Her voice captivated, her persona dazzled, and her legacy lives on. Here is Judy Garland as she was remembered...
1. Margaret O'Brien
"I adored working with Judy. She was 22 at the time, and she seemed like a big sister to me. She was very sweet and always very kind to children. I’m still friends with her lovely children today. She was a lot of fun to be around even though people think of her as a serious, tragic figure. She really loved to tell jokes, and she’d play jump rope with me on the set."
Read about Meet Me In St. Louis here.
2. James Mason
“I adored her. She was such a wonderful talent. She was a unique and marvelous comedian with a great emotional depth and power. And she had a quality that perhaps could be compared to Chaplin at his best.”
Read about A Star Is Born here.
3. Liza Minnelli
“My mother gave me my guts. My father gave me my dreams. And the combination seems to work. By guts, I mean, she gave me encouragement. Both of them always encouraged me. But she gave me feminine strength. And my father gave me a world of colors.”
Read about Cabaret here.
4. Gene Kelly
"Judy was a miraculous entertainer, and she could learn scripts just by reading them through once. I deem myself lucky to have done my very first picture with her, For Me and My Girl. We loved each other… she was a deep friend of my wife and me, and we were very close to her. I dearly loved her as a friend."
5. Vincente Minnelli
“The surface wasn’t scratched with Judy. She had great potential. She could have done anything she wanted to. You could tell her 20 things, and you’d never know if you're getting through to her or not because people were messing with her and making her up and so forth… [but she] wouldn’t forget a thing.”
6. Ann Miller
“She has a force field in her body. An electrical force field that when she turns this on, it would reach to the back of the theater. There’s never going to be another one like her. She was brilliant. She was a star from head to toe.”
Read about Easter Parade here.
7. Margaret Hamilton
"Oh, I just adored her. Judy Garland was an absolute darling, a warm human being, and very professional. Judy was just a young girl when she made the film, but there was a ladylike quality about her. She was one of the happiest people on the set… I think she realized that it was going to be a wonderful thing for her career… She was just a darling, sweet person."
8. Mickey Rooney
“Judy Garland was a different type of entertainer. She was a dancer, a singer, and an incurable romantic. I think she’s one of the greatest actresses in the world.”
Read about Girl Crazy here.
