Judy Garland’s Greatest Movies, According to Data

Inspired by the Folies Bergères of Paris, the Ziegfeld Follies were elaborate stage revues mounted in the early part of the 20th century by the great Broadway showman Florenz Ziegfeld. In 1945, film producer Arthur Freed recreated the splashy Ziegfeld shows with this all-star revue on the big screen. It stars Garland along with MGM Studios’ musical comedy stars Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Lucille Ball, Lena Horne, and Red Skelton.

One of five Busby Berkeley-helmed films on this list, “Babes on Broadway” pairs Garland and Mickey Rooney as aspiring singers who want to stage a show to benefit orphaned children.

In this musical romance loosely based on the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch rom-com “The Shop Around the Corner,” Garland plays a young woman who gets a job at a music store in Chicago at the turn of the century. She gets along with everyone, though a salesman played by Van Johnson is somewhat aloof, hiding the fact that he is attracted to her.

The Andy Hardy movies helped establish Mickey Rooney as one of America’s biggest stars in the 1930s. In this film, Garland co-stars as a neighbor vying for Rooney’s affections in competition with two other girls.

In this film, Garland portrays a vaudevillian who aspires to be a performer in the Ziegfeld Follies. The film had plenty of star power besides Garland, with the likes of James Stewart, Lana Turner, and Hedy Lamarr.

In this Garland-Rooney starrer, Rooney plays a teenage drummer who aspires to win a contest for school bands with the help of a singer played by Garland.

Rooney and Garland play the children of vaudeville performers who try to revive the entertainment form, which is losing popularity to motion pictures. They stage a show to try to realize their dream, but run into problems, including Mickey’s jealous girlfriend.

Garland portrays a woman unhappily engaged to the mayor of her town who falls in love with a performer (Gene Kelly) at a traveling circus. The film is one of four directed or co-directed by Vincente Minnelli, who was Garland’s husband at the time (and the father of her daughter Liza Minnelli).

In this animated film, Garland voices a starstruck cat living on a farm in France who pines for the bright lights of Paris. Singer Robert Goulet voices her suitor and comedian Red Buttons is his cohort.

Garland didn’t appear in many straight dramas. “A Child is Waiting,” directed by independent movie pioneer John Cassavetes, was one of them. It is one of 12 movies on the list with a Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 90% or above. In this film, she played a music teacher who works with children at a state mental institution and her methods put her at odds with the hospital’s authoritarian director (Burt Lancaster).

This is the first of seven Garland movies that received a perfect Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score of 100%. “Girl Crazy” is the classic ‘Hey kids, let’s put on a show” film about a college student (Mickey Rooney) who finds out his college is in desperate financial straits and wants to help the daughter (Garland) of the family who runs the school.

In “I Could Go on Singing,” Garland is a singer who travels to London for a gig and rekindles a romantic relationship with a man that had resulted in the birth of a son, who lives with her lover in England. A fight between the erstwhile couple forces the boy to choose between parents.

In this splashy musical, Garland plays an inexperienced dancer who is picked by a Broadway song-and-dance man Fred Astaire to be his partner after his former partner has decided to go solo.

In “The Harvey Girls,” Garland plays a woman who answers an ad in New Mexico for a mail-order bride. When she finds out her would-be husband is a going-nowhere cowhand, she takes a job at the Harvey House restaurant and fends off opposition from a local saloon and a streetwise showgirl played by Angela Lansbury.

Garland and Gene Kelly play a vaudeville song-and-dance team separated by World War I who reunite after the war and fall in love. This is one of five Garland films directed by Busby Berkeley.

In this comedy/musical, Garland appears as a country girl tending the family farm in Connecticut while her actress sister (Gloria DeHaven) tours with a stock theater company. When her sister returns unexpectedly and wants to convert the family’s barn into location for a musical revue, Judy’s character is incensed, until her sister’s boyfriend (Gene Kelly) sells his car to buy the family a new tractor. Eventually, Judy gets into the act, which includes her singing the infectious Harold Arlen song “Get Happy.”

Garland’s performance in “A Star Is Born” is considered by many critics to be her greatest. This is the second of four versions of the film. Garland portrays an aspiring actress taken under the wing of an actor (James Mason), whom she eventually marries. While her career takes off, his declines, and he becomes a heavy drinker. Judy’s character must decide whether to move ahead with her career or try to save her husband’s life. Garland received the first of her two Oscar nominations for her performance. The film is ranked No. 7 on American Film Institute’s greatest musicals.

In this romance set during wartime,directed by her husband, Vincente Minnelli, Garland plays a secretary who meets a soldier (Robert Walker) on a two-day leave in New York City. After a day and night of sightseeing they fall in love and choose to get married before the soldier returns to duty.

Set during the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, “Meet Me in St. Louis” features Garland as one of four sisters in a well-to-do family learning the ways of the world in life and love. Among the songs the musical is famous for are “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The film is ranked No. 10 on American Film Institute’s greatest musicals.

The film that made Garland one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and is ranked as the third-greatest musical of all time by the American Film Institute features her as Dorothy Gale, a Kansas farm girl, transported to the land of Oz when her house is uprooted by a tornado. Garland received an honorary Academy Juvenile Award for her performance, while the film won Oscars for Best Music and Best Original Song (for Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow”).