Judy Garland — The Rainbow and What It Cost

Biography

From Frances Gumm to Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota — the daughter of vaudeville performers who performed as a family act from her earliest childhood. MGM signed her at thirteen, and she spent the following decade making the studio's most profitable and beloved films, developing across those years into the most completely equipped performer of her generation: a singer of unmatched emotional range, an actress of genuine dramatic depth, and a comic who could hold a frame without stealing it from the story. The instrument was formed in childhood and refined under enormous pressure into something that the commercial entertainment industry had not seen before and has not produced since.

Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz (1939) — Garland at seventeen as Dorothy Gale, the Kansas farm girl whose tornado deposits her in a Technicolor world that is simultaneously a dream and an argument about the value of home — produced the most famous single performance in American cinema and the song that became synonymous with the desire for something better. The honorary Oscar she received for it was a miniature; they gave her a child's award because the performance made the studio uncomfortable about treating her like an adult.

Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) — which she made while beginning her relationship with Minnelli, whom she would later marry — and George Cukor's A Star Is Born (1954) — the film she produced after her MGM years, the comeback that the studio's re-editing of the original cut effectively sabotaged — are the other peaks of her screen career. A Star Is Born's three-hour cut, restored in 1983, contains the finest sustained performance she ever gave on film; the Oscar went to Grace Kelly instead.

Her concert performances — particularly the 1961 Carnegie Hall concert, still regarded as the greatest live recording of the twentieth century — demonstrated the complete performer that the films could only partially contain. The capacity to reach an audience across a live performance, to sustain three hours of material at the pitch that the Carnegie Hall recordings document, is the fullest evidence of what she possessed. She died in London in June 1969 at forty-seven. The voice was intact to the last.

1922

Born Frances Gumm in Grand Rapids; vaudeville family; stages from infancy

1935

MGM at thirteen; the decade of beloved films begins; the instrument under formation

1939

The Wizard of Oz — Dorothy; the rainbow; the honorary child's Oscar

1944

Meet Me in St. Louis — Minnelli directs; they fall in love; they marry

1954

A Star Is Born — the comeback; the cut sabotaged; Oscar to Grace Kelly

1961

Carnegie Hall concert — the greatest live recording of the century

1969

Dies in London; age 47; the voice intact to the last; the century mourns

Filmography & Recordings

From Dorothy's Kansas to Carnegie Hall

1939Musical Fantasy · Victor Fleming · MGM

The Wizard of Oz

Victor Fleming's Technicolor classic — Garland at seventeen as Dorothy Gale, the Kansas girl transported to Oz, performing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in a way that collapsed the distance between the character's longing and the performer's. The most famous film performance in American cinema; the song that became the century's defining statement of the desire for something better; and the honorary child's miniature Oscar that the studio gave a seventeen-year-old for it.

Honorary Oscar

"Over the Rainbow" is the most psychologically transparent performance in the MGM catalogue — a girl singing about wanting to be somewhere else, played by a girl who was already being made to want to be somewhere else, and the transparency is total and completely unintentional and completely devastating. The studio considered cutting the song from the film because it slowed the pace; it is the reason the film exists in the cultural memory it occupies, and the decision not to cut it was made by the producer over the studio's objections.

1954Musical Drama · George Cukor · Comeback

A Star Is Born

George Cukor's Hollywood musical — Garland as Esther Blodgett, the singer whose career is made and sustained by a declining movie star (James Mason) who loves her. The comeback film she produced after her MGM years, originally three hours long, re-edited by Warner Bros. into something shorter and less coherent, restored in 1983 to reveal what the performance actually was. The Oscar that year went to Grace Kelly.

Oscar Nom

The "Born in a Trunk" sequence — twenty-two minutes of performance history condensed into a single number — is the most sustained demonstration of what Garland was capable of as a complete performer: actress, singer, dancer, comedian, tragedian, all simultaneously present and none concealing the others. The re-edited version removed this and other key sequences; the restored film is the argument for what the Oscar that year should have recognised; the Academy's decision was one of its more consequential errors.

1944Musical · Vincente Minnelli · St. Louis

Meet Me in St. Louis

Vincente Minnelli's period musical — Garland as Esther Smith, the eldest daughter of a St. Louis family facing a possible move to New York at the time of the 1904 World's Fair. The film that established Minnelli's visual style and that gave Garland "The Trolley Song" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" — the second of which she performed with a specific sadness that Minnelli had to negotiate her into, and that made the song what it became.

