Judy Garland’s style might be most equated with ruby slippers, but her time as an actress (and not Dorothy) was marked by kitten heels, elegant updos, feminine florals, and at times, feather boas.
In honor of the 80th anniversary The Wizard of Oz’s US-wide release on Sunday, we've put together a gallery of Garland's best looks - which prove the star is still as classic and covetable as ever.
With a new biopic starring Renee Zellweger coming up, Garland continues to inspire stars on the carpet today. Lady Gaga recently played homage to the star's 1954 look in A Star is Born when she wore a similar strapless periwinkle gown on the 2019 Golden Globes red carpet.
But Garland's life was also far from the wholesome Hollywood vision projected of her on screen.
Born Frances Ethel Gumm, Garland and her two sisters, Mary Jane and Dorothy, performed as “The Gumm Sisters.” She made her stage debut at just two-years-old.
Garland then found fame as a teen star but faced many obstacles - from early body shaming to a problem with prescription pills. MGM, the studio she was signed to, forced Garland to go on restrictive diets from a young age, encouraging her to take pills to sleep and ultimately lose weight.
"They'd give us pep pills. Then they'd take us to the studio hospital and knock us cold with sleeping pills... after four hours they'd wake us up and give us the pep pills again," she later wrote. She used the amphetamines encouraged by the studio as diet pills.
The Wizard of Oz era
Garland signed with MGM at only 13-years-old. By the time she turned 18, she was making $150,000 per movie. In 1939 at 17, she famously starred as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, where she won an Oscar and became best known for singing “Over the Rainbow." Shirley Temple was the original choice for the lead role.
Filming The Wizard of Oz was reportedly tough on Garland. She was forced to lose weight for the role and the gingham dress she wore was cut to make her look younger. In a memoir published by her ex-husband, producer Sid Luft, he wrote that the actors who played the munchkins “would make Judy’s life miserable on set by putting their hands under her dress... The men were 40 or more years old
She was one of the most famous stars in the world but experienced horrible stage fright during this period. "All I wanted to do was eat and hide...When I worked, I suffered agonies of stage fright. People had literally to push me out on stage," she told Life in 1961.
Her marriage to Luft also proved difficult. At their 1965 divorce hearing, Garland said that Luft “struck me many times... he did a lot of drinking."
Garland famously made more than 35 films, including Meet Me in St. Louis and A Star is Born. In an unexpected turn of events, Garland did not win an Oscar for her performance in A Star is Born. Instead, fellow fashion icon Grace Kelly won for her role in The Country Girl.
Like many child stars, Garland had difficulty branching out into more adult roles. “Ever since The Wizard of Oz I’ve been accused of being twelve years old. You should see some of the disappointed looks I get, when people lay eyes on me in person. They expect someone in gingham, with braids, to come out singing ‘Over the Rainbow.’ And out I come, instead. I think some of them are pretty angry with me, too, for not wearing braids, and not dressing like Dorothy, and not being eleven or twelve. They’ve written in about it,” she told James Reid in 1940.
When she was 18 Garland started seeing a psychiatrist, which she was open about. "No wonder I was strange. Imagine whipping out of bed, dashing over to the doctor's office, lying down on a torn leather couch, telling my troubles to an old man who couldn't hear, who answered with an accent I couldn't understand, and then dashing to Metro to make movie love to Mickey Rooney,” she once wrote about her experiences.
She was pressurized for her weight throughout her life.
"Unlike other actresses, she could not successfully camouflage extra weight, especially because she was dancing and singing in revealing costumes. Just 4 feet 11½ inches, she could be underweight and still appear heavy or out of proportion onscreen," her ex-husband Sidney Luft wrote.
At 37, Garland's lifelong addiction to alcohol and pills began to take its toll. She ultimately died of an accidental overdose only 10 years later.
Her legacy lives on with Liza and Lorna
Garland left three children, Lorna and Joseph Luft and Liza Minnelli. Lorna and Liza are both noted performers who are continuing her iconic legacy.
“I do think that my mother was a victim of the studio system,” Luft told Australia’s Studio 10. “But it also gave her the ability to channel her talent to all of us [as an audience]. It was a real double-edged sword.”
But Liza Minnelli is less than happy about the upcoming biopic on her mother. “I have never met nor spoken to Renee Zellweger... I don’t know how these stories get started [she said of a reported feud] but I do not approve nor sanction the upcoming film about Judy Garland in any way. Any reports to the contrary are 100% Fiction,” she wrote on her official Facebook page.
At her funeral, her co-star James Mason famously said, "Judy's great gift was that she could wring tears out of hearts of rock."
