Minnesota Music History Channel
Featured Artist
Judy Garland
Minnesota Music History Channel Featured Artist
(Biography and Photos Courtesy Wikipedia)
JUDY GARLAND
Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American singer, actress, and vaudevillian. She was renowned for her vocals and attained international stardom which continued throughout a career that spanned more than 40 years as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on concert stages.Respected for her versatility, she received a Juvenile Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award as well as Grammy Awards and a Special Tony Award.
She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the remake of A Star Is Born and for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg. She remains the youngest recipient (at 39 years of age) of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the motion picture industry.
After appearing in vaudeville with her two older sisters, Garland was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. There, she made more than two dozen films, including nine with Mickey Rooney, and 1939's The Wizard of Oz. After 15 years, she was released from the studio but gained renewed success through record-breaking concert appearances, including a return to acting, beginning with critically acclaimed performances.
Garland's birthplace in Grand Rapids, Minnesota
Despite her professional triumphs, Garland struggled immensely in her personal life, starting when she was a child. Her self-image was strongly influenced by film executives, who said she was unattractive and constantly manipulated her onscreen physical appearance. She was plagued by financial instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. She married five times, with her first four marriages ending in divorce. She also had a long battle with drugs and alcohol, which ultimately led to her death from a barbiturate overdose at the age of 47.
In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the ten greatest female stars in the history of American cinema.
Born Frances Ethel Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minnesota on June 10, 1922, Garland was the youngest child of Ethel Marion (née Milne; November 17, 1893 – January 5, 1953) and Francis Avent "Frank" Gumm (March 20, 1886 – November 17, 1935). Her parents were vaudevillians who settled in Grand Rapids to run a movie theatre that featured vaudeville acts. Garland was of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry.
Named after both her parents and baptized at a local Episcopal church, "Baby" (as she was called by her parents and sisters) shared her family's flair for song and dance. Her first appearance came at the age of two-and-a-half when she joined her two older sisters, Mary Jane "Suzy/Suzanne" Gumm (1915–1964) and Dorothy Virginia "Jimmie" Gumm (1917–1977), on the stage of her father's movie theater during a Christmas show and sang a chorus of "Jingle Bells".Accompanied by their mother on piano, The Gumm Sisters performed there for the next few years.
The Wizard of Oz
In 1938, she was cast in the main role as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939), a film based on the children's book by L. Frank Baum. In this film, she sang the song with which she would forever be identified, "Over the Rainbow." Although producers Arthur Freed and Mervyn LeRoy had wanted her from the start, studio chief Mayer tried first to borrow Shirley Temple from 20th Century Fox, but they declined. Deanna Durbin was then asked but was unavailable, resulting in Garland being cast.
Garland was initially outfitted in a blonde wig for the part, but Freed and LeRoy decided against it shortly into filming. Her blue gingham dress was chosen for its blurring effect on her figure, which made her look younger.
Shooting commenced on October 13, 1938, and was completed on March 16, 1939, with a final cost of more than US$2 million. With the conclusion of filming, MGM kept Garland busy with promotional tours and the shooting of Babes in Arms, directed by Busby Berkeley. She and Rooney were sent on a cross-country promotional tour, culminating in August 17 New York City premiere at the Capitol Theater, which included a five-show-a-day appearance schedule for the two stars.
The Wizard of Oz was a tremendous critical success.At the 1940 Academy Awards ceremony, Garland received an Academy Juvenile Award for her performances in 1939, including The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms. Following this recognition, she became one of MGM's most bankable stars.
Garland starred in three films which were 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".
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During that 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.[54] 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 breakup with Mercer, Garland and Rose were wed on July 27, 1941. "A true rarity" is what media called it. The couple agreed to undergo a trial separation in January 1943 and they divorced in 1944.
