Judy Garland had a voice that could break your heart and lift it in the same song, and she carried a rainbow with her wherever she went.
Born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, she performed as a child with her sisters before signing with MGM as a teenager. Her role as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939), singing Over the Rainbow, made her a star at seventeen.
At MGM she made a series of beloved musicals, including Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and Easter Parade (1948), and later gave a celebrated dramatic performance in A Star Is Born (1954). In her later years she became one of the great concert performers, with a famous series of shows at Carnegie Hall.
She died on 22 June 1969 in London. Garland’s legacy is her voice: powerful, emotional and unmistakable, a sound that still moves listeners today.
Image: Judy Garland singing Over the Rainbow, Wikimedia Commons, CC0 / public domain. Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Judy_Garland_Over_the_Rainbow_2.jpg