While the phrase "Judy Garland" might invoke images of a girl in gingham stepping into a Technicolor dreamscape for the very first time, or a world-worn woman, alone but triumphant, on the stage of Carnegie Hall, the woman-who-would-be-Judy spent her earliest years under a different name entirely. Born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minn., Garland's foray into show business was predestined from the start. As detailed in Gerald Clarke's 2009 tome Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland — largely considered the definitive biography on the actress — Garland's parents, both vaudeville circuit veterans, put the young Frances to work on the stage at the tender age of two.
Alongside her two older sisters and parents, Garland began to tour around the country. Initially billed as "The Gumm Sisters," their parents eventually changed it to "The Garland Sisters" after the girls were purportedly told to come up with a moniker with more audience appeal. According to Garland's daughter Lorna Luft, whose 1998 work Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir served as the basis for the 2001 award-winning television miniseries of the same name, the decision to adopt the nom de theatre was inspired in particular by producer George Jessel, who fondly stated that the sisters "looked prettier than a garland of flowers." From 1934 onwards, Frances would be known to the world by one name only: Judy Garland.
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