15 Shocking Facts About Judy Garland

Judy started performing at age two and was a Hollywood star as a teenager. According to biographers, she was given amphetamines to keep her energetic on set and sleeping pills to help her sleep at night. By her teens she was already dependent on pills, an addiction that would haunt her all her life.

The studio saw Judy as a product. She was reportedly called an 'ugly duckling' compared to other stars and pressured to lose weight, with a strict diet reportedly consisting of chicken soup, black coffee and cigarettes. She wore caps on her teeth and a nose piece to change her look. Her insecurity kept her dependent.

Judy was 16 when she played her iconic role as Dorothy, but the shoot was exhausting. She was put on strict diets and worked long days under hot lights, and in her later accounts she described the pills and pressure that came with those years.

In later interviews and in accounts from her unfinished memoir, Judy described being sexually harassed by powerful men in Hollywood as a teenager. In those days, young actresses who complained risked their careers, so she stayed silent at the time.

At 19, Judy married composer David Rose, but the marriage was doomed. When she became pregnant, her mother and the studio reportedly pushed her to have an abortion so as not to harm her career. She was deeply unhappy, her pill dependency worsened, and they soon divorced.

After more than a dozen years of successful films, Judy was fired by MGM in 1950. She was mentally and physically exhausted and often missed shooting days, and the studio no longer wanted to work with her. Hollywood discarded her, and she had to fight for her own comeback.

Judy may have been done with MGM, but audiences weren't done with her. She began giving concerts worldwide that moved fans to tears. Her 1961 Carnegie Hall concert became legendary, and the live album won multiple Grammys. She also earned an Oscar nomination for A Star Is Born (1954). But behind the scenes she kept struggling with addiction and money problems.

In 1952 Judy married Sid Luft, who became her manager and helped rebuild her career. But her finances were a mess for years: managers and advisers mishandled her money, and she ended up owing large sums in back taxes.

Despite decades of success, Judy was deep in debt by her forties. She was reportedly locked out of hotels for unpaid bills and had to keep performing just to survive, despite her immense talent.

Even as her body was failing, she had to keep performing to earn money. She suffered from serious health problems, including liver damage, and was exhausted by years of medication and alcohol. Fans heard her voice deteriorate, but stopping wasn't an option.

Judy's daughter, Liza Minnelli, became a film and music icon herself, famous for Cabaret (1972), which won her an Oscar. But she also faced her own battles with addiction and health problems, and the parallels with her mother's life are hard to miss.

Judy married her fifth husband, Mickey Deans, just months before her death. The marriage was turbulent, and questions were later raised about whether enough was done to keep her medication use in check.

On 22 June 1969, Judy Garland was found dead in the bathroom of her rented home in London. The coroner ruled it an accidental overdose of barbiturates, the tragic result of years of dependency. She was just 47.

When Judy died, around 20,000 people lined up in New York to pay their respects. Her impact was undeniable, but her life remains one of the most tragic in Hollywood history.