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was originally written with darker lyrics that Garland refused to sing as written; the compromise version she performed — slightly gentler, still genuinely melancholic — became the standard, and her performance of it is the reason. Minnelli directed her into the specific sadness the song required by talking to her about the character's circumstances rather than the song's requirements; the technique produced a performance that the song has been measured against ever since.

1961Concert · Carnegie Hall · Live Recording

Judy at Carnegie Hall

The April 23, 1961 Carnegie Hall concert — two performances in one night, recorded and released as an album that won five Grammy Awards including Album of the Year. Still considered the greatest live performance recording of the twentieth century. The complete performer that the films could only partially contain, given an entire evening and an audience that understood exactly what it was witnessing.

The Carnegie Hall recording captures the quality that made her concert performances unlike anything else available — the directness of communication between the performer and the audience, the sense that nothing was being managed or protected, that the voice and the feeling and the person were the same thing in real time. She performed for nearly three hours; the audience refused to let her stop; the recording was the best-selling album Capitol Records had produced to that point. The concert is the argument that what the films contained was only part of what she was.

Honors

A Child's Honorary Oscar — Two Nominations — Five Grammy Awards

Honorary Academy Award

1940

The Wizard of Oz

A miniature Oscar — the child's version — for "the best performance of a juvenile during 1939." She was seventeen. The studio gave her a small award because the performance made them uncomfortable about acknowledging what they had extracted from someone they were still treating as a child.

Honorary — Age 17

Oscar Nomination — Best Actress

1955

A Star Is Born

Nominated for Esther Blodgett in the film she had produced as her comeback. The Oscar went to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl. The Academy's decision is among its more discussed errors; the restored cut of A Star Is Born makes the argument for Garland's performance more clearly than any critic has managed.

Oscar Nominated

Oscar Nomination — Best Supporting Actress

1962

Judgment at Nuremberg

Nominated for her brief, devastating performance as Irene Hoffman in Stanley Kramer's Nuremberg trial film — a housewife who testifies about having been imprisoned for a relationship with a Jewish man. She filmed her scenes in a single day. The performance demonstrates that what she had was not confined to musicals.

Oscar Nominated

Grammy — Album of the Year

1962

Judy at Carnegie Hall

Five Grammy Awards including Album of the Year for the Carnegie Hall concert recording — the greatest live performance recording of the twentieth century. The Grammys recognised what the Oscars had twice missed: that the instrument was not occasional but sustained, not a quality of specific films but a quality of the person performing them.

5 Grammys

Artistic Identity

The Voice That MGM Nearly Destroyed and Couldn't

The Transparency

The specific quality that made her unlike any other performer of her era — the absence of anything between the feeling and the expression of it — was also the quality that made her impossible to protect. The camera and the microphone found something that she could not conceal and that the pharmaceutical regime could not suppress; the instrument's transparency was constitutional, not trained.

The MGM System

MGM put a thirteen-year-old on amphetamines to control her weight, barbiturates to make her sleep, and amphetamines again to wake her up. The dependency that followed was entirely predictable and entirely the studio's responsibility, and the studio bore none of the consequences that Garland bore all of. The system worked exactly as designed; the design was the problem.

The Concert Artist

Carnegie Hall in 1961 is the argument that the films, for all their distinction, contained only part of what she was. The concert artist — performing directly to an audience that came specifically for her, sustaining the communication across three hours without the mediation of character or story — was the complete form of the instrument, and the recordings are the most direct evidence of it.

The Voice at the End

She died at forty-seven with her voice intact — the cruelest possible evidence of what the instrument could have sustained if the person carrying it had been protected rather than exploited. The pharmaceuticals damaged the body; the voice was more durable than the body; the voice was still there when the body was gone, which is either a mercy or the final argument against what was done to her.

Legacy

Somewhere Over the Rainbow — And What Was Done Before She Got There

Judy Garland's legacy is the song and what it cost — the rainbow and the pharmaceutical regime that began at thirteen, designed by the institution that owned her, that she spent the rest of her life unable to escape. The Wizard of Oz, A Star Is Born, Carnegie Hall: three arguments for the most complete performer of the twentieth century, made by a woman who was simultaneously being destroyed by the system that owned the first of them.

The voice was intact at forty-seven, which is either a testament to the instrument or an indictment of what surrounded it. She died with two Oscar nominations, five Grammy Awards, the most famous song in American cinema, and the greatest live recording of the century — and the evidence that what she was capable of sustained itself despite everything that was done to prevent it, which is the most complicated possible form of triumph.

Oscar Nominations

A Star Is Born · Judgment at Nuremberg

Grammy Awards Won

Carnegie Hall · Album of Year

Age at Death

June 22, 1969, London

Age When MGM Put Her on Pills

Amphetamines · 1935