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Adult stardom

Garland starred in three films which were released in 1940: Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, Strike Up the Band and Little Nellie Kelly. In the last, she played her first adult role, a dual role of both mother and daughter. Little Nellie Kelly was purchased from George M. Cohan as a vehicle for her to display both her audience appeal and her physical appearance. The role was a challenge for her, requiring the use of an accent, her first adult kiss and the only death scene of her career. Her co-star George Murphy regarded the kiss as embarrassing. He said it felt like "a hillbilly with a child bride".

During that time, Garland was still in her teens when she experienced her first serious adult romance with bandleader Artie Shaw. She was deeply devoted to him and was devastated in early 1940 when he eloped with Lana Turner. Garland began a relationship with musician David Rose and, on her 18th birthday, he gave her an engagement ring. The studio intervened because, at the time, he was still married to actress and singer Martha Raye. They agreed to wait a year to allow for his divorce to become final. During that time, Garland had a brief affair with songwriter Johnny Mercer. After her breakup with Mercer, Garland and Rose were wed on July 27, 1941. "A true rarity" is what media called it. The couple agreed to undergo a trial separation in January 1943 and they divorced in 1944.

In 1941, while she was pregnant with Rose's child, Garland had an abortion at the insistence of her mother and the studio executives because the pregnancy wasn't approved of. She had a second abortion in 1943 when she became pregnant during her affair with Tyrone Power.

In her next film, For Me and My Gal (1942), Garland performed with Gene Kelly in his first screen appearance. She was given the "glamor treatment" in Presenting Lily Mars (1943), in which she was dressed in "grown-up" gowns. Her lightened hair was also pulled up in a stylish fashion. However, no matter how glamorous or beautiful she appeared on screen or in photographs, she was never confident about her appearance and never escaped the "girl-next-door" image that the studio had created for her.

One of Garland's most successful films for MGM was Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), in which she introduced three standards: " The Trolley Song ", " The Boy Next Door " and " Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas ". This was one of the first films in her career that gave her the opportunity to be the attractive leading lady. Vincente Minnelli was assigned to direct and he requested that make-up artist Dorothy Ponedel be assigned to Garland. Ponedel refined her appearance in several ways which included extending and reshaping her eyebrows, changing her hairline, modifying her lip line and removing her nose discs and dental caps. She appreciated the results so much that Ponedel was written into her contract for all her remaining pictures at MGM.

Around the same time, Garland had a brief affair with actor and film director Orson Welles, who was then married to actress Rita Hayworth. Garland and Welles ended the affair in early 1945 but remained on good terms afterwards.

During the filming of Meet Me in St. Louis, Garland and Minnelli had some initial conflicts, but they entered into a relationship and they got married on June 15, 1945. On March 12, 1946, daughter Liza was born. The couple got divorced in 1951.

The Clock (1945) was Garland's first straight dramatic film; Robert Walker was cast in the main male role. Though the film was critically praised and earned a profit, most movie fans expected her to sing. She did not act again in a non-singing dramatic role for many years. Garland's other films of the 1940s include The Harvey Girls (1946), in which she introduced the Academy Award-winning song " On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe ", and Till the Clouds Roll By (1946).