These are not disputed facts in any meaningful sense. They are documented in the production history of The Pirate, in MGM’s own internal records (some of which have become available to biographers), in Garland’s later accounts of this period, and in the accounts of people who were present. What they illustrate is that the pharmaceutical and scheduling management that MGM had applied to a child performer over more than a decade had produced, by the time she was in her mid-twenties, a performer in genuine crisis — someone whose capacity for professional functioning was increasingly dependent on chemical assistance, whose physical and psychological health had been eroded by years of institutional mismanagement, and who was simultaneously still capable of extraordinary artistic performance.
The studio’s response to this crisis was not primarily oriented toward her wellbeing. MGM’s concerns were commercial: whether she would be available to perform, whether her instability would delay productions, whether the investment the studio had made in her image could still generate returns. The studio referred her to doctors, some of whom continued prescribing the medications she had become dependent on. It put her on suspension when her absences created production problems. It issued statements about her health that were managed for publicity purposes rather than accuracy.
She was married to Minnelli through the most difficult of these years. The marriage ended in divorce in 1951, following a period in which both parties had come to recognize that the domestic life they had tried to build was not sustainable. Their daughter Liza remained with Garland.