The Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, where the star was born, recently announced that the late 19th century clapboard house in which she spent the first four years of her life is now open to the public.
No doubt the Museum is using flyer printing and poster printing to make residents and visitors to the area aware of this new attraction.
The house recently underwent extensive renovations by Marc Charbonnet, an interior designer based in New York, who is also a Garland enthusiast. Charbonnet worked for two years on the initial design of the interior of the house, looking for furnishings, wallpaper, fabrics, and other household objects of the period so that the house would look like it did when the Garland family lived there.
The items that he has found since completion of the renovation, many of which he knows belonged to the family, have been donated to the Just Garland Museum, which has a collection of her memorabilia.
Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm in 1922, and her family often gave impromptu performances to their guests, preparing ‘Baby Gumm’ for a stage debut as a professional at the age of two. She later joined her siblings in a vaudeville act that toured around the country and emerged quickly as the star of the family.
Once her family left Grand Rapids for Los Angeles in 1926, Garland, who adapted her name for the stage in 1934, returned to the house only on rare occasions. However, she always considered herself to be a plain American girl from Grand Rapids.
