I sing to people."[168]
My published books:
