Hans Price made a significant addition to Weston town hall

Hans Price (1835–1912) was the architect responsible for much of the development of Weston-super-Mare, in North Somerset, England, during the Victorian era.^[1]

Life[link]

Hans Fowler Price was born in Langford, Somerset. He studied under Thomas Barry in Liverpool. By the time that he married Jane Baker in 1862 he had already established his own architectural practice in Weston-super-Mare.

Jane's father was the solicitor to the Smyth Pigott family who were major landowners in the town. Price used these connections to build his business and his personal standing. He spent time as a Town Commissioner, a director of the Gaslight Company, and on many other boards and committees.

Style[link]

Queens Road, which leads up to the Town Quarry

Entrance aedicule to the Mercury Office incorporating classical and eclectic stylistic elements based on the triumphal arch, 1885

Price was an eclectic architect who successfully mixed styles such as Classical, Gothic, Moorish and Flemish in different buildings, his works invariably used materials characteristic of the area. Grey Mendip limestone from local quarries formed the walls, generally as squared rubble blocks. These were decorated with pale yellow Bath Stone quoins and details, and roofed with Welsh slate shipped across the River Severn or tiles produced at the Royal Pottery, Weston-super-Mare. Both domestic and public buildings of this description are familiar in Weston-super-Mare, Clevedon, and elsewhere in the area, having been built from the 1840s through to the 1900s. Many of these were designed by other architects and builders who were influenced by Price's work.

Although rows of Price's houses have a standardised look, the extensive use of individual details in areas such as gables and windows mean that no two adjacent buildings look the same, although individual details were often repeated further down the road.

Works[link]

Using his family connections, Price was responsible for developing much of the housing on Worlebury Hill to the north of the developing Weston-super-Mare town centre. Many buildings in Church Road, Grove Park Road, Cecil Road, South Road and other roads in the district were designed in his offices.

Public buildings designed by Hans Price include:

Weston-super-Mare[link]

Wooler Road, building at forefront was originally part of the nearby hospital

Wadham Street Baptist Church, now The Blakehay Theatre

• Wadham Street Baptist Church (1862). Situated in the oldest part of the town, this church was built using parts of the first public building in Weston-super-Mare that had been on the same site. It now houses the Blakehay Theatre.^[2]
• Hospital (1865). Later becoming the dispensary for an expanded hospital in Alfred Street, this building has been converted into flats and is known as Hans Price House.
• Toll House and Piermaster's House (1867) and Birnbeck Pierhead buildings (1897). The pier links Worlebury Hill and Birnbeck island at the northern limit of the sea front. The building is currently derelict and, as is the pier itself, in need of being found a new sustainable use that will allow its restoration.^[3]
• Bristol Road Baptist Church (1866). This church is built in pink limestone. It serves the upper class housing development on Worlebury Hill and is situated just above The Boulevard.
• Sanatorium (1871). Situated in Uphill Road North at the south end of the beach, the Royal Hospital has since been converted into flats as part of the Royal Sands housing development. The Hans Price-designed building is now known as Royal Court^[4]
• The Boulevard (1874–81). Price built piecemeal much of this street including his own office (1874), Church Institute (1881).
• Masonic Lodge of St Kew (1881 – now the Constitutional Club),^[5]... and the Weston Mercury newspaper office (1885).^[6]
• Somerset House (1897-9).This terrace of shops occupies the east side of the northern section of the High Street. The central section once housed a market hall but this was destroyed by fire in the 1960s and was replaced by The Playhouse theatre.^[7]
• The School of Science and Art (1892). In Lower Church Road. For a time home to the Art Department of Weston College. The buillding now stands empty and its future is uncertain.^[8]
• Town Hall (1897). Hans Price was responsible for the extension of an earlier Town Hall in Walliscote Road.^[9]
• The Board Schools (1897). Now Walliscote School, separate boys' and girls' schools were built on a shared site close to the Town Hall.
• Locking Road Schools. This was the Walliscote Senior School for many years but has now been converted to flats.
• Public Library (1899). A rare building that makes extensive use of red brick. It is situated at the eastern end of The Boulevard.
• Weston-super-Mare Gaslight Company (1912). The workshops for the gas company in Burlington Street now houses the Weston-super-Mare Museum.

• 

  Gaslight Company

• 

  Locking Road School

• 

  Public Library

• 

  Walliscote School

• 

  Town Hall

• 

  School of Science and Art

• 

  Somerset House

• 

  Weston Mercury Office

• 

  Lodge of St Kew

• 

  Hans Price House stands on the corner of Hans Price Close

• 

  The Muses above the Library

• 

  Church Institute

• 

  Sanatorium

• 

  Old Pier Toll House

• 

  Bristol Road

• 

  Hospital Dispensary

Elsewhere[link]

The toll house on Clevedon Pier

• The Toll House, Clevedon Pier.^[10]
• The Royal Pier Hotel, Clevedon.^[11]
• Town Market Hall, Clevedon.^[12]

Legacy[link]

An art gallery in Weston College called the Hans Price Gallery was housed in the former School of Science and Art, a building that was designed by Price. The old Weston-super-Mare Hospital dispensary has been named Hans Price House and stands on the corner of Hans Price Close. In 2011, it was announced that Wyvern Community School in Weston-super-Mare was to receive academy funding of £14 million and be renamed to Hans Price Academy.^[13]

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2011)

Vincent Price
from the trailer for the film Laura (1944)
Born	(1911-05-27)May 27, 1911 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Died	October 25, 1993(1993-10-25) (aged 82) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1935–93
Spouse	Edith Barrett (1938–48) Mary Grant Price (1949–73) Coral Browne (1974–91; her death)

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic performances in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.

Early life and career[link]

Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, Sr., who was the president of the National Candy Company.^[1][2] His grandfather, Vincent Clarence Price, invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder," the first cream of tartar baking powder, and secured the family's fortune.^[3]

Price attended St. Louis Country Day School. He was further educated at Yale in art history and fine art. He was a member of the Courtauld Institute, London. He became interested in the theatre during the 1930s, appearing professionally on stage for the first time in 1935.

Career[link]

As Mr. Manningham in Angel Street, in which he had a three-year run, photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1942.

He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith, Jr. in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944) as well as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).

Price's first venture into the horror genre was in the 1939 Boris Karloff film Tower of London. The following year he portrayed the title character in the film The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a vocal cameo at the end of the 1948 horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein).

In 1946 Price reunited with Tierney in two notable films, Dragonwyck and Leave Her to Heaven. There were also many villainous roles in film noir thrillers like The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948), and The Bribe (1949) with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Charles Laughton. His first starring role was as conman James Addison Reavis in the 1950 biopic The Baron of Arizona. He also did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar. He was active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in The Saint that ran from 1943 to 1951.

In the 1950s, he moved into horror films, with a role in House of Wax (1953), the first 3-D film to land in the year's top ten at the North American box office, then The Mad Magician (1954), and then the monster movie The Fly (1958) and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959). Price also starred in the original House on Haunted Hill (1959) as the eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren. He played Dr. Warren Chapin, in The Tingler, a 1959 horror-thriller film by the American producer and director William Castle. Price also appeared to great effect in the radio drama Three Skeleton Key, the story of an island lighthouse besieged by an army of rats. He first performed the work in 1950 on Escape and returned to it in 1956 and 1958 for Suspense.^[4]

Outside of the horror genre, Price played Baka (the master builder) in The Ten Commandments. In the 1955–1956 television season he appeared three times as Rabbi Gershom Seixos in the ABC anthology series, Crossroads, a study of clergymen from different denominations. About this time he also appeared on NBC's The Martha Raye Show.

1960s[link]

In the 1960s, Price had a number of low-budget successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP) including the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1965). He starred in The Last Man on Earth (1964), the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. In 1968 Price portrayed witchhunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General^[5] (released in the US as The Conqueror Worm). He starred in comedy films, notably Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and its sequel Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966). In 1968 he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day opposite Patricia Routledge.

Price often spoke of his pleasure at playing Egghead in the Batman television series. One of his co-stars, Yvonne Craig (Batgirl), said Price was her favorite villain in the series. In an often-repeated anecdote from the set of Batman, Price, after a take was printed, started throwing eggs at series stars Adam West and Burt Ward, and when asked to stop, replied, "With a full artillery? Not a chance!", causing an eggfight to erupt on the soundstage. This incident is reenacted in the behind-the-scenes telefilm Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt. In the 1960s, he began his role as a guest on the game show Hollywood Squares, even becoming a semi-regular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980.^[6] He was known for usually making fun of Rose Marie's age, and using his famous voice to answer questions in a playfully menacing tone.

Later career[link]

During the early 1970s, Price hosted and starred in BBC Radio's horror and mystery series The Price of Fear. Price accepted a cameo part in the Canadian children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario, on the local television station CHCH. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the show was to recite poems about the show's various characters, sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes.^[7] He appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), and Theatre of Blood (1973), in which he portrayed a pair of campy serial killers. That same year Price appeared as himself in Mooch Goes to Hollywood, a film written by Jim Backus. Price recorded dramatic readings of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.

Price greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture^[8]. Price's voiceover is heard on Alice Cooper's first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare from 1975, and he also appeared in the corresponding TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare. He starred for a year in the early 1970s in a syndicated daily radio program, Tales of the Unexplained. He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy showcasing his art expertise and in a 1972 episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archaeologist. In October 1976, Price appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show.

In the summer of 1977, Price began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights. Written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, the play is set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. The original tour of the play was a success in every city that it played, except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed it at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado, on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. Price would eventually perform the play worldwide. In her biography of her father, Victoria Price stated that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was the best acting that he ever performed.^[3] In the spring of 1979, Price starred with his wife Coral Browne in the short-lived CBS TV series Time Express.

	Vincent Price – "Thriller" noicon excerpt from the voiceover session for the 1982 album.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, Tim Burton's six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price. That same year, he performed a sinister monologue on the title track of Michael Jackson's Thriller album. A longer version of the rap, sans the music, along with some conversation can be heard on Jackson's 2001 remastered reissue of the Thriller album. Part of the extended version can be heard on the Thriller 25 album, released in 2008. Price appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Ruddigore (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple). In 1983 Price played the Sinister Man in the British spoof horror film Bloodbath at the House of Death starring Kenny Everett, and he also appeared in the film House of the Long Shadows, which teamed him with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine. While Price had worked with each one of them at least once in the prior decade, this was the first teaming of all of them together. One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective in 1986.^[9]

From 1981 to 1989, he hosted the PBS television series Mystery! In 1985, he provided voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the mysterious Vincent Van Ghoul, who aided Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo, and the gang in recapturing 13 evil demons. During this time (1985–1989), he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser. In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and the narrator for "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers". In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August, a story of two sisters living in Maine, facing the end of their days. In 1989, Price was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990).

A witty raconteur, Price was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where he once demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher. Price was a noted gourmet cook and art collector. He also authored several cookbooks and hosted a cookery TV show, Cooking Pricewise.

From 1962 to 1971, Sears-Roebuck offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 pieces of fine art to the general public. Price selected and commissioned works for the collection, including works by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí,^[10] and Nate Dunn.^[11]

Personal life[link]

Price was married three times and fathered a son, Vincent Barrett Price, with his first wife, former actress Edith Barrett. Price and his second wife, Mary Grant Price, donated hundreds of works of art and a large amount of money to East Los Angeles College in the early 1960s in order to endow the Vincent and Mary Price Gallery there. The Vincent Price Art Museum was built to house art works and present exhibits. Their daughter, Mary Victoria Price, was born in 1962. Price's last marriage was to the Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). He converted to Catholicism to marry her, and she became a U.S. citizen for him.

One example of his outspoken political action came when he concluded an episode of The Saint titled "Author of Murder",^[12] which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950.^[13] While concluding the episode, Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison and stated that Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies.^[14] Price was later appointed under the Eisenhower Adminstration and his remarks were, "which is kind of a surprise since I am a Democrat^[15]."

Death[link]

Price was a lifelong smoker. He suffered from emphysema and Parkinson's disease; his symptoms were especially severe during the filming of Edward Scissorhands, making it necessary to cut his filming schedule short.

