Judy Garland, or Frances Ethel Gumm, as she was then named, was born to Frank and Ethel Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, on June 10, 1922. Residence and enterprise blurred collectively within the Gumm household, who had been vaudeville performers and recruited their three daughters to affix the act as quickly as they had been sufficiently old to carry a tune. Frances, the youngest, was not but three years outdated when she made her debut. “The roar of the gang—that great, great sound—is one thing I’ve been inhaling since I used to be two years outdated,” the Hollywood legend as soon as mentioned.
In 1926, the household moved to California to pursue additional success in showbiz. The Gumm Sisters, as their trio was recognized, had solely not too long ago modified their names when the one who would go on to fill Dorothy’s sparkly crimson sneakers was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1935. On the age of 13, Judy Garland was born once more. However just some weeks later, her father immediately died of meningitis. The achievement, so intently punctuated by an important loss, could be emblematic of Garland’s life—one filled with the excessive highs and low lows that got here with studio stardom.
In her moments off the studio lot, Garland lived in all kinds of Los Angeles homes, in addition to in New York and in London. She shared the properties with a sequence of 5 husbands and three kids, two of whom would observe the household custom and change into stars in their very own proper. Under, we’re exploring the film icon’s dwelling life in pictures.
A star is born
Searching for a contemporary begin following the tragedy of Frank’s demise, Ethel and her daughters moved right into a Twenties Tudor on a nook lot in Los Angeles’s Hancock Park neighborhood in early 1936, in keeping with biographer Scott Schechter in hid ebook Judy Garland: The Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Legend. Right here, a 16-year-old Garland poses with two of her canine in entrance of the house in 1938, the identical yr that manufacturing started on the movie that will cement her as a bonafide star: The Wizard of Oz.
