page_title: Judy Garland
section_title: Adult stardom
hierarchical_section_title: Judy Garland / Adult stardom
caption_attribution_description: Cropped screenshot of Judy Garland from the trailer for the film Meet Me in St. Louis.
context_page_description: Judy Garland was an American actress, singer, vaudevillian and dancer. With a career spanning 45 years, she attained international stardom as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on the concert stage. Renowned for her versatility, she received an Academy Juvenile Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Special Tony Award, and was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her 1961 live recording Judy at Carnegie Hall.
  Garland began performing in vaudeville as a child with her two older sisters and was later signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She appeared in more than two dozen films for MGM and is remembered for portraying Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz. Garland was a frequent on-screen partner of both Mickey Rooney and Gene Kelly and regularly collaborated with director and second husband Vincente Minnelli. Other film appearances during this period include roles in Meet Me in St. Louis, The Harvey Girls, Easter Parade, and Summer Stock. Garland was released from MGM in 1950, after 15 years with the studio, amid a series of personal struggles that prevented her from fulfilling the terms of her contract.
context_section_description: Garland starred in three films released in 1940: Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, Strike Up the Band, and Little Nellie Kelly. In the last, she played her first adult role, a dual role of both mother and daughter. Little Nellie Kelly was purchased from George M. Cohan as a vehicle for her to display both her audience appeal and her physical appearance. The role was a challenge for her, requiring the use of an accent, her first adult kiss, and the only death scene of her career. Her co-star George Murphy regarded the kiss as embarrassing. He said it felt like "a hillbilly with a child bride".
  During this time, Garland was still in her teens when she experienced her first serious adult romance with bandleader Artie Shaw. She was deeply devoted to him and was devastated in early 1940 when he eloped with Lana Turner. Garland began a relationship with musician David Rose, and on her 18th birthday, he gave her an engagement ring. The studio intervened because, at the time, he was still married to actress and singer Martha Raye. They agreed to wait a year to allow for his divorce to become final. During that time, Garland had a brief affair with songwriter Johnny Mercer. After her break-up with Mercer, Garland and Rose were wed on July 27, 1941. "A true rarity" is what media called it. The couple agreed to a trial separation in January 1943, and divorced in 1944.
  In 1941, Garland had an abortion while pregnant with Rose's child at the insistence of her mother and the studio since the pregnancy wasn't approved. She had a second one in 1943 when she became pregnant from her affair with Tyrone Power.
  In her next film, For Me and My Gal (1942), Garland performed with Gene Kelly in his first screen appearance. She was given the "glamor treatment" in Presenting Lily Mars (1943), in which she was dressed in "grown-up" gowns. Her lightened hair was also pulled up in a stylish fashion. However, no matter how glamorous or beautiful she appeared on screen or in photographs, she was never confident in her appearance and never escaped the "girl-next-door" image that the studio had created for her.
  One of Garland's most successful films for MGM was Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), in which she introduced three standards: "The Trolley Song", "The Boy Next Door", and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". This was one of the first films in her career that gave her the opportunity to be the attractive leading lady. Vincente Minnelli was assigned to direct, and he requested that make-up artist Dorothy Ponedel be assigned to Garland. Ponedel refined her appearance in several ways, including extending and reshaping her eyebrows, changing her hairline, modifying her lip line and removing her nose discs and dental caps. She appreciated the results so much that Ponedel was written into her contract for all her remaining pictures at MGM.
  At this time, Garland had a brief affair with film director Orson Welles, who at that time was married to Rita Hayworth. The affair ended in early 1945, and they remained on good terms afterwards.
  During the filming of Meet Me in St. Louis, Garland and Minnelli had some initial conflict between them, but they entered into a relationship and married on June 15, 1945. On March 12, 1946, daughter Liza was born. The couple divorced by 1951.
  The Clock (1945) was Garland's first straight dramatic film; Robert Walker was cast in the main male role. Though the film was critically praised and earned a profit, most movie fans expected her to sing. She did not act again in a non-singing dramatic role for many years. Garland's other films of the 1940s include The Harvey Girls (1946), in which she introduced the Academy Award-winning song "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe", and Till the Clouds Roll By (1946).
caption: Garland sings "The Trolley Song" in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
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