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JUDY GARLAND
1922�1969
Judy Garland never had a problem taking her audience wherever she
wanted them to go; this was her special magic from the first moment
that she stepped on stage. In the winter of 1939, she starred in
her seventh film, �The Wizard of Oz,� and recorded what would become
her signature song, �Over the Rainbow.� That same year she pressed
her hand and shoe prints into the concrete in the forecourt of Grauman�s
Chinese Theater, the landmark on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; an
international star at 17.
However, the price and pressures of such fame were high. Her studio contract
required her to maintain a certain physical appearance�if she gained weight,
she could be suspended without pay. She was prescribed antidepressants and amphetamines
to control her appetite and barbiturates to help her sleep.
As Garland became more and more addicted to the drugs, her friends noticed
alarming differences; a gaunt look from severe weight loss and dark-blue circles
under her eyes. Garland was also introduced to psychoanalysis. At her first
interview with psychiatrist Karl Menninger, he told her that �she had problems;
they could become serious; she needed help��immediately. Garland started seeing
Menninger, his associate, Ernst Simmel, and, later, Frederick Hacker.
As the drugs took a progressively greater hold of her life, her behavior on
the film set became erratic, disruptive and demoralizing to others in the crew.
As later medical evidence showed, the drugs were gradually destroying her physically.
Gerald Frank, in his book Judy, revealed that with no relief in sight,
by the end of the film �The Pirate,� Garland was �completely and desperately
exhausted.� �She took the medication to wipe out her anxieties, and then when
she attempted to do without pills � the result was a physical pain and a sense
of suffocation that became so intense that she had to take the pills again.�
Now, �her cure became her illness which became her cure which became her illness.�
Under a psychiatrist�s orders, she began the first of many stays in psychiatric
hospitals. In 1949, not yet 27 years old, she was subjected to the violence
and degradation of electroshock. In the late 1950s, as Garland�s druginduced
health problems became critical, she was admitted to the hospital with her liver
and spleen massively swollen and her whole body poisoned with fluids. Seven
weeks later she checked out to make her third and final stage comeback. This
time she was prescribed Valium, Thorazine and, at one time, 40 Ritalin pills
a day.
Assertions that the source of Garland�s troubles was an inherent artistic neurosis
(or similar psychobabble) came only from arrogant psychiatrists or psychoanalysts
with purses to fill. In fact, she had formed her own firm opinion of her treating
psychiatrists, as reported by Frank: �She was abysmally discouraged; her years
of analysis had not helped her � she had no respect for psychiatrists, she had
seen more than a dozen of them and they had all failed her.�
It was a realization that came too late. On June 15, 1969, Garland performed
on stage for the last time at the Half Note Club in Greenwich Village. Six days
later she died of a psychiatric drug overdose in a London hotel.
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