Judy Garland Museum
Famed actress and singer Judy Garland got her start in the little town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The house she lived in during her first few years is now a museum. Its staff has done a wonderful job preserving her time in the house and putting on display artifacts from her lifetime on display.
A sign bearing the name of the museum and a rainbow announces my arrival. Inside, there are lots of photos and pictures to view right away, with the gift shop to the right.
Garland was born Frances Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, to Frank and Ethel Gumm, retired vaudevillians who operated the New Grand Theatre in town. She took to the stage from the start, debuting at that theater at the age of 2 1/2 and attracting the attention of Variety magazine at age 10. In September 1935, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed the rising star who by that time had adopted the stage name Judy Garland.
She acted in shorts, then began a screen partnership with Mickey Rooney starting with Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry (1937) that lasted through 1943. But of course, she’s well-known to most for her role as Dorothy in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. This famous role is well-represented throughout the museum. The carriage used in the movie, a test dress for Dorothy, and artifacts and memorabilia associated with the film are amongst the features.
Garland made numerous films throughout the 1940s, with a memorable turn in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). After being released from her MGM contract in 1950, she returned to the stage, then earned an Oscar nomination for the musical picture A Star Is Born (1954). Throughout her career, she also sang and made albums. She went on tour in 1960-61, performing one-woman concerts that culminated with a showing at Carnegie Hall. The record of this concert, Judy at Carnegie Hall (1961) was a massive success, winning five Grammy Awards.
Throughout the rest of the 1960s, she appeared on television and continued giving concert performances. But the years of stress and drug use eventually caught up with her. In 1969 she died of an accidental barbiturate overdose. Her funeral was held in New York City and attended by some 22,000 fans. The museum doesn’t gloss over the tragedies in Judy’s life, namely the costs of being under the control of a studio who got her addicted to pills and nicotine, restricted her diet, criticized her appearance, and put an undo amount of hardship on her as a teenager. But it chooses to focus on the positive, on the entertainment and joy she brought to millions, placing emphasis on the iconic roles and events but not omitting the lesser-known roles and performances.
The museum is essentially divided into two parts: a building connected to the house which contains the collection of memorabilia, photos, and other items related to her career, and the house itself. According to the museum, "The home has been restored to its circa 1925 appearance. The authentic work was based on family photographs and eyewitness accounts."
You can see the porch where Judy and her two sisters, Mary Jane and Virginia, often played; the landing on the steps where little Judy would practice singing and dancing with them; the bedroom she shared with her parents; and the sisters' bedroom. Anecdotes from Judy, her family, and others are sprinkled throughout the house to embellish the experience. Despite leaving the home at an early age, Garland had lasting memories of the house and of her time in Grand Rapids.
The museum honors the city’s native daughter with an annual festival and other events. In 2014, for the 75th anniversary of the Wizard of Oz, over 1,000 participants dressed up as characters from the film, setting a Guinness World Record. The house has been moved from its original location, but with the museum’s help you can see the general area where it stood a century ago: on today's Highway 2, in the vicinity of the current Central Square Mall. The museum keeps Judy’s memories alive, and for even the most casual of fans it’s a step back in time and a place to recognize and respect a great actress, singer, and performer.
Stranger than fiction:
The museum came under the national spotlight in 2005 when one of four known pairs of original ruby slippers used in the film were stolen from the museum where they had been on loan from a Hollywood memorabilia collector. For years, the case went unsolved, but the slippers were recovered in 2018 by the FBI and in 2023 a man charged with the theft. (For more on this, I recommend the excellent C13 Originals podcast “There’s No Place Like Home”). Now a replica pair of the slippers is on display at the museum.
Visited: September 12, 2023
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