Garland was paid $20,000 upfront for the book by Random House. Her husband at the time, Sid Luft, immediately spent and gambled it away.

Garland said of her life: “When you have lived the life I’ve lived, when you’ve loved and suffered, and been madly happy and desperately sad – well, that’s when you realise you’ll never be able to set it all down. Maybe you’d rather die first…

“I’ve heard how ‘difficult’ it is to be with Judy Garland. Do you know how ‘difficult’ it is to be Judy Garland?

“I’m not something you wind up and put on the stage. There’s a woman. There are three children. There’s me! There’s a lot of life going here.

“I wanted to believe and I tried my damnedest to believe in the rainbow that I tried to get over and I couldn’t. SO WHAT!”

And then described her horrific youth in Hollywood.