A Look at Judy Garland’s 5 Marriages—From Romance to Heartbreak

When we consider the late Judy Garland, we often think of things like The Wizard of Oz and A Star is Born or her tragic battle with mental health. But it turns out that there was another side of the actress that often goes undiscussed: her five marriages, each of which represents something of a mini-saga in her life and few of which actually seemed to have been a good fit. Discover the must-know details regarding her five husbands, including which one was with her at the time of her death.

David Rose (1941 to 1944) 

Judy Garland’s first husband was David Rose, a British composer and bandleader 12 years her senior. The two married in Las Vegas, Nevada, in July 1941 when Garland was 19 and Rose was 31. Problems quickly arose in the marriage, though, because both Garland’s mother and the MGM studio thought her marriage would tarnish the actress' wholesome image. 

Rose himself was also quite hostile to Garland and even teamed up with her mother to convince Garland to have an illegal abortion. All of this led the two to get divorced in June 1944 after just three years of marriage. 

Rose died in 1990 at age 80 and earned two Oscar nominations before his passing. He remarried in 1948, but that one also ended in divorce. 

Vincente Minnelli (1944 to 1951) 

After divorcing Rose, Garland decided to star in the film Meet Me in St. Louis, which debuted in theaters in 1945. There, she met her second husband, director Vincente Minnelli, whom she married in June 1945 despite the 20-year age gap. 

While their marriage might have ended in divorce, Minnelli did positively impact Garland’s life and career. He convinced her to drop her “good girl image” and even hired a makeup artist to help her do so. 

Additionally, he was the father of Garland’s first child, Liza Minnelli, born in March 1946.

Sadly, though, Garland’s depression, anxiety and drug addiction caused her to veer onto a very dark path, resulting in her being fired by MGM after 15 years, causing Garland to try and take her own life twice and enter into various affairs. All of this would ultimately lead the two to divorce in March 1951. 

Minnelli died in 1986 at age 83 and was married three more times after Garland. 

Sidney Luft (1952 to 1965) 

Garland was married to businessman Sidney “Sid” Lift the longest. The two originally met when the actress was 15, but did not begin dating until she was 29. At the time, Garland was still married to Minnelli and battling her mental health demons. 

In Luft’s memoir, Judy and I: My Life with Judy Garland, he even recalled the time that “Judy had cut her throat with a razor blade ... .What demons inhabited her soul just when life seemed so rich and productive? It was a gigantic puzzlement that she would poison herself with pills and that the toxic reaction to whatever she swallowed would create an impulse for self-mutilation.”

He also vividly remembered another time that Garland tried to end her life, writing, “When Judy came out in her short white lace negligee, her arms were in front of her, and she said, ‘Look, darling, what I’ve done!’ Her wrists had been slashed, and she was bleeding profusely.”

Both of these events happened after the two married in June 1952 and between the births of their two children, Lorna (1952) and Joey Luft (1955). During this time,  Luft also became Garland’s manager, which was reportedly the reason the actress' career continued to thrive after she was let go from MGM studios. 

The two divorced in May 1965, with Garland accusing Luft of abuse, stating, "He struck me many times.” After her death, he also tried to sell Garland’s Oscar for The Wizard of Oz. 

Luft died in 2005 from a heart attack. 

Mark Herron (1965 to 1967) 

The same year that Garland divorced Luft, the actress married actor Truman “Mark” Herron in November. Fun fact, though: the two first got married during the summer of 1964, but had to wait until Garland’s divorce from Luft was final to make it legal. 

This was Garland’s fourth marriage and the third time she decided to mix business with pleasure. Herron planned two of Garland and Liza’s shows at the London Palladium and several shows in Canada in 1966. 

The marital bliss didn’t last long, though, because the two divorced in 1967 after Garland accused Herron of beating her. He denied these charges, though, saying that he “only hit her in self-defense.”

Harron died in 1996 from leukemia. 

Mickey Deans (1969 until her death) 

Garland’s shortest marriage also happened to be her last. After pretending to be a doctor to deliver the actress drugs in 1966, Mickey Deans and Garland began dating on and off for three years. Deans then proposed, and the two got married in March of 1969. 

A little over a month after they tied the knot, though, Garland died of an overdose in their bathroom. In total, the two were married for 38 days. 

Deans died in 2003 from congestive heart failure. He was 68. 

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