Garland was given the Hollywood "glamor treatment" for Presenting Lily Mars (1943)
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In 1941, while she was pregnant with Rose's child, Garland had an abortion at the insistence of her mother and the studio executives because the pregnancy wasn't approved of. She had a second abortion in 1943 when she became pregnant during 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 about 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, they included 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.
Around the same time, Garland had a brief affair with actor and film director, Orson Welles, who was then married to actress Rita Hayworth. Garland and Welles ended the affair in early 1945 but remained on good terms afterwards.
During the filming of Meet Me in St. Louis, Garland and Minnelli had some initial conflicts, but they entered into a relationship and they got married on June 15, 1945.[61] On March 12, 1946, daughter Liza was born.[62] The couple got divorced in 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).
During the filming of The Pirate, Garland suffered a nervous breakdown and she was placed in a private sanatorium. She was able to complete filming, but in July 1947 she made her first suicide attempt, making minor cuts to her wrist with a broken glass.[66] During this period, she spent two weeks in treatment at the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.[67] The Pirate was released in May 1948 and it was the first film which did not make a profit since Garland had starred in The Wizard of Oz. The main reasons for its failure were not only its cost, they also included the increasing expense of the shooting delays while Garland was ill, as well as the general public's unwillingness to accept her in a sophisticated film. Following her work on The Pirate, she co-starred for the first and only time with Fred Astaire (who replaced Gene Kelly after Kelly had broken his ankle) in Easter Parade (1948), which became her top-grossing film at MGM.
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Thrilled by the huge box-office receipts of Easter Parade, MGM immediately teamed Garland and Astaire in The Barkleys of Broadway. During the initial filming, Garland was taking prescription barbiturate sleeping pills along with illicitly obtained pills containing morphine. Around this time, she also developed a serious problem with alcohol. These, in combination with migraine headaches, led her to miss several shooting days in a row. After being advised by her doctor that she would only be able to work in four- to five-day increments with extended rest periods between, MGM executive Arthur Freed made the decision to suspend her on July 18, 1948. She was replaced in the film by Ginger Rogers.
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When her suspension was over, she was summoned back to work and she ultimately performed two songs as a guest in the Rodgers and Hart biopic Words and Music (1948), which was her last appearance with Mickey Rooney. Despite the all-star cast, Words and Music barely broke even at the box office. Having regained her strength, as well as some needed weight during her suspension, Garland felt much better and in the fall of 1948, she returned to MGM to replace a pregnant June Allyson for the musical film In the Good Old Summertime (1949) co-starring Van Johnson. Although she was sometimes late arriving at the studio during the making of this picture, she managed to complete it five days ahead of schedule. Her daughter Liza made her film debut at the age of two and a half at the end of the film. In the Good Old Summertime was enormously successful at the box office.[70]
Garland was then cast in the film adaptation of Annie Get Your Gun in the title role of Annie Oakley. She was nervous at the prospect of taking on a role strongly identified with Ethel Merman, anxious about appearing in an unglamorous part after breaking from juvenile parts for several years and disturbed by her treatment at the hands of director Busby Berkeley. Berkeley was severe with Garland's lack of effort, attitude and enthusiasm. She complained to Mayer, trying to have Berkeley fired from the feature. She began arriving late to the set and sometimes failed to appear. At this time, she was also undergoing electroconvulsive therapy for depression.[71][72][73] She was fired from the picture on May 10, 1949, and was replaced by Betty Hutton, who stepped in to perform all the musical routines as staged by Robert Alton.[74] Garland underwent an extensive hospital stay at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, in which she was weaned off her medication and after a while, was able to eat and sleep normally.
Garland returned to Los Angeles heavier and in the fall of 1949, she was cast opposite Gene Kelly in Summer Stock (1950). The film took six months to complete. To lose weight, Garland went back on the pills and the familiar pattern resurfaced. She began showing up late or not at all. When principal photography on Summer Stock was completed in the spring of 1950, it was decided that Garland needed an additional musical number. She agreed to do it provided the song was "Get Happy". In addition, she insisted that director Charles Walters choreograph and stage the number.
