Judy Garland

Who wrote The Secret Life of an American Legend?

According 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.


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  • Garland possessed a contralto vocal range. Her singing voice has been described as brassy, powerful, effortless and resonant, often demonstrating a tremulous, powerful vibrato. Although her range was comparatively limited, Garland was capable of alternating between female and male-sounding timbres with little effort. The Richmond Times-Dispatch correspondent Tony Farrell wrote she possessed "a deep, velvety contralto voice that could turn on a dime to belt out the high notes", while Ron O'Brien, producer of tribute album The Definitive Collection – Judy Garland (2006), wrote the singer's combination of natural phrasing, elegant delivery, mature pathos "and powerful dramatic dynamics she brings to ... songs make her [renditions] the definitive interpretations". The Huffington Post writer Joan E. Dowlin called the period of Garland's music career between 1937 and 1945 the "innocent years", during which the critic believes the singer's "voice was vibrant and her musical expression exuberant", taking note of its resonance and distinct, "rich yet sweet" quality "that grabs you and pulls you in". Garland's voice would often vary to suit the song she was interpreting, ranging from soft, engaging and tender during ballads to humorous on some of her duets with other artists. Her more joyful, belted performances have been compared to entertainers Sophie Tucker, Ethel Merman, and Al Jolson. Although her musical repertoire consisted largely of cast recordings, show tunes and traditional pop standards, Garland was also capable of singing soul, blues, and jazz music, which Dowlin compared to singer Elvis Presley.

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  • Garland was left in a desperate situation which saw her sell her Brentwood home at a price far below its value. She was then cast in February 1967 for the role of Helen Lawson in Valley of the Dolls by 20th Century Fox. According to co-star Patty Duke, Garland was treated poorly by director Mark Robson on the set of Valley of the Dolls and was primarily hired so as to augment publicity for the film. After Garland's dismissal from the film, author Jacqueline Susann said in the 1967 television documentary Jacqueline Susann and the Valley of the Dolls, "I think Judy will always come back. She kids about making a lot of comebacks, but I think Judy has a kind of a thing where she has to get to the bottom of the rope and things have to get very, very rough for her. Then with an amazing inner strength that only comes of a certain genius, she comes back bigger than ever".

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  • In 1961, Garland and CBS settled their contract disputes with the help of her new agent, Freddie Fields, and negotiated a new round of specials. The first, titled The Judy Garland Show, aired on February 25, 1962 and featured guests Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Following this success, CBS made a $24 million offer to her for a weekly television series of her own, also to be called The Judy Garland Show, which was deemed at the time in the press to be "the biggest talent deal in TV history". Although she had said as early as 1955 that she would never do a weekly television series, in the early 1960s, she was in a financially precarious situation. She was several hundred thousand dollars in debt to the Internal Revenue Service, having failed to pay taxes in 1951 and 1952, and the failure of A Star is Born meant that she received nothing from that investment.

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  • During this time Garland had a 6-month affair with actor Glenn Ford. Garland's biographer Gerald Clarke, Ford's son Peter, singer Mel Torme and her husband Sid Luft wrote about the affair in their respective biographies. The relationship began in 1963 while Garland was doing her television show. Ford would attend tapings of the show sitting in the front row while Garland sang. Ford is credited with giving Garland one of the more stable relationships of her later life. The affair was ended by Ford (a notorious womanizer according to his son Peter) when he realized Garland wanted to marry him.

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  • In 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."

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