Downtown Lancaster street scene showing the old Valley Theater on the west side of Sierra Highway, 1940s 15. What can you tell me about Judy Garland when she lived in Lancaster?
Frances Ethel Gumm, later known as Judy Garland, lived in Lancaster during part of her childhood. Born in 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, Frances and her family-father Frank, mother Ethel, and sisters Mary Jane and Virginia-moved to southern California in 1926. Frank, in search of a movie theater where his three daughters could sing and dance, looked first in Glendale and then West Hollywood before buying the 500-seat Lancaster Theater. He renovated the interior, built a box office, installed air conditioning, changed the name to the Valley Theatre, and thus created a venue where the “Gumm Sisters” could perform on a regular basis, with their mother as agent and manager. While living in Lancaster before relocating to Los Angeles in 1933, the Gumm family lived in three houses, one near the high school and two on Cedar Avenue. Sierra Highway from the Valley Theater to the old Ledger Gazette Building, c. 1948 Though much of Frances’s early stage and theater experience took place in Lanca
