Judy Garland

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When writing about Gig I came to think about Judy Garland. The difference here is that poor Judy was basically carnage leftover from before child actors really had rights in place to protect them. Judy was given pep pills to keep her going and sleeping pills to make her sleep at the end of the night by the same people who would later label her as hard to deal with and dispose of her when she was no longer able to stay lucid because of the things they did to her. It was the studio that got her addicted to pills and eventually ruined her life but instead of taking any sort of responsibility for it they basically just made it like it was all her doing. Judy Garland had so much talent and had this amazing singing voice but it was ruined due to addiction that the studio got her hooked on. She should have been protected as a child but she wasn't. She could have been so much more but thanks to everything the studio took from her she died far younger than she should have. Growing up one of my favorite childhood movies after "Peter Pan" with Mary Martin was "The Wizard of Oz" and I think about how that movie should have been a happier time for her than it really was. Judy Garland had all of this talent but thanks to her inability to stay sober and lucid she was difficult to work with. Gene Kelly said he owed her a lot for being so helpful when he did his first film with her which is why he helped her with "Summer Stock" when no one else wanted to work with her. She had been labeled difficult to work with because of her inability to be reliable on a film. She was seldom sober and she was really difficult to work with but Gene worked with her anyway because he felt he owed her. Despite how difficult was for them that movie turned out amazing and when you hear Judy sing in it you wouldn't believe she was really as bad as it was said she was. Judy really needed more support than she had. Child actors who don't have people protecting them often become prey and back when she was a child there weren't the rules and regulations in place to keep her from being preyed upon. I feel so bad for what was done to her. She died far too soon. She had children who loved her and needed her but they never really got the mom they needed because of her addiction.