Judy Garland decorating with her first husband David Rose, 1941

“They met, appropriately enough, at a radio broadcast, and a few months later the fan magazines suddenly noticed that they had all but rented a table at Ciro’s, so often were they seen there. “Judy,” announced one, “must be in love!”

Judy was so much in love, in fact, that she did something she had never done before. She stood up to both her mother and Louis B. Mayer, the head of the studio. Both had issued ultimatums. She could not marry, let alone marry a divorced man 12 years her senior. Though she was 19, MGM was still casting “that baby,” as Mayer called her, as an innocent teenager, whose most daring sexual adventure was an occasional kiss on the cheek from Mickey Rooney. Marriage would damage one of the studio’s most valuable properties and possibly end her career. Garland’s mother agreed, adding that Judy’s two older sisters had lived to regret their own marriages to musicians. “I wish you girls would find someone who digs a slide rule instead of a slide trombone,” she complained.” (.)