By that time, Garland had lost 15 pounds and looked more slender. "Get Happy" was the last segment of Summer Stock to be filmed. It was her final picture for MGM. When it was released in the fall of 1950, Summer Stock drew big crowds and racked up very respectable box-office receipts, but because of the costly shooting delays caused by Garland, the film posted a loss of $80,000 to the studio.[75]
Garland was cast in the film Royal Wedding with Fred Astaire after June Allyson became pregnant in 1950. She failed to report to the set on multiple occasions and the studio suspended her contract on June 17, 1950. She was replaced by Jane Powell. Reputable biographies following her death stated that after this latest dismissal, she slightly grazed her neck with a broken glass, requiring only a Band-Aid, but at the time, the public was informed that a despondent Garland had slashed her throat. "All I could see ahead was more confusion", Garland later said of this suicide attempt. "I wanted to black out the future as well as the past. I wanted to hurt myself and everyone who had hurt me." In September 1950, after 15 years with the studio, Garland and MGM parted company.
Garland was a frequent guest on Kraft Music Hall, hosted by her friend Bing Crosby. Following Garland's second suicide attempt, Crosby, knowing that she was depressed and running out of money, invited her on his radio show – the first of the new season – on October 11, 1950.
She was standing in the wings of it trembling with fear. She was almost hysterical. She said, "I cannot go out there because they're all gonna be looking to see if there are scars and it's gonna be terrible." Bing said "What's going on?" and I told him what happened and he walked out on stage and he said: "We got a friend here, she's had a little trouble recently. You probably heard about it – everything is fine now, she needs our love. She needs our support. She's here – let's give it to her, OK? Here's Judy." And she came out and that place went crazy. And she just blossomed.
— Hal Kanter, Writer for Bing
Garland made eight appearances during the 1950–51 season of The Bing Crosby – Chesterfield Show, which immediately reinvigorated her career. Soon after, she toured for four months to sellout crowds in Europe.[81]
In 1951, Garland began a four-month concert tour of Britain and Ireland, where she played to sold-out audiences throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. The successful concert tour was the first of her many comebacks, with performances centered on songs by Al Jolson and revival of vaudevillian "tradition". Garland performed complete shows as tributes to Jolson in her concerts at the London Palladium in April and at New York's Palace Theater later that year.
Garland said after the Palladium show: "I suddenly knew that this was the beginning of a new life ... Hollywood thought I was through; then came the wonderful opportunity to appear at the London Palladium, where I can truthfully say Judy Garland was reborn." Her appearances at the Palladium lasted for four weeks, where she received rave reviews and an ovation described by the Palladium manager as the loudest he had ever heard.
Garland's engagement at the Palace Theatre in Manhattan in October 1951 exceeded all previous records for the theater and for Garland and was called "one of the greatest personal triumphs in show business history".[86] Garland was honored with a Special Tony Award for her contribution to the revival of vaudeville.[
Garland divorced Minnelli that same year.[88] On June 8, 1952, she married Sidney Luft, her tour manager and producer, in Hollister, California.[89] On November 21, 1952, Garland gave birth to daughter Lorna Luft, who became an actress and singer. On March 29, 1955, she gave birth to son Joey Luft.
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Garland appeared with James Mason in the Warner Bros. film A Star Is Born (1954), the first remake of the 1937 film. She and Sidney Luft, her then-husband, produced the film through their production company, Transcona Enterprises, while Warner Bros. supplied finances, production facilities and crew.[91] Directed by George Cukor, it was a large undertaking to which she initially fully dedicated herself.
As shooting progressed, however, she began making the same pleas of illness that she had so often made during her final films at MGM. Production delays led to cost overruns and angry confrontations with Warner Bros. head Jack L. Warner. Principal photography wrapped on March 17, 1954. At Luft's suggestion, the "Born in a Trunk" medley was filmed as a showcase for her and inserted over director Cukor's objections, who feared the additional length would lead to cuts in other areas. It was completed on July 29.
