After she was revealed, Garland would attempt to commit. Her orange sequinned suit makes her jaunty - a pantomime principal boy got lost in the East End. In 1947, Garland was placed in a mental health facility after suffering a nervous breakdown on the disastrous shoot of The Pirate.

Some nights, Garland would put on an incredible show, others she would turn up late, demanding a cocktail of pills to help overcome her stage fright.Īt the time, a review from January 14 in The Observer described Garland as 'thinner now, almost haggard, her hair flicked back like a boy's. In December 1968, just a few months before her death as a result of an accidental sleeping pill overdose, Garland had landed in London to appear in a five-week run of shows run at Talk of the Town cabaret club in Leicester Square. In fact, according to Garland biographer Gerald Clarke, it was Ethel who first provided pillsones to ramp up energy and others to sleepto her not-yet-10-year-old daughter. Playing the part of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz, was what rocketed Garland to stardom back in 1939, when she was just 16.īut at the end of her life, Judy Garland was penniless, addicted to drugs, virtually homeless and reduced to singing in bars for a measly $100 per night.ĭue to mismanagement and alleged embezzlement, any money Garland once had was long gone and it's said she owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes to the IRS. Mayer also allegedly groped the teenage Judy Garland, according to Gerald Clarke’s book Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, and held meetings with the young woman seated on his lap.

Think of Judy Garland and you'd be forgiven for conjuring the image of an angelic faced teenager, wearing a blue pinafore dress and red shoes with her hair tied up in pigtails as she skips along a yellow brick road.

Gerald clarke judy garland