Best quotes by Judy Garland

Judy Garland

Judy Garland

American actress and singer

Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress and singer. She is widely known for playing the role of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939). With a career spanning 45 years, she attained international stardom as an actress in both musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on the concert stage. Renowned for her versatility, she received an Academy Juvenile Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Special Tony Award. Garland was the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, which she won for her 1961 live recording titled Judy at Carnegie Hall.

Garland began performing in vaudeville as a child with her two older sisters, in a vaudeville group "The Gumm Sisters" and was later signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She appeared in more than two dozen films for MGM. Garland was a frequent on-screen partner of both Mickey Rooney and Gene Kelly and regularly collaborated with director and second husband Vincente Minnelli. Other starring roles during this period included Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946), Easter Parade (1948), and Summer Stock (1950). In 1950, after 15 years with MGM, the studio released her amid a series of personal struggles that prevented her from fulfilling the terms of her contract.

Although her film career became intermittent thereafter, two of Garland's most critically acclaimed roles came later in her career: she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in A Star Is Born (1954) and a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). She also made record-breaking concert appearances, released eight studio albums, and hosted her own Emmy-nominated television series, The Judy Garland Show (1963–1964). At age 39, Garland became the youngest and first female recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the film industry. In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her as the eighth-greatest female screen legend of classic Hollywood cinema.

Garland struggled in her personal life from an early age. The pressures of early stardom affected her physical and mental health from the time she was a teenager; her self-image was influenced by constant criticism from film executives who believed that she was physically unattractive and who manipulated her onscreen physical appearance. Throughout her adulthood she was plagued by alcohol and substance use disorders, as well as financial instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. Her lifelong substance use disorder ultimately led to her death in London from an accidental barbiturate overdose at age 47 in 1969.

All quotes by Judy Garland:

Wouldn`t it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, and a little more loving, have a little more empathy, and maybe we'd like each other a little bit more.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

The greatest treasures are those invisible to the eye but found by the heart.

For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

I've always taken 'The Wizard of Oz' very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I've spent my entire life trying to get over it.

We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality.

Give the people what they want and then go have a hamburger.

In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.

When you have lived the life I've lived, when you've loved and suffered, and been madly happy and desperately sad -- well, that's when you realize you'll never be able to set it all down. Maybe you'd rather die first.

I can live without money, but I cannot live without love.

Behind every cloud is another cloud.

To let a fool kiss you is bad...To let a kiss fool you is worse. 'Twas not my lips you kissed but my soul.

My [singing] style really has no style, because I try to sing each number differently. I’ve always believed that if style takes precedent over the words and music, the audience get’s cheated. It’s like when people see a fine play or movie. They imagine themselves in the leading role. I want them to imagine that they’re singing - not just listening to someone else.

If I'm such a legend, then why am I so lonely? If I'm such a legend, then why do I sit at home for hours staring at the damned telephone, hoping it's out of order, even calling the operator asking her if she's sure it's not out of order?

Birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, oh, why can't I?

I've been in love with audiences all my life, and I've tried to please. I hope I did.

He gave me a look at myself I've never had before. He saw something in me nobody else ever did. He made me see it too. He made me believe it.

When I die I have visions of fags singing 'Over the Rainbow' and the flag at Fire Island being flown at half mast.

Soon the sun beams will smile through. Before you jump out of that bed, just know, the thought of you was the first thing that hit my head. Good morning my darling.

I've never looked through a keyhole without finding someone was looking back.

If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?

As for my feelings toward "Over the Rainbow", it's become part of my life. It is so symbolic of all dreams and wishes that I'm sure that's why people sometimes get tears in their eyes when they hear it.

I was born at the age of twelve on an MGM lot.

You know something? I'm decent! There isn't a great deal of decency in the world, especially in our business, and I'm one of the few really decent ladies around.

My life, my career has been like a roller coaster. I've either been an enormous success or just a down-and-out failure.

It's lonely and cold on the top... lonely and cold.

How strange when an illusion dies. It's as though you've lost a child.

If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.

There have been times when I have deliberately tried to take my life... I think I must have been crying for some attention.

You shouldn't be told you're completely irresponsible and be left alone with too much medication. It's too easy to forget. You take a couple of sleeping pills and you wake up in twenty minutes and forget you've taken them. So you take a couple more, and the next thing you know you've taken too many.

I try to bring the audience's own drama - tears and laughter they know about - to them.

People en masse have always been wonderful to me. I truly have a great love for an audience...I want to give them two hours of just pow.

Hollywood is a strange place if you're in trouble. Everybody thinks it's contagious.

Velveeta: you can eat it - or wax your car with it!

If I'm such a legend, then why am I so lonely? Let me tell you, legends are all very well if you've got somebody around who loves you.

[On daughter Liza Minnelli] I think she decided to go into show business when she was an embryo, she kicked so much.

Audiences have kept me alive.

You are never so alone as when you are ill on stage. The most nightmarish feeling in the world is suddenly to feel like throwing up in front of four thousand people.

I think there's something peculiar about me that I haven't died. It doesn't make sense but I refuse to die.

I'm the original take-orders girl.

'Twas not my lips you kissed but my soul.

I was born in a lovely white house with a garden.

I'm just an Irish biddy.

I truly have a great love for an audience, and I used to want to prove it to them by giving them blood.

I've seen the ticket, and I still can't believe it. When I see the money, I hope I don't hit the floor.