Upon its world premiere on September 29, 1954, the film was met with critical and popular acclaim. Before its release, it was edited at the instruction of Jack Warner; theater operators, concerned that they were losing money because they were only able to run the film for three or four shows per day instead of five or six, pressured the studio to make additional reductions. After its first-run engagements, about 30 minutes of footage were cut, sparking outrage among critics and filmgoers. Although it was still popular, drawing huge crowds and grossing over $6 million in its first release, A Star is Born did not make back its cost and ended up losing money. As a result, the secure financial position Garland had expected from the profits did not materialize. Transcona made no more films with Warner.
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Garland was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and, in the run-up to the 27th Academy Awards, was generally expected to win for A Star Is Born. She could not attend the ceremony because she had just given birth to son Joseph Luft, so a television crew was in her hospital room with cameras and wires to broadcast her anticipated acceptance speech. The Oscar was won, however, by Grace Kelly for The Country Girl (1954). The camera crew was packing up before Kelly could even reach the stage.
Groucho Marx sent Garland a telegram after the awards ceremony, declaring her loss "the biggest robbery since Brinks".[96] Time labeled her performance as "just about the greatest one-woman show in modern movie history".
Garland won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical for the role.
Garland's films after A Star Is Born included Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) (for which she was Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated for Best Supporting Actress), the animated feature Gay Purr-ee (1962) and A Child Is Waiting (1963) with Burt Lancaster. Her final film was I Could Go On Singing (1963), co-starring Dirk Bogarde.
Garland appeared in a number of television specials beginning in 1955. The first was the 1955 debut episode of Ford Star Jubilee; this was the first full-scale color broadcast ever on CBS and was a ratings triumph, scoring a 34.8 Nielsen rating. She signed a three-year, $300,000 contract with the network. Only one additional special was broadcast in 1956, a live concert-edition of General Electric Theater, before the relationship between the Lufts and CBS broke down in a dispute over the planned format of upcoming specials.
In 1956, Garland performed for four weeks at the New Frontier Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip for a salary of $55,000 per week, making her the highest-paid entertainer to work in Las Vegas. Despite a brief bout of laryngitis, when Jerry Lewis filled in for her for one performance while she watched from a wheelchair, her performances there were so successful that her run was extended an extra week.
Later that year, she returned to the Palace Theatre, site of her two-a-day triumph. She opened in September, once again to rave reviews and popular acclaim.
In November 1959, Garland was hospitalized after she was diagnosed with acute hepatitis.[104] Over the next few weeks, several quarts of fluid were drained from her body until she was released from the hospital in January 1960, still in a weak condition. She was told by doctors that she probably had five years or less to live and that, even if she did survive, she would be a semi-invalid and would never sing again.[105] She initially felt "greatly relieved" at the diagnosis. "The pressure was off me for the first time in my life."[77] However, she recovered over the next several months and in August of that year, returned to the stage of the Palladium. She felt so warmly embraced by the British that she announced her intention to move permanently to England.
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At the beginning of 1960, Garland signed a contract with Random House to write her autobiography. The book was to be called The Judy Garland Story and to be a collaboration with Fred F. Finklehoffe. Garland was paid an advance of $35,000 and she and Finklehoffe recorded conversations about her life to be used in producing a manuscript. Garland worked on her autobiography on and off throughout the 1960s, but never completed it. Portions of her unfinished autobiography were included in the 2014 biography, Judy Garland on Judy Garland: Interviews and Encounters by Randy L. Schmidt.
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Her concert appearance at Carnegie Hall on April 23, 1961, was a considerable highlight, called by many "the greatest night in show business history". The two-record album Judy at Carnegie Hall was certified gold, charting for 95 weeks on Billboard, including 13 weeks at number one. It won four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Best Female Vocal of the Year.
