If raw emotion alone could make a singer great, Judy Garland would be pop music's greatest. She was one of the star personalities of the entertainment business—a dynamic, tragic figure on stage, screen, and in her tumultuous not-so-private life.
Little more than three years after the birth of Frances Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, her parents put her on the vaudeville stage to perform in a vocal act with her two older sisters. In 1935,...