Judy Garland, on Drugs, Drink, Suicide Attempts and Her Loathing of Hollywood
Many know her as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. But there was much more trouble behind Judy Garland than just a pair of ruby slippers. At the young and innocent age of 17 she starred in her 7th film, “The Wizard of Oz”. The same year she had her hand and shoe prints forever embedded in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The reality of her envied life was not so pretty however. The pressures were harsh and so was the work load. Her contract stated that if her physical appearances were to change, her voice became impaired or she couldn’t work satisfactorily she would be suspended without pay. Any Garland fan and really anyone who pays attention to gossip of the Golden Era …show more content…
Despite this, it was not unusual for even the major Hollywood film studios to supply their own stars with drugs. Judy Garland and other young stars were worked incredibly hard and often struggled with the demands of appearing in film after film with no break. In 1969 an article in, The New York Times, quoted Garland recounts this experience… “No wonder I was strange. Imagine whipping out of bed, dashing over to the doctor's office, lying down on a torn leather couch, telling my troubles to an old man who couldn't hear, who answered with an accent I couldn't understand, and then dashing to Metro to make movie love to Mickey Rooney…. It was during this period that she also began taking stimulants and depressants. “They'd give us pep pills,” she wrote. “Then they'd take us to the studio hospital and knock us cold with sleeping pills . . . after four hours they'd wake us up and give us the pep pills again… “That's the way we worked, and that's the way we got thin. That's the way we got mixed up. And that's the way we lost contact." In is book, Ending The Drug Addiction Pandemic, Dr. James Milam gives insight to the pandemic of celebrity overdoeses… “There has been an unbroken series starting before iatrogenic deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Judy garland in the 1960s and continuing with the more recent destruction of Anna Nicole smith and heath ledger… virtually all of these victims of psychiatric malpractice could have made full recoveries by being safely taken off alcohol and all addictive drugs. Ending the Drug Addiction Pandemic” (113
Many know her as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. But there was much more trouble behind Judy Garland than just a pair of ruby slippers. At the young and innocent age of 17 she starred in her 7th film, “The Wizard of Oz”. The same year she had her hand and shoe prints forever embedded in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The reality of her envied life was not so pretty however. The pressures were harsh and so was the work load. Her contract stated that if her physical appearances were to change, her voice became impaired or she couldn’t work satisfactorily she would be suspended without pay. Any Garland fan and really anyone who pays attention to gossip of the Golden Era …show more content…
Despite this, it was not unusual for even the major Hollywood film studios to supply their own stars with drugs. Judy Garland and other young stars were worked incredibly hard and often struggled with the demands of appearing in film after film with no break. In 1969 an article in, The New York Times, quoted Garland recounts this experience… “No wonder I was strange. Imagine whipping out of bed, dashing over to the doctor's office, lying down on a torn leather couch, telling my troubles to an old man who couldn't hear, who answered with an accent I couldn't understand, and then dashing to Metro to make movie love to Mickey Rooney…. It was during this period that she also began taking stimulants and depressants. “They'd give us pep pills,” she wrote. “Then they'd take us to the studio hospital and knock us cold with sleeping pills . . . after four hours they'd wake us up and give us the pep pills again… “That's the way we worked, and that's the way we got thin. That's the way we got mixed up. And that's the way we lost contact." In is book, Ending The Drug Addiction Pandemic, Dr. James Milam gives insight to the pandemic of celebrity overdoeses… “There has been an unbroken series starting before iatrogenic deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Judy garland in the 1960s and continuing with the more recent destruction of Anna Nicole smith and heath ledger… virtually all of these victims of psychiatric malpractice could have made full recoveries by being safely taken off alcohol and all addictive drugs. Ending the Drug Addiction Pandemic” (113