“If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?” – Judy Garland

Judy Garland Biography

Frances Ethel Gumm, better known to the rest of the World as Judy Garland, was born on 10 June 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, USA. She was born into the entertainment industry as her parents, Francis Avent Gumm, known as Frank, and Ethel Marion Milne were the owners of a movie theatre in Grand Rapids within which they promoted vaudeville acts.

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It didn’t take long for Frances, or ‘Baby’ as the rest of the family called her to take to the stage as she first performed at the age of just two and a half years when she joined her two older sisters Mary Jane and Dorothy Virginia on the stage during a Christmas show to sing the chorus of Jingle Bells. This was the start of her career as the Gumm Sisters as they became known would perform regularly at their parents’ theatre, with their mother playing the piano for the next few years.

In June 1926, rumours started to circulate that Frank Gumm had made improper advances towards male ushers at the theatre and so the family moved to Lancaster in California where Frank bought another theatre. Ethel took it upon herself to manage her daughters and made it her goal to get them into the movies. After arriving in California Frances enrolled at the Hollywood High School and eventually went on to graduate from University High School in West Los Angeles.

The Gumm Sisters enrolled in a dance school in 1928 and joined the Meglin Kiddies dance troupe which led to an appearance by the sisters in their first movie, a 1929 short called The Big Revue in which they danced and sang a number called That’s the Good Old Sunny South. The following year saw them on two more shorts, A Holiday in Storyland and The Wedding of Jack and Jill. The former of the two featured Frances in her first on screen solo.

The Gumm Sisters toured for a number of years until they appeared in 1934 at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago, where George Jessel, a co-performer suggested they change their name to something a little more appealing than Gumm. There are a number of stories about how the sister’s new name came about and it remains unclear which if any of them are true, but suffice it to say by late 1934, the Gumm Sisters had become the Garland Sisters, and shortly afterwards, Frances changed her name to Judy, and at that point a legend was born. In August 1935, the Garland Sisters broke up when Mary Jane, who had changed her name to Suzanne flew to Reno, Nevada and married a member of the Jimmy Davies orchestra, a musician called Lee Kahn.

Almost immediately, Judy was invited to Culver City in Los Angeles to perform in an impromptu audition at MGM. She performed two songs, Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart and a popular Yiddish vaudeville song called Eli Eli, and was immediately signed to a contract. Garland was only 13 years old at the time but this was a problem for the studio as she was too old to play the standard child star types of role but too young to play glamorous leading lady parts. She was self-conscious about her appearance and was aware that she was not as pretty as some of her contemporaries such as Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. Even the studio’s chief, Louis B. Mayer referred to her as his ‘little hunchback”. This led to insecurities that Judy carried with her for the rest of her life.

Shortly afterwards, in November 1935, Judy’s father contracted meningitis and was hospitalised. He died at the age of only 49, leaving Judy devastated. Even so, she still managed to perform “Zing! When the Strings of My Heart” on the radio, her first professional rendition of the song. It went on to be one of the standard songs performed by her at her concerts.

A couple of years later, in 1937, Judy Garland met Mickey Rooney on the set of Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry and soon afterwards,