7. Judy Garland was subjected to ridicule over her weight while in her teens
Judy Garland was an established child star before she took on the role for which she remains most well-known to this day, that of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz. The studio bosses at MGM were determined to control her weight, after noting with alarm that both she and frequent costar Mickey Rooney were both gaining pounds, possibly a reaction to the drug cocktails both were fed to keep them on their frenetic filming schedules. Garland received memos daily while working containing descriptions of how she appeared on film. They were not complimentary. By contrast, Rooney’s burgeoning rotundity escaped most comments, while Garland read comments negatively describing the fit of her costumes, all while swallowing the diet pills prescribed not by doctors but by MGM officers.
MGM went so far as to restrict the number of meals Garland could be served each day in the studio cafeterias, as executives ensured she retained the healthy girl next door look they wanted to present. Years later Garland claimed that the studio encouraged her to smoke heavily, believing cigarettes to be an appetite suppressant. Desperate to retain her marvelous singing voice (and evidently unconcerned over the effect of tobacco on it), MGM controlled every aspect of the young star’s life, while keeping her on a schedule working eighteen-hour days, six days per week. Garland carried the emotional scars of her abusive treatment for the rest of her life, as well as fighting a lifelong battle against drug and alcohol addiction. She died at 47 of an accidental overdose of barbiturates.