Visit our Judy Garland Tribute Site to find out more about the singer and actress. View Photo Gallery, Timeline, Quiz, and more!

Actress and singer. Born on Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Judy Garland, the star of many classic musical films, was known for her tremendous talent and troubled life. She started out in show business at an early age. The daughter of vaudeville professionals, she started her stage career as a child.

Garland was called “Baby Gumm” and sang “Jingle Bells” at her first public performance at age of two and a half. With her two older sisters, Susie and Jimmie, Garland soon began performing as part of the Gumm Sisters.

In 1926, the Gumm family moved to California where Garland and her sisters studied acting and dancing. They played numerous gigs that their mother Ethel had arranged for them as their manager and agent. In the late 1920s, the Gumm sisters also appeared in several short films.

The Gumm sisters transformed the Garland sisters at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1934. Traveling with their mother, the sisters played at a theater with comedian George Jessel who reportedly suggested they become the Garland sisters. Garland shed her nickname “Baby” in favor of a more mature and vibrant Judy. The following year, she would become a solo act, signing a movie contract with MGM at the age of 13. It was on a radio broadcast that November, however, that Garland debuted one of the songs most closely associated with her, “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart.” Shortly after the program aired, Garland suffered a great personal loss when her father Frank died of spinal meningitis.

Despite her personal anguish, Garland continued on her path to film stardom. One of her first feature film roles was in Pigskin Parade (1936). Playing a girl-next-door type of role, Garland went on to co-star in Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) with friend Mickey Rooney. The two proved to be a popular pairing, and they co-starred in several more Andy Hardy films.

Not only was she working a lot, Garland was under pressure from the studio about her looks and her weight. She was given amphetamines to boost her energy and control her weight. Unfortunately, Garland would soon become reliant on this medication as well as needing to take something else to help her sleep. Drug problems would plague her throughout her career.

In 1939, Garland scored one of her greatest on-screen successes with The Wizard of Oz (1939), which showcased her singing talents as well as her acting abilities. Garland received a special Academy Award for her portrayal of Dorothy, the girl from Kansas transported to Oz. She soon made several more musicals, including Strike Up the Band (1940), Babes of Broadway (1942) with Mickey Rooney, and For Me and My Gal (1943) with Gene Kelly.

Maguire’s father, Vincent, and mother, Wendy, were young and unwed when he was born. Although they married soon after the birth, their relationship was short-lived and Maguire spent much of his early childhood shuttling between households in California, Washington and Oregon.

Maguire’s mother, a secretary, encouraged her son to take acting lessons and soon she was escorting him through the standard circuit of Hollywood auditions. Maguire managed to cadge one- and two-line roles in such sitcoms as Roseanne and Blossom. Maguire left school in the ninth grade to devote himself to acting. He eventually landed a lead role in FOX’s ill-fated Great Scott! . The show was cancelled in 1992 after nine weeks.

In 1995, Maguire auditioned for the lead in the Generation X comedy Empire Records. He was given a small part and eventually excused himself from the production, citing personal frustration. His scenes were cut from the little-seen film.

But this personal setback proved a prelude to giant professional leap forward. After a brief sabbatical from the audition circuit, later that year he appeared in Duke of Groove, a short-film which received an Oscar nomination. He then leveraged a role in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry (1997) and following that, a major role in the brooding, Ang Lee drama The Ice Storm (1997). Maguire’s performance as Paul Hood, the sardonic-but-sensitive son of Kevin Kline and Joan Allen, earned high praise from critics. In 1998, Maguire again played the fictive son of Joan Allen in Pleasantville, but this time, it was Maguire in the lead role.

After a small role in the film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Maguire again played the coming-of-age card in The Cider House Rules, a wistful interpretation of John Irving’s bestselling novel. The film garnered seven Academy Award nominations.

In Wonder Boys (2000), Maguire found himself playing a slightly quirkier version of the prodigal son. Cast opposite Michael Douglas, Maguire played James Leer, a precocious writing student with a flair for prevarication.

But with the release of Spiderman (2002), Maguire’s days as the Holden-Caulfield-in-residence seem to be over. Reportedly paid $4 million for the title role, Maguire (with the help of a range of state-of-the-art special effects) made the transition from nerdy teen Peter Parker to comic book hero. The film, which was tied up in copyright wrangling for almost a decade, also features Kirsten Dunst and Willem Dafoe. The film netted $114 million in its opening weekend, a box-office record. The actor signed on for the sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man, for 2004. In 2006, Maguire starred in the Oscar-nominated film, The Good German. Maguire returns as Peter Parker in the third Spider-Man film opening in May 2007.

Maguire lives in Los Angeles. Although he has publicly proclaimed his abstention from alcohol and drugs, he is an avid participant in the city’s nightlife and a visible member of what the media has dubbed “the latter-day Rat Pack” along with fellow actor and friend Leonardo DiCaprio.

© 2007 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.