A Look Back at Her 5 Marriages

Judy Garland was best known for playing Dorothy Gale and singing “Over the Rainbow” in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. But while Dorothy went on a fantastical adventure, the actress and singer’s journey off-screen was plagued by depression and drug abuse.

Sadly, Garland died in 1969 from a barbiturate overdose when she was 47.

Throughout her life, Garland had five husbands — composer David Rose, film director Vincente Minnelli, businessman Sid Luft, actor Mark Herron and entrepreneur Mickey Deans — who witnessed the young star’s ups and downs and gave her three children.

Here are the stories behind Garland’s marriages and the role these men played in her life.

David Rose (1941–1944)

David Rose was already a successful composer and orchestra leader when he first met Garland. He was asked to make some arrangements for her records, and their association was initially purely professional.

After his first marriage to actress Martha Raye ended after less than three years, he and Garland saw more of each other. Eventually, their common enthusiasm for music led to romance, and they married in July 1941.

It was a scandalous move at the time. Garland, the shining star of MGM, was just 19, and Rose was 12 years her senior. Her mother and the MGM studio heads forbade her from doing it, worried the wedding would ruin her reputation as the innocent teenager from The Wizard of Oz. However, Garland stood her ground, rushing off to Las Vegas with Rose to get married.

Their shared musical passion wouldn’t be enough to keep them together. The two were polar opposites — Rose, reserved, and Garland, far more fond of parties and dancing. The two divorced in 1944.

Rose continued to find success with hits like “The Stripper” and “Holiday for Strings.” He won four Emmy Awards for compositions for television programs like Little House on the Prairie and Bonanza.

Vincente Minnelli (1945–1951)

Garland’s 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis was one of her biggest hits, launching songs “The Boy Next Door,” “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” into the American lexicon. It was also where she met her second husband, director Vincente Minnelli.

Minnelli apparently pushed Garland to drop her “girl-next-door” image, hiring a makeup artist who refined her appearance to give her a more sophisticated look. The makeover exposed Garland to a whole new audience. The couple married in June 1945.

The actress and director duo reunited twice more, in 1945’s The Clock and 1948’s The Pirate. In March 1946, they also welcomed their daughter Liza Minnelli, who would become a star in her own right.

Following her death, it became public over time that Garland lived with addiction and mental health disorders. As reported by PBS News, her struggles with severe cases of depression and anxiety led to Garland self-medicating with alcohol and drugs such as amphetamines and sleeping pills, which she had used since she was a child.

Fired from MGM after 15 years, Garland had a “nervous breakdown” and spiraled, resulting in two suicide attempts. The stresses took a toll on her marriage to Minnelli, and Garland began an affair. She and Minnelli divorced in 1951.

Sid Luft (1952–1965)

Though they first met when she was 15, Garland and businessman Sid Luft began dating 14 years later when Garland was still married to Minnelli. Out of work and recently hospitalized after a suicide attempt, Garland was at a low point.

In Judy and I: My Life with Judy Garland — a 2017 memoir about the late star excerpted at the time in PEOPLE — Luft wrote that he felt “an electrical force” and a desire to protect her.

They married in June 1952 and remained together for 13 years, by far her longest relationship. The couple had two children together: Lorna Luft, born in November 1952, and Joey Luft, born in March 1955.

Luft became Garland’s manager and staged a comeback with triumphant live engagements in London and New York. He was instrumental in getting her the lead in 1954’s A Star Is Born, which earned her an Oscar nomination.

In the years that followed, Garland’s dependency on various pills quickly began to dominate their relationship. Luft said her drug addiction, suicide attempts and constant struggle to diet drove them further apart.

“If I were to show concern, she’d abruptly tell me to ‘f— off,’” he wrote.

By 1962, the pair lived “virtually separate lives” in the same home, with the children residing in one wing that Garland occasionally visited. “[The children] wouldn’t realize she was stoned,” Luft added.

They finally divorced in May 1965, with Garland telling a judge at a court hearing that Luft had been abusive. The New York Times reported that Garland told Edward R. Brand of the Superior Court, “He struck me many times. He did a lot of drinking.”

Though Luft denied the claims, he again faced scrutiny decades later when he attempted to sell her Academy Award, only to be blocked by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. He married twice more.

Mark Herron (1965–1967)

Garland wasn’t single for long. She married actor (and tour promoter) Mark Herron in a Las Vegas ceremony in November 1965. (They actually wed in the summer of 1964, but since Garland was still legally married to Luft, they had to wait to make it official.)

Herron produced Garland’s two 1964 London Palladium concerts with Liza, as well as some 1956 Canadian appearances.

They separated five months later. Garland was granted a divorce in 1976, testifying that Herron had beaten her. According to The Los Angeles Times, he said he had “only hit her in self-defense.”

Herron continued acting, often appearing in summer stock productions. He had a long-lasting relationship with fellow actor Henry Brandon. The two stayed together until Brandon’s death in 1990. Herron died in 1996.

Mickey Deans (1969)

Musician Mickey Deans was only married to Garland for three months before she died. The two met on strange terms. As he explained in his 1972 autobiography Weep No More, My Lady, they were in Garland’s hotel in New York in 1966, with Deans posing as a doctor when he delivered the singer a package of stimulant tablets.

They dated on and off for three years before Deans proposed, and they wed on March 15, 1969.

He discovered Garland on the morning of June 22, 1969, dead in their bathroom.

Eventually, Deans moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he focused on historic renovations and producing police fundraising events. He never remarried and died of congestive heart failure in July 2003 at the age of 68.