57 Fun Facts About Judy Garland

What was Judy Garland's birth name?

Frances Ethel Gumm. Named for her parents, Frank and Ethel, she was plain 'Baby' at home and on stage, while the real Dorothy of the family was one of her two elder sisters.

In which state was Garland born?

Minnesota. A pair of Dorothy's ruby slippers was stolen in 2005 from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, her home town, and turned up thirteen years later in a sting operation.

By Garland's own account, which song did she sing again and again at her stage debut, aged two?

Jingle Bells. Thrilled by the applause at a Christmas show, she sang it over and over, the story goes, until her father came out and carried her off the stage of the theatre he ran.

Which 1934 event drew Garland and her sisters to Chicago, where a comedian urged a new surname?

The World's Fair. A Chicago theatre is said to have billed the trio as the Glum Sisters, and the comedian George Jessel, on the same bill, reportedly urged a fresh surname, and the trio became the Garland Sisters.

Whom did Garland bitterly describe as the real Wicked Witch of the West?

Her mother. In a 1967 television interview Garland recalled Ethel standing in the wings and threatening to wrap her round the bedpost and 'break you off short' if she did not go out and sing.

Which song did Garland, 13, sing on national radio in 1935 as her father lay dying?

'Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart' went out on the Shell Chateau Hour while her father lay in hospital with meningitis. He died the next day, and the song became a standard in her concerts.

Which studio boss is said to have called the teenage Garland, under five feet tall, 'my little hunchback'?

Louis B. Mayer ran MGM, where Garland was judged against glamour girls such as Lana Turner. The studio kept her on diets, and she stayed insecure about her looks for the rest of her life.

Garland got MGM's attention singing 'You Made Me Love You' at whose birthday party?

Clark Gable's. Roger Edens had rewritten the old hit as a fan letter, 'Dear Mr. Gable', and Garland sang it again to the star's photograph in Broadway Melody of 1938.

When Garland ordered a regular meal, the MGM commissary was reportedly told to serve her only what?

Chicken soup and black coffee; some accounts add cigarettes and appetite pills. Garland later wrote that the studio kept its young stars going on pep pills, then knocked them out with sleeping pills.

Hollywood legend says MGM first wanted which Fox child star, rather than Garland, as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz?

Shirley Temple is the name in the legend, but Oz historians dismiss it: they say the part was being written for Garland from the start.

What was Garland made to wear as Dorothy in early filming before the look was scrapped?

A blonde wig, worn with heavy baby-doll make-up. Stand-in director George Cukor scrapped the look, restored her own dark hair and told her to be herself.

Which honour did Garland receive for The Wizard of Oz?

The Academy Juvenile Award, a small statuette, honoured her screen work of 1939. It was the only Oscar Garland ever won; two nominations as an adult both ended in defeat.

Which bandleader broke the teenage Garland's heart by eloping with Lana Turner in 1940?

Artie Shaw was her first serious adult romance, and she believed they would marry. He did not feel the same, and his surprise elopement left her devastated.

Whose first screen appearance came opposite Garland in For Me and My Gal (1942)?

Gene Kelly's. Garland had pushed for the Broadway star of Pal Joey to get the part, then helped him adapt his stage acting for the camera and backed him against director Busby Berkeley.

Why did Garland balk at the first lyrics of 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas'?

They were too bleak to sing to little Margaret O'Brien, Garland said, fearing audiences would think her a monster. Songwriter Hugh Martin resisted, then wrote the gentler words heard in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).

Whom did Garland marry in June 1945 after clashing with him on the set of Meet Me in St. Louis?

Vincente Minnelli directed a film Garland at first resisted making. They fought on set, became a couple during the shoot, and their daughter Liza was born in March 1946.

Which Oscar-winning song did Garland introduce in The Harvey Girls (1946)?

'On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe' won Best Original Song for Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. The film follows the Harvey House waitresses who worked along that real railway's route in the Old West.

Which dancer came out of retirement to partner Garland in Easter Parade (1948) after her original co-star was injured?

Fred Astaire had announced his retirement in 1946, but MGM offered him the part when its star broke an ankle, and the injured man backed the move.

Who replaced Garland when MGM suspended her from The Barkleys of Broadway in 1948?

Ginger Rogers was brought in when MGM removed Garland and suspended her in July 1948. Migraines and a growing dependence on sleeping pills had kept her off the set for days at a time.

