American performer and gay icon Judy Garland was BOTD in 1922. Born Frances Gumm in Grand Rapids, Michigan to actor parents, she began performing in vaudeville as a child. By 10, she was a singing sensation, attracting the attention of Hollywood producers, and signed a contract with film studio MGM at 13. Teamed with fellow child star Mickey Rooney, she made a series of successful “putting on a show” musical films, making her one of MGM’s most popular box-office stars. Her remarkable performance in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz earned her a special Oscar for juvenile performers. Fed amphetamines and barbituates to endure long working hours and put on a restrictive diet to keep a youthful appearance, she struggled with depression and drug addiction for the rest of her life. She transitioned to adult roles with the 1944 musical Meet Me in St Louis, directed by Vincente Minnelli. They married the following year, and had a daughter, the actress and singer Liza Minnelli. Garland’s later career was a roller-coaster of triumphs and burnouts, with tremendous performances in Easter Parade and Summer Stock followed by breakdowns, suicide attempts and Olympian-level drug abuse. Dumped by MGM in 1950, she returned to the stage, with celebrated performances at New York’s Palace Theatre and the London Palladium. Her long-awaited screen comeback, A Star is Born, had a troubled production, marred by her frequent absence from set due to illness. Released in 1954, it was a box office disappointment, though she won praise for her triple threat of singing, dancing and acting skills (playing, ironically, an actress struggling with her husband’s addiction). Favoured to win the Oscar, she lost to Grace Kelly, in what was widely viewed as a cold-shoulder from Hollywood. She delivered a powerful dramatic performance in Judgment at Nuremberg, but largely disappeared from Hollywood, staging a comeback with a now-legendary 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall. The recording of the concert won five Grammys, including album of the year and best female vocal performance, and remains one of the best-selling musical albums of all time. She also hosted and produced the popular TV variety show The Judy Garland Show, memorably performing with Liza and a young Barbra Streisand. A staunch supporter of Black civil rights and progressive causes, Garland was both aware and appreciative of her substantial gay fanbase, who saw their own struggles reflected in her tumultuous life. In 1967, she undertook a concert series at the Palace Theatre in London, shocking audiences with her haggard, emaciated appearance and ragged voice. Married five times, she had two children with third husband Sidney Luft. She died in 1969 of an accidental barbituates overdose, aged 47. The news of her death is thought to have inspired drag queens at the Stonewall Inn in New York to fight back against a police raid, triggering the Stonewall Riots, the symbolic birth of the gay liberation movement. Now considered one of the greatest performers of the 20th century, she is also hailed as a gay icon. Her performance in Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz inspired the term “friends of Dorothy” to describe homosexuality, while the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow has become an enduring LGBTQ anthem. She has been portrayed many time on stage and screen, most notably by Judy Davis in the TV film Me and My Shadow, and by Renee Zellwegger in the Oscar-winning biopic Judy.