Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. While critically acclaimed for many different

Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm) was an American actress and singer. While critically acclaimed for many different roles throughout her career, she is widely known for playing the part of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939). She attained international stardom as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage. Renowned for her versatility, she received an Academy Juvenile Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Special Tony Award. Garland was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, which she won for her 1961 live recording titled Judy at Carnegie Hall.

Garland began performing as a child with her two older sisters, in a vaudeville group "The Gumm Sisters" and was later signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She appeared in more than two dozen films for MGM. Garland was a frequent on-screen partner of both Mickey Rooney and Gene Kelly and regularly collaborated with director and second husband Vincente Minnelli. Other starring roles during this period included Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946), Easter Parade (1948) and Summer Stock (1950). In 1950, after 15 years with MGM, the studio released her 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 a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in A Star Is Born (1954) and a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). She also made record-breaking concert appearances, released eight studio albums and hosted her own Emmy-nominated television series, The Judy Garland Show (1963 to 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 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.

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. Throughout her adulthood she was plagued by alcohol and substance abuse, as well as financial instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. Her lifelong substance use disorder ultimately led to her death from an accidental barbiturate overdose in 1969, at age 47.

EARLY LIFE
Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. She was the youngest child of Ethel Marion (née Milne; 1893 to 1953) and Francis Avent "Frank" Gumm (1886 to 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.

The family...

LINK TO ARTICLE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Garland

TAGS: Judy Garland, United Service Organizations entertainers, Traditional pop music singers, Torch singers, Special Tony Award recipients, Singers from Minnesota, Singers from Los Angeles, People from Lancaster California, People from Grand Rapids Minnesota, New York (state) Democrats, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract players, Hollywood High School alumni, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners, Grammy Award winners, Decca Records artists, Child pop musicians, Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners, Capitol Records artists, California Democrats, Burials at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Burials at Ferncliff Cemetery, Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (film) winners, American women pop singers, American voice actresses, American television actresses, American tap dancers, American stage actresses, American radio personalities, American people of Scottish descent

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