Renowned for her powerful contralto voice, emotional depth, and versatility, Garland rose to international fame as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939), a role that cemented her status as a Hollywood legend.

At age 13, she was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), where she starred in numerous musical films, including The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), and Summer Stock (1950), the latter earning her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

[3] Garland's film career saw a resurgence in the 1950s and 1960s with critically acclaimed performances in A Star Is Born (1954) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), which she received Academy Award nominations for, and has released eight studio albums.

[28] The group broke up by August 1935, when Mary Jane "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.

[29] In September 1935, Louis B. Mayer asked songwriter Burton Lane to go to the Orpheum Theater in downtown Los Angeles to watch the Garland Sisters' vaudeville act and to report to him.

The film contrasted her vocal range and swing style with Durbin's operatic soprano and served as an extended screen test for them, as studio executives were questioning the wisdom of having two girl singers on the roster.

[36]Garland's first feature-length film was a loan-out to Fox titled Pigskin Parade, a football-themed musical comedy, where she was billed tenth after Stuart Erwin, Jack Haley, Patsy Kelly, Betty Grable and others.

[6] She was plagued with self-doubt throughout her life; despite successful film and recording careers, awards, critical praise and her ability to fill concert halls worldwide, she required constant reassurance that she was talented and attractive.

Although producers Arthur Freed and Mervyn LeRoy had wanted to cast her in the role from the beginning, studio chief Mayer first tried to borrow Shirley Temple from 20th Century Fox, but they declined.

Ponedel refined her appearance in several ways which included extending and reshaping her eyebrows, changing her hairline, modifying her lip line and removing her nose discs and dental caps.

The main reasons for its failure were not only its cost but also included the increasing expense of the shooting delays while Garland was ill, as well as the general public's unwillingness to accept her in a sophisticated film.

[74] When her suspension was over, she was summoned back to work and she ultimately performed two songs as a guest in the Rodgers and Hart biopic Words and Music (1948), which was her last appearance with Mickey Rooney.

Having regained her strength, as well as some needed weight during her suspension, Garland felt much better and in the fall of 1948, she returned to MGM to replace a pregnant June Allyson for the musical film In the Good Old Summertime (1949) co-starring Van Johnson.

When it was released in the fall of 1950, Summer Stock drew big crowds and racked up very respectable box-office receipts, but because of the costly shooting delays caused by Garland, the film posted a loss of $80,000 to the studio.

[81] Reputable biographies following her death stated that after this latest dismissal, she slightly grazed her neck with a broken glass, requiring only a Band-Aid, but at the time, the public was informed that a despondent Garland had slashed her throat.

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.

Before its 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.

[103] 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),[104] the animated feature Gay Purr-ee (1962) and A Child Is Waiting (1963) with Burt Lancaster.

Garland took part in recording an all-star radio broadcast on October 26, 1947, Hollywood Fights Back, during which she exhorted listeners to action: "Before every free conscience in America is subpoenaed, please speak up!

[136][137][138] On August 28, 1963, Garland and other celebrities such as James Garner, Josephine Baker, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Paul Newman, Rita Moreno and Sammy Davis Jr. took part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a demonstration organized to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans.

She had been photographed by the press in Los Angeles earlier in the month alongside Eartha Kitt, Marlon Brando and Charlton Heston as they planned their participation in the march on the nation's capital.

[174] Camille Paglia, writing for The New York Times, joked that even in Garland's adult life, "her petite frame literally throbbed with her huge voice", making it appear as though she were "at war with her own body".

Writing for Turner Classic Movies, biographer Jonathan Riggs observed that Garland had a tendency to imbue her vocals with a paradoxical combination of "fragility and resilience" that eventually became a signature trademark of hers.

[22] Contributing to the Irish Independent, Julia Molony observed Garland's voice, although "still rich with emotion", had finally begun to "creak with the weight of years of disappointment and hard-living" by the time she performed at Carnegie Hall in 1961.

[193] Doug Strassler, a critic for the New York Press, described Garland as a "triple threat" who "bounced between family musicals and adult dramas with a precision and a talent that remains largely unmatched".

[195] Michael Musto, a journalist for W magazine, wrote that, in her film roles, Garland "could project decency, vulnerability and spunk like no other star and she wrapped it up with a tremulously beautiful vocal delivery that could melt even the most hardened troll".

[197][198] In a review for the Star Tribune, Graydon Royce wrote that Garland's public image remained that of "a Midwestern girl who couldn't believe where she was", despite having been a well-established celebrity for over 20 years.

[188] MGM reports that Garland was consistently tardy and demonstrated erratic behavior, which resulted in several delays and disruptions to filming schedules until she was finally dismissed from the studio, which had deemed her unreliable and difficult to manage.

[203] In June 1998, in The New York Times, Camille Paglia wrote, "Garland was a personality on the grand scale who makes our current crop of pop stars look lightweight and evanescent.

[178] AllMusic's biographer William Ruhlmann said that "the core of her significance as an artist remains her amazing voice and emotional commitment to her songs" and believes that "her career is sometimes viewed more as an object lesson in Hollywood excess than as the remarkable string of multimedia accomplishments it was".