Judy Garland: A Biography

Praised as “undoubtedly the best of the many books on Judy Garland” by no less a critic than John Lahr (the son of Bert Lahr the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz) Anne Edwards’s biography attempts to present a complete picture of the late actress and not just the boozing drug-addicted caricature of a woman that is central to lesser biographies. From Edwardss account we learn for example that Garland saw it as her duty to provide for her family financially a generosity that her mother Ethel exploited with disastrous results. A student of great poets―Shelley Keats and Browning in particular―she often tried her own hand at verse; surviving poems are reproduced here. Above all Judy Garland sought to please whether it was an audience or a studio head and therein lies her powerful and heartbreaking story.