As a small child, she was brought into nightclubs to perform at venues wildly inappropriate for someone her age.
Her biographers later wrote that her mother regularly gave her pills to stay awake, and others to help her sleep. It was a routine that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Speaking with Barbara Walters in 1967, the star said her mother was a “mean” stage mother.
“She was very jealous because she had absolutely no talent,” she said. “She would stand in the wings, and if I didn’t feel good, she’d say, ‘You get out and sing, or I’ll wrap you around the bedpost and break you off short!’ So I’d go out and sing.”
In later years, she would often claim that her mother never her, that she had planned an abortion until a medical student friend convinced her parents otherwise, and even tried to induce a miscarriage.
“She must have rolled down nineteen thousand flights of stairs and jumped off tables,” she would say.
Her mother would also take delight in recounting her schemes and strategies to the neighborhood ladies.
Breakthrough
In 1935, the juvenile signed with MGM. Two years later, she finally appeared on screen when she performed “You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want to Do It)” in Broadway Melody. It was the breakthrough she desperately needed. As writer John Fricke explained:
“One movie would be wrapping up and she’d been in rehearsals for the next one. This overlapping went on from the late ‘30s into the early ‘40s.”
Producers worried audiences wouldn’t believe such a small 13-year-old girl could sing the way she did. Still, she kept working. When MGM loaned her out to Fox for Pigskin Parade, her performance was so strong that her home studio finally began giving her real roles.
