From drugs to endure exhausting work hours, to unrequited love, these celebrities were on the lips of many generations.
Judy Garland, the actress who gave life to the character of Dorothy in the film The Wizard of Oz (1939) was a childhood collaborator of Mickey Rooney, who would become famous for his participation in the Andy Hardy saga. Both were from that generation of the 30s in Hollywood and, initially, when they were hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM), neither had any idea that in the future they would share a set in 12 films and that their lives would be intertwined by strong rumors.
Frances Gumm and Joseph Yule Jr. -the real names of the two celebrities- began their careers around 1935 when she was 13 years old and the boy was 15. Their stage names were a requirement requested by MGM when they joined the company and, both The native of Minnesota, like the boy from Brooklyn glimpsed with this modification what would be the beginning of a long career in the world of the seventh art.
But something that would shock the public beyond his brilliant performances in films like Crazy About Them, Youth Harmonies, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, were the speculations that little by little gained strength. In them it was said that the demand in MGM was so great that the young people had to take from sleeping pills to barbiturates, to endure the long periods of recordings.
The controversy of this situation lasted for several years and, according to what Garland would have told biographer Paul Donnelley, these assumptions would have been true:
“They gave me (Mickey Rooney) pills to keep us up long after we were exhausted (…) Then they took us to the studio hospital and knocked us out with sleeping pills… then after four hours They would wake us up and give us the pills again so we could work 72 hours straight. Half the time we were hanging from the ceiling, but it was a way of life for us."
For many, it was not a secret that Garland over the years suffered from a great problem of addiction to drugs and alcohol, in addition, to that she tried to take her life on multiple occasions.
Sid Luft, ex-husband of the actress, would declare for the obituary in The New York Times that Garland tried to commit suicide at least 20 times since she was 28 years old. This, coupled with the multiple hospitalizations for physical reasons and mental health crises that the famous actress went through for years.
But everything did not stop there, because Mickey Rooney would also have issued several statements regarding whether he and Judy were forced to take pills when they were young by study orders. According to the American medium Public Broadcasting Service, the actor denied on multiple occasions that the events happened in this way.
“Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer never gave Judy Garland drugs. Mr. Mayer did not sanction anything for Judy. No one on that lot was responsible for the death of Judy Garland. Unfortunately, Judy chose that path," Rooney said.
Another of the rumors that arose over the years was that, due to the closeness between Judy and Mickey in various films, a romance could exist between the two. However, as far as records exist, this never happened.
In addition, according to the journalist Anne Helen Petersen, Garland has always been branded in the industry as an "ugly duckling" and this would have perpetuated a mirage of "unrequited love" between Judy and Rooney.
"She didn't look like the rest of those MGM stars... she became kind of an avatar for the rejected person, who's enough or pretty enough," Petersen noted in 2014 on the You Must Remember podcast. Este.
By 1942, Rooney was 21 years old and married Ava Gardner, from whom he would divorce a year later. Subsequently, the famous married seven more times -none with Judy- and, throughout his life, he conceived nine children and two stepchildren.
On the other hand, Judy married David Rose, then Vincente Minnelli, later Sidney Luft, Mark Herron, and finally Mickey Deans.
Although Garland's addictions continued to worsen, by 1968 - when her career was no longer at the height of the 1930s - she tried to get back on the road to fame and sing in London for five weeks.
“Most nights Judy would function without the pills, but she had to feel that someone was there to help her. People always think of her as an alcoholic, but it was the pills that were the real monsters in her life," Wilder said at the time.
The greatest tragedy would happen on June 22, 1969, when Mickey Dean found his wife, Judy Garland, in the bathroom of the apartment they shared in London. The version of events was blunt: The Wizard of Oz actress would have died from an accidental drug overdose.
