Judy Garland Criticized For Doing Blackface, But She Was Forced Into Roles And Abused From A Young Age

Gen Z is known for retroactively finding reasons to call various actors and celebrities racist. They have recently set their sights on Judy Garland, claiming that her past blackface performances make her a bigot who should never be celebrated again. But there's more to the story than what we see on camera.

Judy Garland, born Frances Ethel Gumm in 1922, became an American cultural icon with a career spanning over four decades in the entertainment industry. Garland captivated audiences as a singer, actress, and performer, but her journey was one fraught with challenges from an early age. With a pushy stage mother and a demanding studio system, Garland was subjected to a harsh regimen that included drug prescriptions for weight loss and sleep regulation. Her breakout role came at the age of 16 in the iconic film The Wizard of Oz, where she played Dorothy Gale. The movie catapulted her to stardom but also left her with emotional and physical scars due to on-set exploitation.

Garland's talents weren't confined to the silver screen; she was also a gifted singer with an emotional depth that resonated with audiences. She won numerous awards, including a Juvenile Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Tony, and Grammy Awards. Her later years were marked by personal and professional struggles, including drug and alcohol addiction, financial instability, and four turbulent marriages. Despite these hardships, she continued to perform until her untimely death in 1969 at the age of 47 from an overdose of barbiturates.

Judy Garland Criticized for Doing Blackface, but She Was Forced into Roles and Abused from a Young Age

The tale of the making of the classic film The Wizard of Oz reveals a grim underside to Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age, especially concerning its treatment of Garland. A chaotic project from the start, it had three credited writers, 17 uncredited, and saw four directors fired before Victor Fleming took the reins. But the most harrowing story comes from the set experiences of 16-year-old Garland.

Her exploitation began far earlier in her life. At the age of 10, Garland was given stimulants by her mother, Ethel Gumm, to stay awake for grueling 72-hour shoots, followed by sleeping pills to rest. This early exploitation set the stage for her experiences during the filming of The Wizard of Oz. Sid Luft, Garland’s ex-husband, revealed in a posthumous memoir that Garland was groped by the actors playing the munchkins on set. Despite the abuses, she maintained her public persona as a consummate performer, masking her traumas even in interviews. This grim chapter serves as a stark example of how the chaos and creative rigor often associated with filmmaking can serve as a veil for cruel exploitation and abuse. Even though The Wizard of Oz immortalized Garland's name in Hollywood, it also marred her life and career irreparably.

Garland’s self-image was also deeply affected. Early in her career, after her first starring role, she felt overweight, a self-assessment likely influenced by MGM head Louis B. Mayer’s derogatory remarks about her physique. According to biographer Lauren Becall, from childhood, Garland was placed on various drugs to lose weight or regulate sleep, which affected her for life.

This pattern of abuse had long-lasting consequences. Garland was addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates by the end of filming and struggled with mental health issues, exacerbated by further mistreatment from studio executives. Surveillance was sent to her home to enforce a diet of coffee, cigarettes, and chicken soup, and social contact with people her age was restricted.

It was also revealed that Garland was forced to have multiple abortions at a young age. “Married or not, the MGM girls maintained their virginal image,” Jane Ellen Wayne writes in The Golden Girls of MGM. Garland married bandleader David Rose in 1941 when she was just 19 years old. When she was pregnant, her mother and the studio arranged for her to have an abortion—without asking if she agreed with the decision. In 1943, Garland got pregnant again from her affair with Tyrone Power. Howard Strickling, head of publicity for MGM, arranged for her to have another abortion. Naturally, these experiences led to many mental health issues for Garland.

After her death, Garland's third husband, Sid Luft, said she attempted to kill herself 20 different times in the 13 years they were married. In 1950, she was fired from MGM (after producing 30 films with the studio), and Betty Hutton was cast in Annie Get Your Gun. She cut her throat with a broken water glass, and after she survived, she ate herself to obesity.

“I went to pieces,” Garland said. “All I wanted to do was eat and hide. I lost all my self-confidence for 10 years. I suffered agonies of stage fright. People had to literally push me onto the stage.”

Many content creators on TikTok have been sharing clips of Garland doing blackface in the past, particularly in the 1930s when she wore a checkered dress, had fake braids, and had her whole face painted black with overlined white lips. People claimed that these moments of Garland's career were buried, and we need to know who she really was.

But many people defended her in the comments and reminded others that Garland was forced to do these roles from a young age and had no choice in the matter.

"As inexcusable as these actions are this was 1941 unfortunately this was incredibly normalized as well as her parents/ network thing forcing her to," one person commented.

"Judy was forced to do black face, she had no choice, it was the 40s," another said.

"At the risk of sounding like an uncle tom... Judy had almost no control over her career. studios even controlled who you married & what you ate," another person said.

Gen Z is desperate to paint anyone in a racist light retrospectively, but very few are willing to admit that Garland lived in a different era. It may be hard for young people to understand this today, but the truth is, blackface was commonly accepted in this time period, and very few (if any) opposed it because it simply wasn't considered offensive. There are countless things that our ancestors and late Hollywood actors did that would be taken as extremely insulting today, but they were completely normal back then. The opposite can be argued as well; back then, it would be considered extremely inappropriate (and perhaps even mentally ill) to show your naked body to spectators at a basketball game (like Lizzo has done many times) or to brag about cheating on your husband (which many women do online today). But today, these are considered perfectly normal and acceptable.

Even aside from the differences in time period, Garland was forced into these roles against her will. It's extremely unfair to hold her accountable for these actions when she was coerced into doing them, amidst a slew of emotional and physical abuse. Let her soul in rest in peace instead of retroactively trying to cancel a woman who died decades ago.

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