Judy Garland

Trivia of Judy Garland (10 June 1922 - 22 June 1969)

*She was born to a pair of vaudeville performers and theater operators, and by the time she came along, her two older sisters had already started appearing onstage — so in some ways, showbiz was inevitable. After begging her parents to let her perform, she got her big debut at the family’s theater when she was just 2 years old. This started a new era of Judy and her sisters performing as a trio, although she emerged quickly as the standout of the group. While all three were talented, and even appeared together in the 1929 short film The Big Revue, it was Judy who caught the attention of performers and promoters on the road.

* At just 13 years old, she signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and started going to school on the MGM lot with other child stars, including Mickey Rooney.The CEO of MGM called Garland a “fat little pig with pigtails” when she was just a teenager. In her earlier career, when the priority was preserving her childlike look, she carried rubber discs in a small carrying case, along with caps for her teeth. She’d insert the discs in her nose to give it a more upturned look. Because the studio wanted to keep her looking as young as possible, her breasts were also often bound.Once she was a little older and starring in less-childlike roles, such as Esther Smith in Meet Me in St. Louis, she started wearing a canvas and metal corset that required two people on either side to pull the strings tight.MGM executives encouraged her to take diet pills to control her weight and sleeping pills so she could sleep after working such long days in the studio. Nowadays, it would be illegal to make a kid work as many hours as Garland was forced to. She was already addicted to pills by the time ‘Wizard of Oz’ was wrapped when Garland was just 17.

*Toto, the female Cairn terrier in Wizard of Oz, was said to have become so attached to Judy that she wouldn’t let Judy leave to go to lunch without following along. After filming The Wizard of Oz, it was Toto—not the Scarecrow—that Judy said she missed most of all.

*At 17 years old, and already one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars, Garland had her first serious romantic relationship with 29-year-old musician/bandleader Artie Shaw. Garland’s heart was broken when she read in the morning paper that Shaw had eloped with her friend—and future movie star—Lana Turner. To make the situation even worse, Shaw defended himself to Garland by denying that their relationship had ever been a romantic one. “Lana is a woman I'll have sex with,” he told Garland. “I never thought of you in that way and I didn't think you thought of me in that way.”

*Garland was friends with John F. Kennedy, whom she met when he was a junior senator. Per Garland’s third husband Sid Luft's memoir Judy & I, Kennedy would sometimes call Garland and ask her to sing for him; other times, she would call him to vent when she’d had a particularly grueling week. Garland’s daughter, Liza Minnelli, would later recall that Kennedy would always ask Garland to sing a few bars of “Over the Rainbow” to end their calls.

*Garland discouraged her children from entering show business, pointing out her financial and health problems. Nevertheless, Liza Minnelli and Lorna Luft became entertainers.

*On June 22, 1969, Garland was found dead in the bathroom of her rented house in Cadogan Lane, Belgravia, London.At the inquest, Coroner Gavin Thurston stated that the cause of death was "an incautious self-overdosage" of barbiturates.Thurston stressed that the overdose had been unintentional and no evidence suggested that she had intended to kill herself.Forensic pathologist believed that Garland had an eating disorder (it was probably bulimia nervosa), which contributed to her death.