His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery!, as his condition was becoming noticeable on-screen.^{[citation needed]} He died of lung cancer on October 25, 1993, at UCLA Medical Center at the age of 82. He was cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu, California.^[16]

Legacy[link]

In 1951, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Price donated some 90 pieces from his own collection to East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, thus establishing the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the U.S. The collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of $5 million.^[17]

The A&E Network aired an episode of Biography the night following his death, highlighting Price's horror film career, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E produced its updated episode, a show titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price (Citadel Press, 1995). In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.^{[citation needed]}

Price was an Honorary Board Member, and strong supporter until his death, of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum located in Bristol, Connecticut. The museum features detailed life-size wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Masque of the Red Death.^[18] A black box theater at Price's alma mater, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, is named after him.

Director Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who is obsessed with the grim and macabre. It is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on Sesame Street. He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price even had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws. The October 2005 episode of the Channel 101 series Yacht Rock featured comedian James Adomian as Vincent Price during the recording of Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch where Vincent Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s and '60s. Other cast members who have played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season 10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season).

In 1999, a frank and detailed biography written by his daughter, Victoria Price, about her father was published by St. Martin's Press. In late May 2011, an event was held by the organization Cinema St. Louis to celebrate what would have been Price's 100th Birthday.^[19] It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.^[20][21]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Price, Vincent, I Like What I Know – A Visual Autobiography, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, copyright 1959.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Vincent Price

• Vincent Price at the Internet Movie Database
• Vincent Price at the Internet Broadway Database
• Vincent Price at AllRovi
• Vincent Price at TV Tropes
• Vincent Price Gallery
• St. Louis Walk of Fame
• Profile @ Turner Classic Movies
• Vincent Price Papers catalog
• Vincent Price at Virtual History
• Three Skeleton Key on Escape: March 17, 1950. Radio drama starring Vincent Price.

Judy Garland
c. 1940
Born	Frances Ethel Gumm (1922-06-10)June 10, 1922 Grand Rapids, Minnesota
Died	June 22, 1969(1969-06-22) (aged 47) Chelsea, London, England
Cause of death	Barbiturate overdose
Resting place	Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York
Nationality	American
Other names	Judy Garland
Occupation	Singer, actress, vaudevillian
Years active	1924-1969 as a singer 1929-1967 as an actress
Spouse	David Rose (m. 1941-1944; divorced) Vincente Minnelli (m. 1945-1951; divorced) Sidney Luft (m. 1952-1965; divorced) Mark Herron (m. 1965-1967; divorced) Mickey Deans (m. 1969, her death)
Children	Liza Minnelli Lorna Luft Joey Luft
Awards	List of awards and honours

Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress, singer and vaudevillian. Renowned for her contralto voice, she attained international stardom through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage.^[1] 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. At 39 years of age, she remains the youngest recipient 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 the 1939 film with which she would be most identified, 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.

Despite her professional triumphs, Garland battled personal problems throughout her life. Insecure about her appearance, her feelings were compounded by film executives who told her she was unattractive and manipulated her on-screen 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 had a long struggle with alcohol and drug use during most of her career, dying of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 47, leaving children Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft, and Joey Luft.

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.^[2]

Early life[link]

Garland's birthplace in Grand Rapids, Minnesota

Born Frances Ethel Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, 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's ancestry on both sides of her family can be traced back to the early colonial days of the United States. Her father was descended from the Marable family of Virginia, her grandfather from a Milne ancestry from Aberdeen, Scotland^[3] and her maternal grandmother from a Patrick Fitzpatrick, who emigrated to America in the 1770s from Smithtown, County Meath, Ireland.^[4]

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".^[5] Accompanied by their mother on piano, The Gumm Sisters performed there for the next few years.

Following rumors that Frank Gumm had made sexual advances toward male ushers, the family relocated to Lancaster, California in June 1926.^[6] Frank purchased and operated another theater in Lancaster, and Ethel, acting as their manager, began working to get her daughters into motion pictures.

Early career[link]

The Gumm Sisters[link]

The Gumm Sisters, AKA The Garland Sisters, circa 1935, from left to right: Mary Jane, Frances Ethel (Judy Garland) and Dorothy Virginia Gumm.

In 1928, The Gumm Sisters enrolled in a dance school run by Ethel Meglin, proprietress of the Meglin Kiddies dance troupe. They appeared with the troupe at its annual Christmas show.^[7] It was through the Meglin Kiddies that they made their film debut, in a 1929 short subject called The Big Revue. This was followed by appearances in two Vitaphone shorts the following year, A Holiday in Storyland (featuring Garland's first on-screen solo) and The Wedding of Jack and Jill. They next appeared together in Bubbles. Their final on-screen appearance came in 1935, in another short entitled La Fiesta de Santa Barbara.^[8]

In 1934, the trio, who by then had been touring the vaudeville circuit as "The Gumm Sisters" for many years, performed in Chicago at the Oriental Theater with George Jessel. He encouraged the group to choose a more appealing name after "Gumm" was met with laughter from the audience. According to theatrical legend, their act was once erroneously billed at a Chicago theater as "The Glum Sisters".^[9]

Several stories persist regarding the origin of the name "Garland". One is that it was originated by Jessel after Carole Lombard's character Lily Garland in the film Twentieth Century which was then playing at the Oriental; another is that the girls chose the surname after drama critic Robert Garland.^[10] Garland's daughter, Lorna Luft, stated that her mother selected the name when Jessel announced that the trio "looked prettier than a garland of flowers".^[11] Another variation surfaced when he was a guest on Garland's television show in 1963. He claimed that he had sent actress Judith Anderson a telegram containing the word "garland," and it stuck in his mind.^[12]

By late 1934 the Gumm Sisters had changed their name to the Garland Sisters.^[13] Frances changed her name to "Judy" soon after, inspired by a popular Hoagy Carmichael song.^[14] By August 1935 they were broken up when Suzanne Garland flew to Reno, Nevada and married musician Lee Kahn, a member of the Jimmy Davis orchestra playing at Cal-Neva Lodge, Lake Tahoe.^[15]

Signed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer[link]

Garland with Mickey Rooney in Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)

In 1935, Garland was signed to a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, supposedly without a screen test, though she had made a test for the studio several months earlier. It did not know what to do with her, as at age 13 she was older than the traditional child star but too young for adult roles. Her physical appearance created a dilemma for MGM. At only 4 feet 11.5 inches (151.1 cm), her "nice" or "girl next door" looks did not exemplify the more glamorous persona required of leading ladies of the time. She was self-conscious and anxious about her appearance. "'Judy went to school at Metro with Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, real beauties,' said Charles Walters, who directed her in a number of films. 'Judy was the big money-maker at the time, a big success, but she was the ugly duckling ...I think it had a very damaging effect on her emotionally for a long time. I think it lasted forever, really.'"^[16] Her insecurity was exacerbated by the attitude of studio chief Louis B. Mayer, who referred to her as his "little hunchback".^[17] During her early years at the studio, she was photographed and dressed in plain garments or frilly juvenile gowns and costumes to match the "girl next door" image that was created for her. She was made to wear removable caps on her teeth and rubberized disks to reshape her nose.^[18]

She performed at various studio functions and was eventually cast opposite Deanna Durbin in the musical short Every Sunday. The film contrasted her alto vocal range^[19] and swing style with Durbin's operatic soprano and served as an extended screen test for the pair, as studio executives were questioning the wisdom of having two girl singers on the roster.^[20] Mayer finally decided to keep both actresses, but by that time Durbin's option had lapsed and she was signed by Universal Studios.

On November 16, 1935, in the midst of preparing for a radio performance on the Shell Chateau Hour, Garland learned that her father, who had been hospitalized with meningitis, had taken a turn for the worse. Frank Gumm died the following morning, on November 17, leaving her devastated. Her song for the Shell Chateau Hour was her first professional rendition of "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart", a song which would become a standard in many of her concerts.^[21]

Garland next came to the attention of studio executives by singing a special arrangement of "You Made Me Love You" to Clark Gable at a birthday party held by the studio for the actor; her rendition was so well regarded that she performed the song in the all-star extravaganza Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937), singing to a photograph of him.^[22]

MGM hit on a winning formula when it paired Garland with Mickey Rooney in a string of "backyard musicals".^[23] The duo first appeared together in the 1937 B movie Thoroughbreds Don't Cry. They became a sensation and teamed up again in Love Finds Andy Hardy. She would eventually star with him in nine films.

To keep up with the frantic pace of making one film after another, Garland, Rooney, and other young performers were constantly given amphetamines, as well as barbiturates to take before going to bed.^[24] For Garland, this regular dose of drugs led to addiction and a lifelong struggle and contributed to her eventual demise. She later resented the hectic schedule and felt that her youth had been stolen from her by MGM. Despite successful film and recording careers, awards, critical praise and her ability to fill concert halls worldwide, she was plagued throughout her life with self-doubt and required constant reassurance that she was talented and attractive.^[25]

[edit] The Wizard of Oz

Garland as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939)

In 1938, aged 16, she was cast 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 for which she would forever be identified, "Over the Rainbow". She 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.^[26]

Shooting commenced on October 13, 1938,^[27] and was completed on March 16, 1939,^[28] with a final cost of more than US$2 million.^[29] With the conclusion of filming, MGM kept Garland busy with promotional tours and the shooting of Babes in Arms. She and Rooney were sent on a cross-country promotional tour, culminating in the August 17 New York City premiere at the Capitol Theater, which included a five-show-a-day appearance schedule for the two stars.^[30]

The Wizard of Oz was a tremendous critical success, though its high budget and promotions costs of an estimated $4 million coupled with the lower revenue generated by children's tickets meant that the film did not make a profit until it was re-released in the 1940s.^[31] 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.^[32] Following this recognition, she became one of MGM's most bankable stars.

Stardom as an adult[link]

Garland performing "The Trolley Song" in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

In 1940, she starred in three films: Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, Strike Up the Band, and Little Nellie Kelly. In the latter, 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.^[33] The success of these three films, and a further three films in 1941, secured her position at MGM as a major property.

During this time Garland experienced her first serious adult romances. The first was with the band leader Artie Shaw. She was deeply devoted to him and was devastated in early 1940 when he eloped with Lana Turner.^[34] Garland began a relationship with musician David Rose, and, on her 18th birthday, he gave her an engagement ring. The studio intervened because he was still married at the time to the actress and singer Martha Raye. They agreed to wait a year to allow for his divorce from her to become final, and were wed on July 27, 1941.^[35] Garland, who had aborted her pregnancy by him in 1942, agreed to a trial separation in January 1943, and they divorced in 1944.^[36] She was noticeably thinner in her next film, For Me and My Gal, alongside Gene Kelly in his first screen appearance. She was top billed over the credits for the first time and effectively made the transition from teenage star to adult actress.

in Presenting Lily Mars (1943)

At the age of 21, she was given the "glamour treatment" in Presenting Lily Mars, 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 in her appearance and never escaped the "girl next door" image that had been created for her.^[37]

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". Vincente Minnelli was assigned to direct and he requested that makeup artist Dorothy Ponedel be assigned to Garland. Ponedel refined her appearance in several ways, including extending and reshaping her eyebrows, changing her hairline, modifying her lip line and removing her nose discs. She appreciated the results so much that Ponedel was written into her contract for all her remaining pictures at MGM.

During the filming of Meet Me in St. Louis, after some initial conflict between them, Garland and Minnelli entered a relationship. They were married June 15, 1945,^[38] and on March 12, 1946, daughter Liza was born.^[39] In 1951, they divorced.^[40]

The Clock (1945) was her first straight dramatic film, opposite Robert Walker. Though the film was critically praised and earned a profit, most movie fans expected her to sing. It would be many years before she acted again in a non-singing dramatic role. Garland's other famous 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 The Pirate (1948).

Leaving Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer[link]

During filming for The Pirate in April 1947, Garland suffered a nervous breakdown and was placed in a private sanitarium.^[41] She was able to complete filming, but in July she undertook her first suicide attempt, making minor cuts to her wrist with a broken glass.^[42] During this period, she spent two weeks in treatment at the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Massachusetts^[43] Following her work on The Pirate, she completed three more films for MGM: Easter Parade (in which she danced with Fred Astaire), In the Good Old Summertime, and her final film with MGM, Summer Stock.

Garland in Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)

Because of her mental condition, Garland was unable to complete a series of films. During the filming of The Barkleys of Broadway, she was taking prescription sleeping medication along with illicitly obtained pills containing morphine. It was 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 by Ginger Rogers.^[44]

Garland was 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. She began arriving late to the set and sometimes failed to appear. She was suspended from the picture on May 10, 1949, and was replaced by Betty Hutton.^[45]

Garland was next cast in the film Royal Wedding with Fred Astaire after June Allyson became pregnant in 1950. She again 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.^[46] Reputable biographies following her death stated that after this latest dismissal, she slightly grazed her neck with a broken water glass, requiring only a Band-Aid, but at the time, the public was informed that a despondent Garland had slashed her throat.^[47] "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."^[48]

Later career[link]

Renewed stardom on the stage[link]

In October 1951, Garland opened in a vaudeville-style, two-a-day engagement at Broadway's newly refurbished Palace Theatre. Her 19-week engagement exceeded all previous records for the theater, and was described as "one of the greatest personal triumphs in show business history".^[49] Garland was honored for her contribution to the revival of vaudeville with a Special Tony Award.^[50]

In May 1952, at the height of Garland's comeback, her mother Ethel was featured in a Los Angeles Mirror story in which she revealed that while Garland was making a small fortune at the Palace, Ethel was working a desk job at Douglas Aircraft Company for $61 a week.^[51] They had been estranged for years, with Garland characterizing her mother as "no good for anything except to create chaos and fear" and accusing her of mismanaging and misappropriating her salary from the earliest days of her career.^[52] Garland's sister Virginia denied this, stating "Mama never took a dime from Judy."^[53] On January 5, 1953, Ethel Gumm was found dead in the Douglas Aircraft parking lot. She was 59 years old.^[54]

[edit] A Star Is Born

Garland in A Star Is Born (1954)

In 1954, Garland filmed a musical remake of the 1937 film A Star is Born for Warner Bros. She and her third husband, Sid Luft (whom she had married in 1952) produced the film through their production company, Transcona Enterprises, while Warner Bros. supplied the funds, production facilities, and crew.^[55] Directed by George Cukor and costarring James Mason, it was a large undertaking to which she initially fully dedicated herself.

As shooting progressed, however, she began making the same pleas of illness which 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 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.^[56]

Upon its September 29, 1954 world premiere, the film was met with tremendous critical and popular acclaim. Before 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. About 30 minutes of footage was cut, sparking outrage among critics and filmgoers. A Star is Born ended up losing money, and the secure financial position Garland had expected from the profits did not materialize.^[57] Transcona made no more films with Warner.^[58]

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. She could not attend the ceremony because she had just given birth to her son, Joseph Luft, so a television crew was in her hospital room with cameras and wires to televise 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 her a telegram after the awards ceremony, declaring her loss "the biggest robbery since Brinks". TIME magazine labeled her performance as "just about the greatest one-woman show in modern movie history".^[59] Garland won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical for the role.^[60]

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), costarring Dirk Bogarde.

Television, concerts, and Carnegie Hall[link]

Garland before a concert, circa 1957

Garland engaged Sid Luft as her manager the same year she divorced Minnelli.^[61] He arranged a four-month concert tour of the United Kingdom, where she played to sold-out audiences throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland.^[62] It included her first appearances at the renowned London Palladium, for a four-week stand in April.^[63] Although some in the British press chided her before her opening for being "too plump",^[64] she received rave reviews and the ovation was described by the Palladium manager as the loudest he had ever heard.^[65]

Garland and Luft were married on June 8, 1952, in Hollister, California.^[66] Garland gave birth to Lorna Luft, herself a future actress and singer, on November 21, 1952, and to Joey Luft on March 29, 1955.^[67]

Beginning in 1955, Garland appeared in a number of television specials. The first, the 1955 debut episode of Ford Star Jubilee, 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, a live concert edition of General Electric Theater, was broadcast in 1956 before the relationship between the Lufts and CBS broke down in a dispute over the planned format of upcoming specials.^[68] In 1956, Garland performed 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.^[69] Despite a brief bout of laryngitis, her performances there were so successful that her run was extended an extra week.^[70] 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.^[71]

In November 1959 Garland was hospitalized, diagnosed with acute hepatitis.^[72] Over the next few weeks several quarts of fluid were drained from her body until, still weak, she was released from the hospital in January 1960. She was told by doctors that she likely 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.^[73] She initially felt "greatly relieved" at the diagnosis. "The pressure was off me for the first time in my life."^[47] 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.^[74]

Her concert appearance at Carnegie Hall on April 23, 1961, was a considerable highlight, called by many "the greatest night in show business history".^[75] The two-record Judy at Carnegie Hall was certified gold, charting for 95 weeks on Billboard, including 13 weeks at number one. The album won four Grammy Awards including Album of the Year and Best Female Vocal of the Year.^[76] The album has never been out of print.

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, entitled The Judy Garland Show, aired in 1962 and featured guests Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.^[77] Following this success, CBS made a $24 million offer 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,^[78] 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.^[79] A successful run on television was intended to secure her financial future.

Following a third special, Judy Garland and Her Guests Phil Silvers and Robert Goulet, Garland's weekly series debuted September 29, 1963.^[80] The Judy Garland Show was critically praised,^[81][82] 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 canceled in 1964 after 26 episodes. Despite its short run, the series was nominated for four Emmy Awards.^[83] The demise of the series was personally and financially devastating for Garland.

Garland sued Luft for divorce in 1963, claiming "cruelty" as the grounds. 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.^[84] She had filed for divorce from Luft more than once previously, including as early as 1956, but had reconciled.^[85]

Final years[link]

Mickey Deans and Garland, at their wedding in March 1969, only three months before her death

With the demise of her television series, Garland returned to the stage. Most notably, she performed at the London Palladium with her then 18-year-old daughter Liza Minnelli in November 1964. The concert, which was also filmed for British television network ITV, was one of her final appearances at the venue. She made guest appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, The Hollywood Palace, and The Merv Griffin Show, on which she guest-hosted an episode.^[86]

Garland was a lifelong Democrat and was active in both the Hollywood Democratic Committee and attended many of the Democratic National Conventions. In 1960 she was in attendance at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles with John F. Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson, and Lyndon B. Johnson.^[87][88][89]

A 1964 tour of Australia was largely disastrous. Garland's first concert in Sydney, held in the Sydney Stadium because no concert hall could accommodate the crowds who wanted to see her, went well and received positive reviews. Her second performance, in Melbourne, started an hour late. The crowd of 7,000, angered by her tardiness and believing her to be drunk, booed and heckled her, and she fled the stage after just 45 minutes.^[90] She later characterized the Melbourne crowd as "brutish".^[52] A second concert in Sydney was uneventful but the Melbourne appearance garnered her significant bad press.^[91] Some of that bad press was deflected by the announcement of a near fatal episode of pleurisy.

Garland's tour promoter Mark Herron announced that they had married aboard a freighter off the coast of Hong Kong; however, she was not legally divorced from Luft at the time the ceremony was performed.^[92] It became final on May 19, 1965,^[84] but she and Herron did not legally marry until November 14, 1965 and then separated six months later.^[93]

In February 1967, Garland was cast as Helen Lawson in Valley of the Dolls for 20th Century Fox.^[94] During the filming, she missed rehearsals and was fired in April, replaced by Susan Hayward.^[95] Her prerecording of the song "I'll Plant My Own Tree" survived, along with her wardrobe tests.

Returning to the stage, Garland made her last appearances at New York's Palace Theatre in July, a 16-show tour, performing with her children Lorna and Joey Luft. She wore a sequined pantsuit on stage for this tour, which was part of the original wardrobe for her character in Valley of the Dolls.^[96]

By early 1969, Garland's health had deteriorated. She performed in London at the Talk of the Town nightclub for a five-week run^[97] and made her last concert appearance in Copenhagen during March 1969.^[98] She married her fifth and final husband, musician Mickey Deans, at Chelsea Register Office, London, on March 15, 1969,^[99] her divorce from Herron having been finalized on February 11.^[100]

Death[link]

Garland's crypt at the Ferncliff Mausoleum.

On June 22, 1969, Garland was found dead by Deans in the bathroom of their rented house in Chelsea, London. At the subsequent inquest, coroner Gavin Thursdon 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.^[101] Thursdon stressed that the overdose had been unintentional and that there was no evidence to suggest she had committed suicide. Her autopsy showed that there was no inflammation of her stomach lining and no drug residue there, which indicated that the drug had been ingested over a long period of time, rather than in one dose. Her death certificate stated that her death had been "accidental".^[102] Even so, a British specialist who had attended her said she had been living on borrowed time due to cirrhosis of the liver.^[103] She had turned 47 just twelve days prior to her death. Her Wizard of Oz costar Ray Bolger commented at her funeral, "She just plain wore out."

On June 26, Deans took Garland's remains to New York City, where an estimated 20,000 people lined up for hours at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan to pay their respects. On June 27, James Mason gave a eulogy at the funeral, an Episcopal service led by the Rev. Peter A. Delaney of Marylebone Church, London, who had officiated at her marriage to Deans.^[104] The public and press were barred. She was interred in a crypt in the community mausoleum at Ferncliff Cemetery, in Hartsdale, New York.^[105]

Legacy[link]

Star for recognition of film work at 1715 Vine Street on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has another for recording at 6764 Hollywood Blvd.

Rooney watches Garland put her handprint into cement at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, 1939.

Garland's legacy as a performer and a personality has endured long after her death. The American Film Institute named her eighth among the Greatest Female Stars of All Time.^[106] She has been the subject of over two dozen biographies since her death, including the well-received Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir by her daughter, Lorna Luft, whose memoir was later adapted into the television miniseries Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows, which won Emmy Awards for the two actresses portraying her (Tammy Blanchard and Judy Davis).^[107]

Garland was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.^[108] Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.^[109] These include "Over the Rainbow", which was ranked as the number one movie song of all time in the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Songs" list. Four more Garland songs are featured on the list: "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (#76), "Get Happy" (#61), "The Trolley Song" (#26), and "The Man That Got Away" (#11).^[110] She has twice been honored on U.S. postage stamps, in 1989 (as Dorothy)^[111] and again in 2006 (as Vicki Lester from A Star Is Born).^[112]

Gay icon[link]

Garland always had a large base of fans in the gay community and has become a gay icon.^[113] Reasons often given for her standing, especially among gay men, are admiration of her ability as a performer, the way her personal struggles mirrored those of gay men in America during the height of her fame and her value as a camp figure.^[114] When asked about how she felt about having a large gay following, she responded, "I couldn't care less. I sing to people."^[115]

Some have also suggested a connection between the date of Garland's death and funeral on June 27, 1969 and the Stonewall riots, the flashpoint of the modern Gay Liberation movement,^[116][117] which started in the early hours of June 28.^[116] However, in a 2009 interview gay historian David Carter stated that this connection is untrue, and based on a mocking reference to the riot by an anti-gay writer in the Village Voice the next day.^[118]

Filmography and performances[link]

Portrayals in fiction[link]

Garland has been portrayed on television by Andrea McArdle in Rainbow (1978), Tammy Blanchard (young Judy) and Judy Davis (older Judy) in Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001) and Elizabeth Karsell in James Dean (2001). Anne Hathaway is set to play Garland in a biopic titled Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland which is in production and is set to be released in either 2012 or 2013.

On stage, Garland is a character in the musical The Boy from Oz (1998), portrayed by Chrissy Amphlett in the original Australian production and by Isabel Keating on Broadway in 2003. End of the Rainbow (2005) featured Caroline O'Connor as Garland and Michael Cumpsty as Garland's pianist. Adrienne Barbeau played Garland in The Property Known as Garland (2006) and The Judy Monologues (2010) featured Kimberly Roberts as Garland. Garland was briefly mentioned in the biopic film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge for the 1954 Academy Awards for A Star Is Born.

Discography[link]

Awards[link]

Biography portal

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Bianco, David. Gay Essentials: Facts For Your Queer Brain. Alyson Publications. Los Angeles, 1999. ISBN 1-55583-508-2.
• Clarke, Gerald (2001). Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland. New York, Random House. ISBN 0-375-50378-1.
• DiOrio, Jr., Al. Little Girl Lost: The Life and Hard Times of Judy Garland. Manor Books. New York, 1973.
• Duberman, Martin (1993). Stonewall. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-525-93602-5.
• Edwards, Anne. Judy Garland. Simon & Schuster. New York, 1975. ISBN 0-671-80228-3 (paperback edition).
• Finch, Christopher. Rainbow: The Stormy Life of Judy Garland. Ballantine Books. 1975. ISBN 0-345-25173-3 (paperback edition).
• Frank, Gerold. Judy. Harper & Row. New York, 1975. ISBN 0-06-011337-5.
• Juneau, James. Judy Garland: A Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies. Pyramid Publications. 1974, New York. ISBN 0-515-03482-7.
• Luft, Lorna. Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir. Simon & Schuster. New York, 1999. ISBN 0-283-06320-3.
• Sanders, Coyne Steven. Rainbow's End: The Judy Garland Show. Zebra Books. 1990 ISBN 0-8217-3708-2 (paperback edition).
• Seaman, Barbara. Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann. Seven Stories Press. 1996, New York. ISBN 0-9658770-6-X (1996 edition).
• Shipman, David. Judy Garland: The Secret Life of an American Legend. Hyperion. New York, 1992. ISBN 0-7868-8026-0 (paperback edition).
• Steiger, Brad (1969). Judy Garland. New York, Ace Books.
• Wayne, Jane Ellen (2003). The Golden Girls of MGM. New York, Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-7867-1303-8.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Judy Garland

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Judy Garland

• Judy Garland at the Internet Movie Database
• Judy Garland at AllRovi
• Judy Garland at the TCM Movie Database
• Judy Garland at the Internet Broadway Database
• Judy Garland at TV Guide
• The Judy Room Celebrating the life and career of Judy Garland
• The Judy Garland Birthplace and Museum in Grand Rapids, MN
• The Judy Garland Club official international fan club
• Judy Garland: By Myself – American Masters special
• Judy Garland's Film "The Wizard of Oz" Film site on Judy and Oz
• Judy Garland at The Biography Channel

Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer receiving his star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame (2010)
Background information
Birth name	Hans Florian Zimmer
Born	(1957-09-12) 12 September 1957 (age 54) Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Genres	Film score, Video game score
Occupations	Film composer, Video game composer, Music producer
Instruments	Piano, Keyboard, MIDI Master Keyboard, Synthesizer, Guitar
Years active	1977–present
Labels	Remote Control Productions
Website	hanszimmer.com

Hans Florian Zimmer, German pronunciation: [hans ˈfloːʁi̯aːn ˈtsɪmɐ]; (born 12 September 1957) is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including award winning film scores for The Lion King (1994), Crimson Tide (1995), Gladiator (2000), The Last Samurai (2003),The Dark Knight (2008), and Inception (2010).

Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the United Kingdom before moving to the United States. He is the head of the film music division at DreamWorks studios, and works with other composers through the company which he founded, Remote Control Productions.^[1]

Zimmer's works are notable for integrating electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements. He has received four Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, a Classical BRIT Award, and an Academy Award. He was also named on the list of Top 100 Living Geniuses, published by The Daily Telegraph.^[2]

Early life[link]

Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. As a young child, he lived in Königstein-Falkenstein, where he played the piano at home, but had piano lessons only briefly as he disliked the discipline of formal lessons.^[3] He moved to London as a teenager, where he attended Hurtwood House school.^[4] In an interview with the German television station ZDF in 2006, he commented: "My father died when I was just a child, and I escaped somehow into the music and music has been my best friend."^[5]

Early career[link]

Zimmer began his career playing keyboards and synthesizers. He worked with The Buggles, a New Wave band formed in 1977 with Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley. Zimmer can be seen briefly in The Buggles' music video for the 1979 song "Video Killed the Radio Star".^[6] After working with The Buggles, he started to work for the Italian group Krisma, a New Wave band formed in 1976 with Maurizio Arcieri and Christina Moser. He was a featured synthesist for Krisma’s third album, Cathode Mamma. He has also worked with the band Helden (with Warren Cann from Ultravox).^[7] Both Zimmer (on keyboards) and Cann (on drums), were invited to be part of the Spanish group Mecano for a live performance in Segovia (Spain) in 1984. Two songs from this concert were included in the "Mecano: En Concierto" album released in 1985 only in Spain. In 1980 Zimmer co-produced a single, "The History Of The World Part 1," with, and for, UK Punk band The Damned, which was also included on their 1980 LP release, "The Black Album," and carried the description of his efforts as "Over-Produced by Hans Zimmer."

While living in London, Zimmer wrote advertising jingles for Air-Edel Associates.^[7] In the 1980s, Zimmer partnered with Stanley Myers, a prolific film composer who wrote the scores for over sixty films. Zimmer and Myers co–founded the London–based Lillie Yard recording studio. Together, Myers and Zimmer worked on fusing the traditional orchestral sound with electronic instruments.^[8] Some of the films on which Zimmer and Myers worked are Moonlighting (1982), Success is the Best Revenge (1984), Insignificance (1985), and My Beautiful Launderette (1985). Zimmer's first solo score was Terminal Exposure for director Nico Mastorakis in 1987, for which he also wrote the songs. Zimmer acted as score producer for the 1987 film The Last Emperor, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Score.^[7]

One of Zimmer's most durable works from his time in the United Kingdom is the theme song for the television game show Going for Gold, which he composed with Sandy McClelland in 1987. In an interview with the BBC, Zimmer said: "Going For Gold was a lot of fun. It's the sort of stuff you do when you don't have a career yet. God, I just felt so lucky because this thing paid my rent for the longest time."^[9]

Hollywood film scoring[link]

A turning point in Zimmer's career occurred with the 1988 film Rain Man.^[8] Hollywood director Barry Levinson was looking for someone to score Rain Man, and his wife heard the soundtrack CD of the anti-Apartheid drama A World Apart, for which Zimmer had composed the music. Levinson was impressed by Zimmer's work, and hired him to score Rain Man.^[10] In the score, Zimmer uses synthesizers (mostly a Fairlight CMI) mixed with steel drums. Zimmer explained that "It was a road movie, and road movies usually have jangly guitars or a bunch of strings. I kept thinking don't be bigger than the characters. Try to keep it contained. The Raymond character doesn't actually know where he is. The world is so different to him. He might as well be on Mars. So, why don't we just invent our own world music for a world that doesn't really exist?".^[11] Zimmer’s score for Rain Man was nominated for an Academy Award in 1989, and the film won four Academy Awards including Best Picture.^[12]

A year after Rain Man, Zimmer was asked to compose the score for Bruce Beresford's Driving Miss Daisy which, like Rain Man, won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Driving Miss Daisy’s instrumentation consisted entirely of synthesizers and samplers, played by Zimmer. According to an interview with Sound On Sound magazine in 2002, the piano sounds heard within the score come from the Roland MKS–20, a rackmount synthesizer. Zimmer joked: "It didn't sound anything like a piano, but it behaved like a piano."^[13]

1991's Thelma & Louise soundtrack by Zimmer featured the trademark slide guitar performance by Pete Haycock on the "Thunderbird" theme in the film. As a teenager, Zimmer was a fan of Haycock, and their collaboration on film scores includes K2 and Drop Zone.^[14]

For the 1992 film The Power of One, Zimmer traveled to Africa in order to use African choirs and drums in the recording of the score. On the strength of this work, Disney Animation Studios approached Zimmer to compose the score for the 1994 film The Lion King. This was to be his first score for an animated film. Zimmer said that he had wanted to go to South Africa to record parts of the soundtrack, but was unable to visit the country as he had a police record there "for doing 'subversive' movies" after his work on The Power of One. Disney studio bosses expressed fears that Zimmer would be killed if he went to South Africa, so the recording of the choirs was organized during a visit by Lebo M.^[15] Zimmer won numerous awards for his work on The Lion King, including an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, and two Grammys. In 1997, the score was adapted into a Broadway musical version which won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1998.^[16][17] As of April 2012^[update], the musical version of The Lion King is the highest grossing Broadway show of all time, having grossed $853.8 million.^[18]

	Crimson Tide - "Roll Tide" noicon A clip from the score of the 1995 film Crimson Tide.
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Zimmer's score for Crimson Tide (1995) won a Grammy Award for the main theme, which makes heavy use of synthesizers in place of traditional orchestral instruments. For The Thin Red Line (1998), Zimmer said that the director Terrence Malick wanted the music before he started filming, so he recorded six and a half hours of music.^[11] Zimmer's next project was The Prince of Egypt (1998), which was produced by DreamWorks Animation. He introduced Ofra Haza, an Israeli Yemenite singer, to the directors, and they thought she was so beautiful that they designed one of the characters in the film to look like her.^[11]

Work: 2000–present[link]

	Gladiator - "Battle" noicon A clip from the score of the 2000 film Gladiator.
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In the 2000s, Zimmer has composed scores for Hollywood blockbuster films including Gladiator (2000), Black Hawk Down and Hannibal (2001), The Last Samurai (2003), The Da Vinci Code (2006) The Simpsons Movie (2007), Angels and Demons (2009) and Sherlock Holmes (2009). While writing the score for The Last Samurai, Zimmer felt that his knowledge of Japanese music was extremely limited. He began doing extensive research, but the more he studied, the less he felt he knew. Finally, Zimmer took what he had written to Japan for feedback and was shocked when he was asked how he knew so much about Japanese music.^[11]

During the scoring of The Last Samurai in early 2003, Zimmer was approached by the producer Jerry Bruckheimer, with whom he had worked previously on Crimson Tide, The Rock and Pearl Harbor. Bruckheimer had finished shooting Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, but was unhappy with the music composed for the film by Alan Silvestri and wanted a replacement score.^[19] Bruckheimer wanted Zimmer to rescore the film, but due to his commitments on The Last Samurai, the task of composing and supervising music for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was given to Klaus Badelt, one of Zimmer's colleagues at Media Ventures. Zimmer provided some themes that were used in the film, although he is not credited on screen.^[20][21] Zimmer was hired as the composer for the three subsequent films in the series, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), collaborating with Rodrigo y Gabriela.^[22]

For the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, "The Daily Variety" reported that Zimmer purchased an out-of-tune piano for 200 dollars and used it throughout the scoring process because of its "quirkiness".^[23]

Hans Zimmer in 2008

Zimmer is also noted for his work on the scores of Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008), on which he collaborated with James Newton Howard.^[9] The scores for these films were disqualified from receiving Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score due to too many composers being listed on the cue sheet.^[24] Zimmer succeeded in reversing the decision not to nominate The Dark Knight in December 2008, arguing that the process of creating a modern film score was collaborative, and that it was important to credit a range of people who had played a part in its production.^[25] Zimmer explained his approach to scoring with other musicians in an interview with Soundtrack.net in 2006:

	Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard - "Now We Are Free" noicon A clip from the score of the 2000 film Gladiator.
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"Originally I had this idea that it should be possible to create some kind of community around this kind of work, and I think by muddying the titles - not having "you are the composer, you are the arranger, you are the orchestrator" - it just sort of helped us to work more collaboratively. It wasn't that important to me that I had "score by Hans Zimmer" and took sole credit on these things. It's like Gladiator: I gave Lisa Gerrard the co-credit because, even though she didn't write the main theme, her presence and contributions were very influential. She was more than just a soloist, and this is why I have such a problem with specific credits."^[26]

Zimmer is also composing the score for The Dark Knight Rises, the final installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. The film is scheduled for release in July 2012.^[27]

Zimmer works with other composers through his company Remote Control Productions, formerly known as Media Ventures. His studio in Santa Monica, California has an extensive range of computer equipment and keyboards, allowing demo versions of film scores to be created quickly.^[28] His colleagues at the studio have included Harry Gregson-Williams, James Dooley, Geoff Zanelli, Henning Lohner, Steve Jablonsky, Mark Mancina, John Van Tongeren, John Powell and Thomas J. Bergersen.

In October 2000, Zimmer performed live in concert for the first time with an orchestra and choir at the 27th Annual Flanders International Film Festival in Ghent.^[29] He has received a range of honors and awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award in film Composition from the National Board of Review, the Frederick Loewe Award in 2003 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, ASCAP’s Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement, and BMI's Richard Kirk Award for lifetime achievement in 1996. Recent work includes the Spanish language film Casi Divas,^[30] Sherlock Holmes, The Burning Plain (2009), and Inception (2010). He composed the theme for the television boxing series The Contender, and worked with Lorne Balfe on the music for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which was his first video game project.^[31] Zimmer also collaborated with composers Borislav Slavov and Tilman Sillescu to create the score for the video game Crysis 2.^[32]

In December 2010, Zimmer received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He dedicated the award to his publicist and long term friend Ronni Chasen, who was shot dead in Beverly Hills the previous month.^[33]

Zimmer composed and produced the music for the 84th Academy Awards with Pharrell Williams of The Neptunes.^[34]

Zimmer lives in Los Angeles with his wife Suzanne, and has four children.^[35][36]

Discography and awards[link]

References[link]