Like Marlene Dietrich, whose move from the screen to the concert hall paralleled her own, Garland’s art and life were tightly interwoven, but, unlike Dietrich, Garland was never in control of her career. Initially a cheerful innocent in a series of musicals with fellow child star Mickey Rooney and at the end of her screen career almost a parody of herself, Garland throughout her films, and later in concert, sang with moving intensity. Her vocal style was simple but affecting, the catch and her vibrato emphasized by her forever outstretched hand all denoting her commitment to the material she sang.

   Her best performances included ‘Over the Rainbow’, the song forever associated with her from The Wizard of Oz, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, which she sings to comfort Margaret O’Brien in Meet Me in St. Louis, and ‘The Man That Got Away’ from A Star Is Born. On these, her passion helped forge an unusually intense relationship with her audience.
   Garland was the daughter of vaudeville parents and made her stage debut at the age of three. Paired with her two elder sisters, she performed as the Gumm Sisters, in 1936, now renamed Garland at the suggestion of George Jessel, she made her first recording ‘Swing Mr. Charlie’ and signed with MGM. Her screen debut, Every Sunday in which she co-starred with Deanna Durbin, was not a success but her performance of ‘Dear Mr. Gable’ was one of the highlights of Broadway Melody of 1937. The verse was written by producer and lyricist Roger Edens, who became a close musical associate of Garland’s he played piano when she was screen-tested by MGM and later co-wrote ‘Born in a Trunk’ for her. By now a juvenile star, Garland was teamed with Rooney for nine films, commencing with 'Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry'.
   In 1939, despite studio opposition, she was chosen by producer Arthur Freed for the part of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, one of the most engaging fantasies ever produced in Hollywood. Following her marriage to orchestra leader David Rose in 1941, she made a series of backstage musicals, including Strike Up the Band, Babes on Broadway, Ziegfeld Girl and Presenting Lily Mars, before she was teamed with director Vincente Minnelli for four superior films. With Minnelli she made, Meet Me in St. Louis, in which she was both brash ‘The Trolley Song’ and melancholic ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, The Clock, the amiable extravaganza Ziegfeld Follies and the witty The Pirate in which she sang Cole Porter’s triumphant ‘Be a Clown’ with Gene Kelly. Though these and subsequent films, including Easter Parade in which she sang ‘We’re a Couple of Swells’ with Fred Astaire, were successes, Garland by now addicted to pills to keep her weight down, to sleep and to keep awake earned the reputation of a temperamental star.
   After she broke down during the filming of Annie Get Your Gun and was replaced by Betty Hutton, she was fired by MGM in 1950, and in 1951 she divorced Minnelli. In the summer of 1951, Garland made a triumphant appearance at the London Palladium which initiated a series of successful highly emotional concert tours that reached its climax at Carnegie Hall in 1961. The recording of that performance, the double-album Judy at Carnegie Hall, sold over two million copies and was the most successful of her numerous live albums. Before then she had returned to the screen for A Star Is Born the best of the films that echoed her life, and later appeared in three minor films, including I Could Go on Singing. She returned to the concert stage in the mid-sixties, but her appearances became more erratic. Her death was officially recorded as the result of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, but as Ray Bolger put it at her funeral, ‘She just plain wore out’.