On stage, Garland is a character in the musical The Boy from Oz (1998), portrayed by Chrissy Amphlett in the original Australian production and by Isabel Keating on Broadway in 2003. End of the Rainbow (2005) featured Caroline O'Connor as Garland and Paul Goddard as Garland's pianist. Adrienne Barbeau played Garland in The Property Known as Garland (2006) and The Judy Monologues (2010) initially featured male actors reciting Garland's words before it was revamped as a one-woman show.
Upon Garland's death, despite having earned millions during her career, her estate came to US$40,000 (equivalent to $278,875 in 2019). Years of mismanagement of her financial affairs by her representatives and staff along with her generosity toward her family and various causes resulted in her poor financial situation at the end of her life. In her last will, signed and sealed in early 1961, Garland made many generous bequests which could not be fulfilled because her estate had been in debt for many years. Her daughter, Liza Minnelli, worked to pay off her mother's debts with the help of family friend Frank Sinatra.In 1978, a selection of Garland's personal items were auctioned off by her ex-husband Sidney Luft with the support of their daughter Lorna and their son Joe. Almost 500 items, ranging from copper cookware to musical arrangements, were offered for sale. The auction raised US$250,000 (equivalent to $979,974 in 2019) for her heirs.
More InfoGarland was nearly as famous for her personal struggles in everyday life as she was for her entertainment career. She has been closely associated with her carefully cultivated girl next door image. Early in her career during the 1930s, Garland's public image had earned her the title "America's favorite kid sister", as well as the title "Little Miss Showbusiness". In a review for the Star Tribune, Graydon Royce wrote that Garland's public image remained that of "a Midwestern girl who couldn't believe where she was", despite having been a well-established celebrity for over 20 years. Royce believes that fans and audiences insisted on preserving their memory of Garland as Dorothy no matter how much she matured, calling her "a captive not of her own desire to stay young, but a captive of the public's desire to preserve her that way". Thus, the studio continued to cast Garland in roles that were significantly younger than her actual age.
More InfoIn September, 1947, Garland joined the Committee for the First Amendment, an action group formed by Hollywood celebrities in support of the Hollywood Ten during the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives led by J. Parnell Thomas, which was formed to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and organizations suspected of having Communist ties. The Committee for the First Amendment sought to protect the civil liberties of those accused. Other members included Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Dorothy Dandridge, John Garfield, Katharine Hepburn, Lena Horne, John Huston, Gene Kelly, and Billy Wilder. Garland took part in recording an all-star October 26, 1947 radio broadcast, Hollywood Fights Back, during which she exhorted listeners to action: "Before every free conscience in America is subpoenaed, please speak up! Say your piece! Write your congressman a letter—air mail special. Let the Congress know what you think of its Un-American Committee."
More InfoGarland was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. These include "Over the Rainbow", which was ranked as the number one movie song of all time in the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Songs" list. Four more Garland songs are featured on the list: "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (No. 76), "Get Happy" (No. 61), "The Trolley Song" (No. 26), and "The Man That Got Away" (No. 11). She has twice been honored on U.S. postage stamps, in 1989 (as Dorothy) and again in 2006 (as Vicki Lester from A Star Is Born). While on tour in 1964, Garland identified "Over the Rainbow" as her favorite of all the songs she had ever recorded, to which Trussel observed that "Her career would remain inextricably linked". Garland would frequently use an overture from "Over the Rainbow" as her entrance music during concerts and television appearances. According to Paglia, the more Garland performed "Over the Rainbow", the more it "became her tragic anthem ... a dirge for artistic opportunities squandered, and for personal happiness permanently deferred". In 1998, Carnegie Hall hosted a two-concert tribute to Garland, which they promoted as "a tribute to the world's greatest entertainer".
More InfoAccording to Malony, Garland was one of Hollywood's hardest-working performers during the 1940s, which Malony claims she used as a coping mechanism after her first marriage imploded. However, studio employees recall that Garland had a tendency to be quite intense, headstrong and volatile; Judy Garland: The Secret Life of an American Legend author David Shipman claims that several individuals were frustrated by Garland's "narcissism" and "growing instability", while millions of fans found her public demeanor and psychological state to be "fragile", appearing neurotic in interviews. MGM reports that Garland was consistently tardy and demonstrated erratic behavior, which resulted in several delays and disruptions to filming schedules until she was finally dismissed from the studio, which had deemed her unreliable and difficult to manage. Farrell called Garland "A grab bag of contradictions" which "has always been a feast for the American imagination", describing her public persona as "awkward yet direct, bashful yet brash". Describing the singer as "Tender and endearing yet savage and turbulent", Paglia wrote that Garland "cut a path of destruction through many lives. And out of that chaos, she made art of still-searing intensity." Calling her "a creature of extremes, greedy, sensual, and demanding, gluttonous for pleasure and pain", Paglia also compared Garland to entertainer Frank Sinatra due to their shared "emblematic personality ... into whom the mass audience projected its hopes and disappointments", while observing that she lacked Sinatra's survival skills.
More InfoWe don't show ads. Help us keep it that way.