In 1961, Garland and CBS settled their contract disputes with the help of her new agent, Freddie Fields, and negotiated a new round of specials. The first, titled The Judy Garland Show, aired on February 25, 1962 and featured guests Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.[112] Following this success, CBS made a $24 million offer (equivalent to $167 million in 2023 to her for a weekly television series of her own, also to be called The Judy Garland Show, which was deemed at the time in the press to be "the biggest talent deal in TV history".
Although she had said as early as 1955 that she would never do a weekly television series,[113] in the early 1960s, she was in a financially precarious situation. She was several hundred thousand dollars in debt to the Internal Revenue Service, having failed to pay taxes in 1951 and 1952 and the failure of A Star is Born meant that she received nothing from that investment.
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Following a third special, Judy Garland and Her Guests Phil Silvers and Robert Goulet, Garland's weekly series debuted September 29, 1963. The Judy Garland Show was critically praised, but for a variety of reasons (including being placed in the time slot opposite Bonanza on NBC), the show lasted only one season and was cancelled in 1964 after 26 episodes. Despite its short run, the series was nominated for four Emmy Awards, including Best Variety Series.
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During this time, Garland had a six-month affair with actor Glenn Ford. Garland's biographer Gerald Clarke, Ford's son Peter, singer Mel Tormé, and her husband Sid Luft wrote about the affair in their respective biographies.
The relationship began in 1963 while Garland was doing her television show. Ford would attend tapings of the show sitting in the front row while Garland sang. Ford is credited with giving Garland one of the more stable relationships of her later life. The affair was ended by Ford (a notorious womanizer, according to his son Peter) when he realized Garland wanted to marry him
In 1963, Garland sued Sidney Luft for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty. She also asserted that he had repeatedly struck her while he was drinking and that he had attempted to take their children from her by force.[126] She had filed for divorce from Luft on several previous occasions, even as early as 1956, but they had reconciled each time.[127]
Mickey Deans and Garland at their London wedding in March 1969, three months before her death
After her television series was canceled, Garland returned to work on the stage. She returned to the London Palladium performing with 18-year-old daughter Liza Minnelli in November 1964. The concert was also shown on the British television network ITV and it was one of her final appearances at the venue. She made guest appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show. Garland guest-hosted an episode of The Hollywood Palace with Vic Damone. She was invited back for a second episode in 1966 with Van Johnson as her guest. Problems with Garland's behavior ended her Hollywood Palace guest appearances.[128]
A 1964 tour of Australia ended badly. Garland's first two concerts in Sydney were held in the Sydney Stadium because no concert hall could accommodate the overflow crowds who wanted to see her. Both went well and received positive reviews. Her third performance, in Melbourne, started an hour late. The crowd of 7,000 was angered by her tardiness and believed that she was drunk; they booed and heckled her and she fled the stage after 45 minutes.[129] She later characterized the Melbourne crowd as "brutish".[130] Garland's Melbourne appearance gained a negative press response.[131]
Garland's tour promoter Mark Herron announced that they had married aboard a freighter off the coast of Hong Kong. However, she was not officially divorced from Luft at the time the ceremony was performed.[132] The divorce became final on May 19, 1965,[126] and she and Herron did not legally marry until November 14, 1965; they separated five months later.[133] During their divorce, Garland testified that Herron had beaten her. Herron claimed that he "only hit her in self defense".[134]
For much of her career throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, husband Sidney Luft had been her manager. However, Garland eventually parted ways with Luft professionally, signing with agents Freddie Fields and David Begelman. By the fall of 1966, Garland had also parted ways with Fields and Begelman. Fields's and Begelman's mismanagement of Garland's money, as well as their embezzlement of much of her earnings, resulted in her owing around $500,000 in total in personal debts and in debts to the IRS. The IRS placed tax liens on her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, her recording contract with Capitol Records, and any other business deals from which she could derive an income.[135]
Garland was left in a desperate situation that saw her sell her Brentwood home at a price far below its value
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. She was then cast in February 1967 in the role of Helen Lawson in Valley of the Dolls by 20th Century Fox. According to co-star Patty Duke, Garland was treated poorly by director Mark Robson on the set of Valley of the Dolls and was primarily hired to augment publicity for the film. After Garland's dismissal from the film, author Jacqueline Susann said in the 1967 television documentary Jacqueline Susann and the Valley of the Dolls, "I think Judy will always come back. She kids about making a lot of comebacks, but I think Judy has a kind of a thing where she has to get to the bottom of the rope and things have to get very, very rough for her. Then with an amazing inner strength that only comes of a certain genius, she comes back bigger than ever".
