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"View Slideshow\n\nThe lacerating memories of Judy Garland's tempest-tossed final years are now on full display eight times a week on Broadway, courtesy of Peter Quilter's play End of the Rainbow. Though critics' reviews have been mixed, most have lauded British actress Tracie Bennett's Tony-nominated performance as the troubled diva, a role she'll take to Los Angeles next spring, to kick off a planned national tour.\n\nWhile the show deals primarily with the dark period leading up to Garland's death in 1969, there was a sweeter, gentler chapter in the actress's life\u2014long before the alcohol and pills, before her rise to big-screen stardom in The Wizard of Oz. Born Frances Ethel Gumm in 1922, she was the youngest of three girls raised by Frank Gumm, a vaudeville performer, and his wife, Ethel, a pianist. She spent her first four years in a late-19th-century white-clapboard house close to the center of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. That house\u2014which has twice been moved to different locations in the town\u2014was opened to the public as part of the Judy Garland Museum, following an extensive restoration headed by New York\u2013based interior designer (and Garland enthusiast) Marc Charbonnet. Next year will mark its tenth anniversary.\n\n\"The house is my little tribute to director Vincente Minnelli and Meet Me in St. Louis,\" says Charbonnet, referencing the nostalgic 1944 film musical directed by Garland's then soon-to-be husband and featuring the actress at her glowing career peak. Charbonnet, who calls the project a labor of love, spent about two years on the initial design of the interiors, acquiring period furnishings, fabrics, wallpaper, and household objects to approximate the rooms as they would have been when the Gumms lived there. (He continues to track down pieces owned by the family and donate them to the museum, which displays a collection of Garland memorabilia in an adjacent building.)\n\nThe Gumms entertained frequently, often treating guests to impromptu performances. These no doubt would prepare \"Baby\" Gumm\u2014as they called Garland then\u2014for her professional stage debut, at age two, at her father's movie house, where musical acts preceded the silent films, accompanied by Ethel on the piano. Baby would eventually join her elder siblings in a touring vaudeville act and quickly emerged as the star.\n\nThe family relocated to Los Angeles in the fall of 1926, and Garland (who adopted her stage name in 1934, a year before she signed with MGM) rarely returned to her hometown. But, in a 1958 letter in a movie magazine, she wrote, \"Basically, I am still Judy Garland, a plain American girl from Grand Rapids, Minnesota, who's had a lot of good breaks, a few tough breaks, and who loves you with all her heart.\"\n\nCharbonnet says that Garland's attachment to the Grand Rapids house became evident in a 2009 encounter he had with Lorna Luft, Garland's daughter by Sidney Luft, at an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz. Charbonnet recalls introducing himself to her as the designer of Garland's house, to which Luft dismissively responded, \"My mother had many homes.\" Charbonnet says that when he specified it was the Grand Rapids residence, \"Her demeanor changed\u2014she was like a different person. She turned back to me and said, rather warmly, \u2018Oh, you mean Momma's house.'\"\n\nClick here to see our slide show of Judy Garland's childhood home."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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