Judy Garland

She was the youngest child of Ethel Marion Gumm ( Milne; 1896–1953) and Francis "Frank" Avent Gumm (1886–1935).

Her parents were vaudevillians who settled in Grand Rapids to run a movie theater that featured vaudeville acts.

She was of Irish, English, Scottish, and French Huguenot ancestry, named after both of her parents and baptized at a local Episcopal church.

"Baby" (as she was called by her parents and sisters) shared her family's flair for song and dance.

Her first appearance came at the age of two, when she joined her elder sisters Mary Jane "Suzy/Suzanne" Gumm and Dorothy Virginia "Jimmie" Gumm on the stage of her father's movie theater during a Christmas show and sang a chorus of "Jingle Bells".

The Gumm Sisters performed there for the next few years, accompanied by their mother on piano.

Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress and singer.

She attained international stardom and critical acclaim: as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles; as a recording artist; and on the concert stage.

Renowned for her versatility, she received a Golden Globe Award, a Special Tony Award and was one of twelve in history to receive an Academy Juvenile Award.

Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

The family relocated to Lancaster, California, in June 1926, following rumors that her father had homosexual inclinations.

Frank bought and operated another theater in Lancaster, and Ethel began managing her daughters and working to get them into motion pictures.

In 1928, the Gumm Sisters enrolled in a dance school run by Ethel Meglin, proprietor of the Meglin Kiddies dance troupe.

They appeared with the troupe at its annual Christmas show.

Through the Meglin Kiddies, they made their film debut in a short subject called The Big Revue (1929), where they performed a song-and-dance number called "That's the Good Old Sunny South".

This was followed by appearances in two Vitaphone shorts the following year: A Holiday in Storyland (featuring Garland's first on-screen solo) and The Wedding of Jack and Jill.

They next appeared together in Bubbles.

The trio had toured the vaudeville circuit as "The Gumm Sisters" for many years by the time they performed in Chicago at the Oriental Theater with George Jessel in 1934.

He encouraged the group to choose a more appealing name after "Gumm" was met with laughter from the audience.

According to theater legend, their act was once erroneously billed at a Chicago theater as "The Glum Sisters".

Several stories persist regarding the origin of their use of the name Garland.

One is that it was originated by Jessel after Carole Lombard's character Lily Garland in the film Twentieth Century (1934), which was then playing at the Oriental in Chicago; another is that the girls chose the surname after drama critic Robert Garland.

Garland's daughter Lorna Luft stated that her mother selected the name when Jessel announced that the trio "looked prettier than a garland of flowers".

Their final on-screen appearance was in an MGM Technicolor short entitled La Fiesta de Santa Barbara (1935).

She appeared in more than two dozen films for MGM, including The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946), Easter Parade (1948), and Summer Stock (1950).

Garland was a frequent on-screen partner of both Mickey Rooney and Gene Kelly and regularly collaborated with director Vincente Minnelli, her second husband.

In 1950, after 15 years with MGM, she was released from her contract with the studio amid a series of personal struggles that prevented her from fulfilling the terms of her contract.

Although her film career became intermittent thereafter, two of Garland's most critically acclaimed roles came later in her career: she received Academy Award nominations for her performances in the musical drama A Star Is Born (1954) and the courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).

A TV special was filmed in Hollywood at the Pantages Theatre premiere of A Star Is Born on September 29, 1954, in which Jessel stated:

Garland won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her 1961 live recording, Judy at Carnegie Hall; she was the first woman to win that award.

Throughout her career she recorded and introduced numerous songs including "Over the Rainbow", which became her signature song, the Christmas classic "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and Saint Patrick's Day anthem "It's a Great Day for the Irish".

Garland began performing as a child, with her two older sisters, in a vaudeville group "The Gumm Sisters," and was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager.

She also made concert appearances that attracted record-breaking audience sizes, 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.

Garland struggled in her personal life from an early age.

The pressures of early stardom affected her physical and mental health from the time she was a teenager; her self-image was influenced by constant criticism from film executives who believed that she was physically unattractive and who manipulated her onscreen physical appearance.

She had financial troubles, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes.

Throughout her adulthood, she struggled with substance use disorder involving both drugs and alcohol; she died from an accidental barbiturate overdose in 1969, at age 47.

In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked her as the eighth-greatest female screen legend of classic Hollywood cinema.