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Returning to the stage, Garland made one of her last U.S. appearances at New York's Palace Theatre in July 1967, a 27-show stand, performing with her children Lorna and Joey Luft. She wore a sequined pantsuit on stage for this tour; the pantsuit was part of the original wardrobe for her character in Valley of the Dolls. Garland earned more than $200,000 from her final run at New York's Palace Theatre from her 75% share of the profits generated by her engagement there. On closing night at the Palace, federal tax agents seized the majority of her earnings.
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By early 1969, Garland's health had deteriorated. She performed in London at the Talk of the Town nightclub for a five-week run in which she was paid £2,500 per week, and made her last concert appearance in Copenhagen during March 1969.
After her divorce from Herron had been finalized on February 11, she married her fifth and final husband, nightclub manager Mickey Deans, at Chelsea Register Office, London, on March 15.
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On June 22, 1969, Garland was found dead in the bathroom of her rented house in Cadogan Lane, Belgravia, London. At the inquest, Coroner Gavin Thurston stated that the cause of death was "an incautious self-overdosage" of barbiturates; her blood contained the equivalent of ten 1.5-grain (97 mg) Seconal capsules. Thurston stressed that the overdose had been unintentional and no evidence suggested that she had intended to kill herself. Garland's autopsy showed no inflammation of her stomach lining and no drug residue in her stomach, which indicated that the drug had been ingested over a long period of time, rather than in a single dose.
Her death certificate stated that her death was "accidental". Supporting the accidental cause, Garland's physician noted that a prescription of 25 barbiturate pills was found by her bedside half-empty and another bottle of 100 barbiturate pills was still unopened.
A British specialist who had attended Garland's autopsy stated that she had nevertheless been living on borrowed time owing to cirrhosis, although a second autopsy conducted later reported no evidence of alcoholism or cirrhosis.[147][148] Her Wizard of Oz co-star Ray Bolger commented at her funeral, "She just plain wore out."
After Garland's body had been embalmed and clothed in the same gray, silk gown she wore at her wedding to Deans, Deans traveled with her remains to New York City on June 26, 1969, where an estimated 20,000 people lined up to pay their respects at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan, which remained open all night long to accommodate the overflowing crowd.
On June 27, 1969, James Mason gave a eulogy at the funeral, an Episcopal service led by the Rev. Peter Delaney of St Marylebone Parish Church, London, who had officiated at her marriage to Deans, three months earlier. "Judy's great gift", Mason said in his eulogy, "was that she could wring tears out of hearts of rock... She gave so richly and so generously, that there was no currency in which to repay her." The public and press were barred. She was interred in a crypt in the community mausoleum at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York, a town 24 miles (39 km) north of midtown Manhattan.
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Upon Garland's death, despite having earned millions during her career, her estate came to US$40,000 (equivalent to $230,000 in 2021). Years of criminal mismanagement of her financial affairs by her representatives and staff along with her generosity toward her family and various causes resulted in her poor financial situation at the end of her life. In her last will, signed and sealed in early 1961, Garland made many generous bequests that could not be fulfilled because her estate had been in debt for many years. Her daughter, Liza Minnelli, worked to pay off her mother's debts with the help of family friend Frank Sinatra.
For full biography go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Garland