With her daughter currently performing a tribute show in London, the gay icon with the ruby slippers is everywhere. Richard Bevan  takes a peek behind the legend.

I can remember the first time I saw Judy Garland. I was about six and The Wizard of Oz was still doing the rounds at local flea pits, usually as a double bill with some inane Hollywood musical like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Even then I thought the film camp, although those freaky flying monkeys gave me the creeps for years. That said, I’ve never been a huge fan. Intrigued, yes, certainly by the irony that behind the sweet image of a sixteen year old girl singing ‘Over the Rainbow’ in a gingham pinny, was a true-life tragic story unfolding.

No doubt that, and the high drama associated with Hollywood troopers with their ‘smile when you are low’ showbiz mantra, has helped put Garland into the Pantheon of gay icons. How doubly ironic that daughter Liza was to play the ultimate of fictional gay icons, Sally Bowles, and who is now herself the reigning Queen of tragi-drama divas.

What has cemented Garland’s name on the Hollywood walk of gay fame isn’t perhaps The Wizard of Oz, nor her moment of mature glory in A Star Is Born, but simply the fact that she died on the night of the most significant moment of gay revolution; Stonewall.

Whether Garland can be attributed to fuelling a feeling of social disorder among New York’s queers and trannies is debatable, but it’s a wonderful notion to think that united grief over the star’s death, transmuted into a feeling of fighting back against years of social oppression. I’m surprised the symbol of gay freedom is a rainbow coloured flag and not a pair of ruby slippers!

Ethel Gumm
Garland started out in life with the odds stacked against her - Ethel Gumm not being the most glamorous of names. It is said that after having had three daughters, Garland’s mother was disappointed Judy wasn’t a boy. So if anyone believes there was always a ‘tomboy’ aura about our Judy, now you know why.

Set to work with her sisters under the artless moniker The Gumm Sisters, kid sister soon became noted as ‘Baby Gumm’. With impersonations of Fanny Brice and singing and dancing formulated brilliantly especially for her by her mother, ‘Baby’ became a sensation with her audiences. After the sibling act broke up, Judy went solo and then onto Hollywood. The rest is history.

Between 1939 and 1950 Garland made around twenty two films and was the reigning "queen of the musicals" during that period, appearing in more musicals than any other actress.

Wizard Of Oz
Wizard was the first big break that put her immediately on the international stage and yes, it’s true the studio suppressed her developing womanhood with a pernicious cocktail of puberty delaying potions while also strapping down her puppies. It’s probably no surprise that by the time she was nineteen she was a walking chemist.

Given ‘uppers’ for energy and ‘downers’ to help her sleep, the young starlet developed an early reliance on narcotics, not for recreational indulgence, but simply in order to function and do her work. Her output as a performer was prolific, taking in tours, stage shows and over 1000 concert and nightclub engagements. It’s little wonder that she was a wreck, both emotionally and physically by the time she was forty.

A Star Is Born 
Despite been dropped by MGM, the movie factory that made so much dosh out of her, Garland fought back with sell out one-woman shows. It was at this time she married for the third time manager Sid Luft (Lorna’s father) and broke all attendance records on Broadway. Then in 1954 she made A Star Is Born, her personal masterpiece and best film.

The flip side to her incredible staying power and keeping at the top despite her advancing years was sadly a private life that was in turmoil. But where would a gay icon be without tantrums, tears and broken crockery smashing behind the velvet stage curtains?

Garland’s life spiraled out of control as she married and remarried, battled with drugs, alcohol and broken professional engagements, then to be finally hit by the tax man. It is doubly tragic to think that this woman who gave pleasure to millions around the globe finally found herself financially ruined and homeless.

Birth Of Gay Liberation
Even if she didn’t know it at the time, certain quarters of the gay community could indeed empathise with this tragic character. She was a fighter, surviving against the odds and in many ways, an outsider. No wonder legions of drag queens held candlelit memorials to her on the harsh streets of New York.
 
On June 22, 1969, less than two weeks after her 47th birthday, Garland was found dead in a London hotel bathroom by her last husband, Mickey Deans. That night a confrontation between patrons of Stonewall and the NYPD kicked off into a street battle culminating in gays barricading themselves in the bar. It was the catalyst for the beginning of Gay Lib and the first of many political battles won over the next thirty years.

Judy was laid to rest at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Well, there’s no place like home.

Buy the immortal DVD of The Wizard of Oz online and save some pennies. And while you're at it, whynot take home the classic CD, Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall