and a parade of brilliant and gifted men-lovers and artists, impresarios and crooks-who helped her reach so many creative pinnacles yet left her hopeless and alone after each seemingly inevitable fall. the golden age of Hollywood, brought into sharp focus with cinematic urgency, from the hidden private lives of the movie world's biggest stars to the cold-eyed businessmen who controlled the machine. Gerald Clarke is the author of Capote,the acclaimed biography of Truman Capote. Her funeral drew about 20,000 people to the Frank E. She died by accidental drug overdose in 1969. She was best known for playing Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz and starring. Here are her early years, during which her parents sowed the seeds of heartbreak and self-destruction that would plague her for decades. As detailed in Gerald Clarke’s biography, Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, Garland performed through anxiety, sexual misconduct, forced eating disorder and medication, substance abuse, grief, and four divorces. In real life: Born Frances Gumm, she changed her name to Judy at age 11 and signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at 13. Based on hundreds of interviews and drawing on her own unfinished-and unpublished-autobiography, Get Happy presents the real Judy Garland in all her flawed glory. Judy Garland died over thirty years ago, but no biography has so completely captured her spirit-and demons-until now.įrom her tumultuous early years as a child performer to her tragic last days, Gerald Clarke reveals the authentic Judy in a biography rich in new detail and unprecedented revelations. She lived at full throttle on stage, screen, and in real life, with highs that made history and lows that finally brought down the curtain at age forty-seven.

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