Mix Up Star: JUDY GARLAND

Updated: Mar 8, 2021

Died: 1969 - Age 47

Judy Garland was an American actress, singer, vaudevillian and dancer. With a career spanning 45 years, 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.

Vaudeville

Light theatrical entertainment featuring individual, unrelated acts, vaudeville was popular in the United States from the mid-1890s until the early 1930s. Magicians, acrobats, comedians, trained animals, jugglers, singers, and dancers performed as soloists or in groups.

Academy Juvenile Award

The Academy Juvenile Award, also known informally as the Juvenile Oscar, was a Special Honorary Academy Award to specifically recognize juvenile performers under the age of eighteen for their "outstanding contributions to screen entertainment".

Garland began performing in vaudeville as a child with her two older sisters and was later signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She appeared in more than two dozen films for MGM and is remembered for portraying Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939). 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 film appearances during this period include roles in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946), Easter Parade (1948), and Summer Stock (1950). Garland was released from MGM in 1950, after 15 years 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 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 (1963–1964).

Last year, Renee Zellweger, won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal as Judy Garland in the movie, Judy. The film successfully and compassionately portrayed Judy's struggles in her later years.