Her third marriage, to Sid Luft, ended in divorce in 1965 following an extended legal contest over the custody of their children. She married Mark Herron in November 1965; the marriage lasted only months before they separated, and the divorce was finalized in 1967. She married Mickey Deans in March 1969, three months before her death.
The London engagement of December 1968 — a five-week run at the Talk of the Town nightclub — was received poorly by some critics. Tony Palmer of The Observer was sharply negative, and Time magazine described it as “the biggest flop of her life.” Other accounts from the same engagement describe audiences that remained devoted and responsive to her performances. The record of this period is mixed, and the mixture is consistent with what the preceding decades had established about the relationship between her performing capability and the physical conditions under which she worked.
She was forty-six years old during the London engagement. She had been performing professionally for more than four decades. She had been a child star, a studio property, a film actress, a concert artist, a recording star, a television performer, and a cultural figure whose meaning to a specific segment of her audience exceeded what any of these categories could fully describe.
She married Deans in London on March 15, 1969.
The Final Period
Judy Garland died in London on June 22, 1969, at the rented house in Cadogan Lane where she and Mickey Deans had been living. She was forty-seven years old. Mickey Deans found her in the bathroom in the early morning hours.