Judy is a biographical drama about American actress Judy Garland, who started out as part of a vaudeville family and eventually became a bigger child star than Shirley Temple. Her most iconic role was playing Dorothy Gale in the movie The Wizard of Oz, which she did while still a teenager. The movie Judy follows her life from her difficult childhood until her untimely death in 1969 at the age of 47. It takes an honest look at her use of drugs to stay thin and keep up with her work schedule, as well as her five marriages.
The movie is complete with numerous flashbacks, which prove to be effective in telling Garland’s life story. During the last part of her life, she had a successful stage career in Britain, but her health deteriorates and at the end of her life, she is diagnosed as being both physically and emotionally exhausted. Renee Zellweger plays the title role, and the film goes into detail about her later performances being affected by her moodiness and her unreliability on stage.
Since the movie is a biography, only part of it details her role in The Wizard of Oz, but it’s interesting to note that while working on that movie, she was constantly being given amphetamines both to keep her weight down and to help her stay alert enough to accommodate her work schedule. After an already difficult childhood, Judy is constantly being told she is overweight and that she won’t get any future parts in movies unless she is a lot thinner.
Six months before Judy Garland died, she gave a concert in Britain and sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at the end of the concert. Before she left the stage, she asked the audience not to forget her. “Promise you won’t,” she says to them at the end of the concert. The movie made more than $45 million and was considered a huge success, even though some critics called Renee Zellweger’s performance shallow and gave it less-than-promising reviews.
Below are the main characters in the movie Judy:
Renee Zellweger (Judy Garland)
Although the movie mostly follows Judy Garland’s career during the last part of her life, flashbacks are used to show what happened to her along the way. Her most familiar role was that of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz, but she also had many years of success as an actress, singer, and stage act, both in the United States and in Britain. Eventually, her health starts to deteriorate and between the amphetamines and her problems with anxiety, her performances start to suffer as well.
She is married five times and has three children – two daughters and a son. She is physically separated from her children for much of the time that she is in Britain performing, but due to certain events, she has to perform there to make ends meet. At one point, she returns to the States to see her children and find that her third husband, Sidney Luft, has divorced her. Judy Garland died on June 22, 1969, in Britain at the age of 47.
Finn Wittrock (Mickey Deans)
Mickey Deans was Judy Garland’s fifth husband, whom she married the same year she died. Deans was a nightclub owner who Judy met at a party, and the two became good friends. Toward the end of her life, he always cheered her up and helped her through some tough times, even paying her a surprise visit in London when she was performing there. There’s little wonder that they end up married, considering how fond they were of each other when they first met.
Rufus Sewell (Sidney Luft)
Sidney Luft was Judy Garland’s third husband and father of two of her children, Lorna Luft and Joey Luft. To many, Luft was the reason Garland kept working, and he even talked her studio Warner Bros. into bankrolling her comeback movie, which was a remake of A Star is Born and which was hugely successful. Luft started out as a boxer but got into show business in “behind the scenes” jobs. According to those who knew him best, this is where he really shined and it didn’t surprise them that he was successful at it.
That being said, while A Star is Born made huge amounts of money, it didn’t make more than the production costs, which is why Luft’s contract with Warner Bros. was canceled after the movie was made. If the contract hadn’t been canceled, Garland would’ve been featured in two additional films, which were almost certain to be successful. Luft was accused of abuse while married to Garland, and died of a heart attack in 2005 at the age of 89.
Richard Cordery (Louis B. Mayer)
Louis B. Mayer was a film producer and part owner of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio, one of the most successful studios in the history of Hollywood. It was Mayer who used emotional abuse and physical intimidation to get Garland to take amphetamines, which he said would help her lose weight and give her enough energy to accommodate her hectic schedule. Unfortunately, Garland remained addicted to amphetamines for the rest of her life, and few were surprised when she died of a drug overdose.
Mayer was like a father figure to his child and teenage stars, including Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. He made a total of nine films with Garland, and most of the young people who worked for his studio had good things to say about him. He died at the age of 73 in 1957.
Gemma-Leah Devereaux (Liza Minnelli)
Liza Minnelli was Judy Garland’s oldest child and was born in 1946. She is a singer, dancer, actress, and choreographer. She was married and divorced four times and starred on Broadway in Cabaret, as well as in the very successful movie Arthur in 1981. The movie Judy shows her relationship with her mother as well as the start of her career. She even had a small part in one of Garland’s films, In the Good Old Summertime, which was filmed in 1949 when she was only three years old.
Bella Ramsey (Lorna Luft)
Lorna Luft is Judy Garland’s second daughter and was born in 1952 and is an actress, singer, and author. She has starred in many films and Broadway productions, as well as television shows such as McLeod, Murder She Wrote, Love American Style, The Twilight Zone, Caroline in the City, Hooperman, and Sean Saves the World. She is still active in the business today.
Lewin Lloyd (Joey Luft)
Joey Luft was the son of Judy Garland and Sidney Luft and Judy Garland’s third child. He was born in 1955 and is now an actor and film producer. When his mother died in 1969, he was around 14 years old.
Gus Barry (Mickey Rooney)
By the time Mickey Rooney died in 2014 at the age of 93, he had been in show business for roughly nine decades. He and Judy Garland made numerous movies together and were both child stars. Until Garland died, her relationship with Rooney was very close, although the two were never romantically involved. In addition to Judy Garland, Rooney worked with other big names that include Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, John Wayne, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Other characters in the film include: