She had been performing professionally for more than a decade before MGM signed her. The studio did not discover a raw talent; it acquired a trained performer with years of stage experience, a developed vocal instrument, and a family infrastructure already organized around her career.
Becoming a Studio Property
In September 1935, Louis B. Mayer signed Frances Gumm to a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She was thirteen years old. The audition — accounts vary in their descriptions, but most agree she performed for studio personnel and made an immediate impression — led to a standard studio contract of the kind that MGM used to secure performing talent at minimal initial cost. She received no screen test; Mayer reportedly signed her directly after hearing her sing.
MGM in 1935 was the dominant studio in Hollywood. Under Mayer and his production chief Irving Thalberg, the studio had built a system for manufacturing entertainment that was comprehensive to the point of being totalizing. It had its own directors, writers, composers, choreographers, costumers, makeup artists, and physical trainers. It had its own publicity department, which controlled the public images of contract players with the same deliberateness that the production departments controlled what appeared on screen. And it had an approach to child and adolescent performers that reflected the studio’s commercial orientation in its most unvarnished form.
Garland’s contract gave MGM extensive control over her professional life. She was assigned to pictures, not offered roles she could accept or decline. She trained on studio grounds with studio coaches. Her public appearances were managed by the publicity department. And as she entered adolescence — which she did under the studio’s gaze, during her time as a contract player — her physical appearance became a subject of ongoing studio attention.