Garland was fired from which role in 1949, with Betty Hutton taking over?

Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun: Garland had recorded all her songs when MGM fired her in May 1949. She had clashed with director Busby Berkeley, who was himself sacked days before her.

Which number did Garland ask to add to Summer Stock, appearing visibly slimmer than in the rest of the film?

'Get Happy' was her own choice. She wore the tuxedo jacket and fedora from a number cut from Easter Parade, in what proved her last film for MGM.

Which friend brought Judy Garland onto his radio show in 1950, telling listeners 'she needs our love'?

'And she came out and that place went crazy. And she just blossomed'; eight appearances that season relaunched her.

At which London venue did Garland launch her stage comeback in April 1951, months after leaving MGM?

The Palladium booked her for four weeks from 9 April 1951, and she was a critical and popular smash. It began the concert years that carried the rest of her career.

For what did Garland get a Special Tony Award after her record 1951 run at the Palace Theatre?

The engagement was called 'one of the greatest personal triumphs in show business history'.

Whom did Garland marry in June 1952, her tour manager and later producer of A Star Is Born?

Sidney Luft fathered her younger children, Lorna and Joey, and steered her return to the concert stage. The marriage, her longest, ended in divorce in 1965.

Which number was added to Garland's 1954 comeback film after director George Cukor had left the production?

'Born in a Trunk' was shot in July 1954 under dance director Richard Barstow, with Garland's mentor Roger Edens supervising. Its medley of old standards includes 'Swanee'.

Who beat Garland to the 1954 Best Actress Oscar, with a TV crew already set up in her hospital room?

Grace Kelly won for The Country Girl. NBC had built a camera platform outside Garland's hospital window, a day after she gave birth to her son Joey; she later joked that the crew packed up and left without a word.

Which co-star of A Star Is Born later gave the eulogy at Garland's funeral?

James Mason told mourners her great gift was that 'she could wring tears out of hearts of rock.' Press and public were shut out, but a loudspeaker carried his words to a room upstairs.

For which 1961 film did Garland earn a Best Supporting Actress nomination?

Judgment at Nuremberg gave her a songless part as a German woman persecuted under the Nazis and called to testify. It was her first on-screen role since A Star Is Born seven years earlier.

Which illness put Garland in hospital in late 1959, with doctors warning she would never work again?

Hepatitis had swollen her liver, and doctors blamed it partly on years of diet pills and tranquilizers. Told she would be a semi-invalid, she was back on the concert stage within a year.

Garland's April 1961 concert at which venue was called 'the greatest night in show business history'?

Carnegie Hall is where Capitol recorded her whole show that April night, and the live double album went on to top the US chart.

Garland's two-record live set from 1961 made her the first woman to win which Grammy?

Album of the Year went to a concert recorded in a single night, from a singer doctors had said would never perform again.

CBS scheduled The Judy Garland Show against which Sunday-night ratings giant, helping doom it after one season?

Bonanza was one of the most-watched shows in America, and Garland's series never dented it. CBS cancelled her after a single season, Emmy nominations and all.

Which 21-year-old singer taped duets with Garland in October 1963 that CBS rushed to air two days later?

Barbra Streisand taped the hour on a Friday, and it went so well that CBS aired it that Sunday. Ethel Merman 'crashed' the set to belt a number with them both.

Which president did Garland reportedly phone most weeks, ending the call by singing him a few bars of her signature song?

John F. Kennedy never let her off the phone without a few bars of 'Over the Rainbow', his aide Dave Powers recalled. The two families were summer neighbours at Hyannis Port.

In which Australian city did a crowd of 7,000 boo Garland off stage in 1964?

Her two Sydney Stadium shows had gone well; she called the Melbourne crowd 'brutish'.

Which 1967 film did Garland leave weeks into shooting, after being cast as Helen Lawson?

Valley of the Dolls carried on with Susan Hayward in the part. Garland left with half her fee and the pantsuit made for the role, which she went on to wear in concert.

For which film did Garland's eldest daughter, Liza, win the Best Actress Oscar that her mother never won?

Cabaret won Liza the award for playing Sally Bowles, a singer in Weimar Berlin. Her mother had been nominated for A Star Is Born and lost.

Whom did Garland's 1966 lawsuit accuse of embezzling her earnings?

