Judy Garland as a gay icon

Time magazine, in reviewing Garland's 1967 Palace Theatre engagement, disparagingly noted that a "disproportionate part of her nightly claque seems to be homosexual".

It goes on to say that "[t]he boys in the tight trousers"[4] (a phrase Time repeatedly used to describe gay men, as when it described "ecstatic young men in tight trousers pranc[ing] down the aisles to toss bouquets of roses" to another gay icon, Marlene Dietrich)[5] would "roll their eyes, tear at their hair and practically levitate from their seats" during Garland's performances.

"[4] Writer William Goldman, in a piece for Esquire magazine about the same Palace engagement, again disparages the gay men in attendance, dismissing them as "fags" who "flit by" chattering inanely.

Dorothy's journey from Kansas to Oz "mirrored many gay men's desires to escape the black-and-white limitations of small-town life ... for big, colorful cities filled with quirky, gender-bending characters who would welcome them.

Why would she want to go back to Kansas, in this dreary black and white farm with an aunt who dressed badly and seemed mean to me, when she could live with magic shoes, winged monkeys and gay lions?

[12]The 2020 comedic short film Digging Up Dorothy features a drag queen's obsession with Judy Garland several decades after her death.

[15] Some observers of the riots contend that most of those involved "were not the type to moon over Judy Garland records or attend her concerts at Carnegie Hall.

[18] Regardless of the truth of the matter, the Garland/Stonewall connection has persisted and has been fictionalized in Stonewall, Nigel Finch's feature film about the events leading up to the riots.

"[19] Time magazine would summarize decades later: The uprising was inspirited by a potent cocktail of pent-up rage (raids of gay bars were brutal and routine), overwrought emotions (hours earlier, thousands had wept at the funeral of Judy Garland) and drugs.

[22] Garland's performance of this song has been described as "the sound of the closet", speaking to gay men whose image "they presented in their own public lives was often at odds with a truer sense of self that mainstream society would not condone".

[23] Her father, Frank Gumm, would apparently seduce or at least keep company with very young men or older teens, then move on when told to leave or before his activities could be discovered.