Remembering An Icon: The Sad Truth Behind Judy Garland's Cause Of Death

The third daughter of vaudevillians Frank and Ethel Gumm, the future icon was born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. She made her stage debut at the age of two and a half, performing alongside her older sisters, Mary Jane and Virginia, as the Gumm Sisters.

"Most of her teen and adult life, she had been on either Benzedrine or a diet or both," Sidney Luft wrote in his memoir 'Judy and I: My Life With Judy Garland.' "Unlike other actresses, she could not successfully camouflage extra weight, especially because she was dancing and singing in revealing costumes," Luft further wrote.

Ethel, an aggressive and critical stage mother, was the first to give Garland pills to keep her energy up for the stage and to help her sleep afterward. According to the biography "Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland" by Gerald Clarke, this started as early as age ten.

The problem worsened when Garland signed on as an actress with MGM in 1935. She later spoke about the breakneck pace at which she was expected to work—starring in more than two dozen films for the studio.

"They had us working days and nights on end. They’d give us pills to keep us on our feet long after we were exhausted. Then they’d take us to the studio hospital and knock us out with sleeping pills—[co-star Mickey Rooney] sprawled out on one bed and me on another," Garland said, according to Paul Donnelley's biography of the actress. "Then after four hours they’d wake us up and give us the pep pills again so we could work 72 hours in a row. Half of the time we were hanging from the ceiling, but it was a way of life for us," she added.

She struggled with addiction, anxiety, and illness. After getting hooked on pills at 15, Garland’s health declined throughout her life. Her obituary in the 'LA Times' lists her illnesses: “hepatitis, exhaustion, kidney ailments, nervous breakdowns, near-fatal drug reactions, overweight, underweight, and injuries suffered in falls.” Her drug habit had impeded her career before. While filming the 1948 film 'The Pirate' with Minnelli, Garland’s pill use spiked, causing her to miss days of filming and exhibit erratic behavior, including shouting paranoid thoughts on set

In 1945, Garland married director Vincente Minnelli. They had a child, Liza, but divorced in 1951 when Minnelli was having an affair with a man. Garland had two children with her next husband, Sidney Luft. Her fourth husband, actor Mark Herron, was gay. Garland divorced him after he was abusive toward her, and after their brief marriage, Herron was in a committed relationship with another actor. Garland met her last husband, Mickey Deans, when he was delivering stimulants to her. They were married for only three months before she died. “He gave in to her and he fed her all the things she wanted,” said Rosalyn Wilder, a colleague.

Toward the end of her life, Judy Garland faced serious money problems. She performed solo concerts to pay off thousands of dollars in back taxes owed to the IRS. These shows were often chaotic, with Garland sometimes taking the stage hours late, leading to angry and hostile audiences.

Deans and Garland were still very much a couple when he found her dead in their Belgravia home on June 22, 1969. He broke through a locked bathroom door and discovered Garland slumped on the toilet, her hands still holding up her head. The Scotland Yard autopsy recorded her cause of death as "Barbiturate poisoning (quinabarbitone) incautious self-overdosage. Accidental."

The coroner, Dr. Gavin Thurston, also found evidence of cirrhosis of the liver, likely due to the copious amount of alcohol Garland had consumed throughout her life. “This is quite clearly an accidental circumstance to a person who was accustomed to taking barbiturates over a very long time,” Dr. Thurston said about Judy Garland’s cause of death. “She took more barbiturates than she could tolerate," he added.