Judy Garland’s 20 best films – ranked!

20. Listen, Darling (1938)

A very silly and frankly odd musical, although perhaps not quite odd enough to qualify for cult status. Judy Garland plays a girl called Pinkie who is worried about her widowed mother, played by Mary Astor – and believes she needs to get remarried to a nice man. So with her pal Buzz (played by the renowned former child actor Freddie Bartholomew, of David Copperfield and Little Lord Fauntleroy fame), she in effect kidnaps her bemused but indulgent mother in a trailer and tours around the country looking for a likely stepdad candidate – and hits on Walter Pidgeon. As so often, Garland steals it with a standout song, this one being Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart.

19. The Pirate (1948)

A wacky musical fantasy directed by Vincente Minnelli, featuring Cole Porter songs, but probably the least notable of Garland’s MGM musicals. Garland stars as a shy girl from the Caribbean, who has been forced into an engagement with the unattractive local mayor. Then a travelling circus arrives, led by the dashing and roguish Gene Kelly, who of course falls for Garland. Their song together, Be a Clown, was later reworked – without acknowledgment to Porter – as Make ’Em Laugh in Singin’ in the Rain.

18. Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937)

At 15, looking younger but with the brassily powerful singing voice of someone older, Garland had a scene-stealing small role in this cheerfully improbable backstage musical comedy, with Eleanor Powell as a horse trainer who somehow lucks into showbiz stardom. Garland plays a young wannabe in a boarding house who sends a fan letter to Clark Gable, and sings the song You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want to Do It) to his picture.

17. In the Good Old Summertime (1949)

Garland took