Her agents, Freddie Fields and David Begelman, had rebuilt her career in the early 1960s. Short of money, she settled without recovering what she said was missing.

What was Mickey Deans, the fifth husband Garland married in London in March 1969, by profession?

A nightclub manager at a fashionable New York discotheque, Deans first met her in 1967 when he delivered pills to her hotel. He found her dead three months after the wedding.

In which London district was the rented house where Garland died in June 1969?

Belgravia's Cadogan Lane held the small mews house she and Mickey Deans rented early in 1969. The coroner ruled her barbiturate overdose accidental.

Which Wizard of Oz co-star was among the mourners at Garland's New York funeral in 1969?

Ray Bolger, the film's Scarecrow, joined the invited mourners inside a Manhattan funeral chapel while fans crowded the barriers outside. Time opened its obituary with the Scarecrow coming to her funeral.

What was Garland dressed in as thousands of fans filed past her glass-topped coffin in New York?

Her latest wedding gown was the grey one she had worn to marry Mickey Deans three months earlier. So many came to the Manhattan chapel that it stayed open through the night.

In 2017 Garland's remains were moved from Ferncliff Cemetery in New York to which Los Angeles cemetery?

Hollywood Forever had what her New York crypt lacked: room for her children to be buried beside her one day. Her daughter Lorna arranged the move.

To whom was Garland deep in debt by late 1968?

The IRS was pursuing her for back taxes and would have taken any declared fee. So that autumn a Manhattan club paid her quietly, in cash.

Where does 'Over the Rainbow' rank on the AFI's list of the 100 greatest movie songs?

First place went to a ballad MGM almost cut from The Wizard of Oz after previews, feeling it slowed the opening. Four more Garland recordings made the hundred.

Garland's 2006 US stamp used a publicity photo for A Star Is Born, in which she played which fictional star?

Vicki Lester is the screen name the studio hands band singer Esther Blodgett, who learns of it when she collects her first paycheck. Garland's first stamp, in 1990, showed her as Dorothy.

Which actress won the Best Actress Oscar for playing Garland in the 2019 biopic Judy?

Renee Zellweger had stepped away from acting for several years before returning in 2016. Playing Garland's last London shows brought her a second Oscar, after Cold Mountain.

Hours after Garland's Manhattan funeral in June 1969, which uprising began a few miles downtown in Greenwich Village?

The Stonewall riots began in the early hours of 28 June, when police raided a gay bar. Some link the mood that night to her funeral; people who were there have called that a myth.

Which 1940 film had Garland play a mother and her daughter, with her only on-screen death scene?

Little Nellie Kelly has the mother die in childbirth, then brings Garland back as the grown daughter. She also sings 'Singin' in the Rain', twelve years before the film of that name.

Which 1945 drama cast Garland as a New Yorker who marries a soldier on leave?

The Clock was shot in California: MGM rebuilt Penn Station on a soundstage, with a moving belt standing in for its escalator. That is where the couple first meet.

Which car maker put its name on the CBS series that Garland opened in 1955 with her first television special?

Ford sponsored the monthly Ford Star Jubilee, and her live 90-minute show launched it. A year later the series bowed out with the first television showing of The Wizard of Oz.

Which singer restaged Garland's celebrated 1961 New York concert song for song, in the same hall, in 2006?

Rufus Wainwright sang her whole set in order, 45 years on, and released it as a live album. Garland's daughter Lorna joined him on stage for one of her mother's songs.

In 1947 Garland joined which group formed by Hollywood celebrities to support the Hollywood Ten?

The Committee for the First Amendment flew a planeload of stars to Washington to protest the hearings. Garland spoke on its all-star radio broadcast, Hollywood Fights Back, that same week.

Which London nightclub hosted Garland's five-week run in the winter of 1968-69, the setting of the 2019 film Judy?

The Talk of the Town booked her for five weeks from late December 1968. Audiences could see how unwell she was, and she died in London that June.

In which port did 1964 press reports have Garland marrying Mark Herron aboard a freighter?

Hong Kong was the port in the reports, but no such wedding could count, because her divorce was not yet final. The couple married legally in Las Vegas in November 1965.

Garland's first husband, composer David Rose, devoted the back yard of their Los Angeles home to what?

Miniature trains, with working steam engines, were his great hobby, and 1942 gossip columns had her watching him run them. He kept the backyard railroad going long after their 1944 divorce.