AP Photo Archive
Judy Garland in a scence from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.

Following in their mothers’ footsteps

Famous mother/daughter duos

Jody Lane LAN02013@BYUI.EDU Scroll Staff

What do famous actress Judy Garland and Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie have in common? They both had daughters who followed in their footsteps.

In 1903, Curie, along with her husband Pierre Curie, was awarded her first Nobel Prize in physics for her research on radiation. Eight years later, she was awarded another Nobel Prize in chemistry, “in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium ...,” according to www.nobelprize.org, making her one of only four persons ever to receive more than one Nobel Prize.

Curie was active in her research and in the education of her two daughters, Irène and Ève. Curie felt educating her children was an important part of motherhood, and Irène seemed to take an interest in science, according to www.woodrow.org.

After college, Irène became an assistant to her mother at the Curie Institute. She married and changed her name to Joliot-Curie.

In 1935, Joliot-Curie became the only daughter of a Nobel Prize winner to receive a Nobel Prize. And, just like her mother, Joliot-Curie received that honor for her research of radiation, according to www.nobelprize.org.

Four years after Joiliot-Curie won a Nobel Prize for her work in a lab, another woman was winning awards for her work in a film studio.

Actress Judy Garland won a Juvenile Oscar Award for her portrayal of Dorothy in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Thirty-three years later, her daughter, Liza Minnelli, won an Oscar for Best Actress for her work in Cabaret.

Minnelli’s upbringing in a show business family had an effect on her childhood. Her father, Vincente Minnelli, directed dozens of movies in the 1950s and 1960s such as An American in Paris and Brigadoon. Garland also acted in numerous films, according to www.imdb.com.

“It was no great tragedy, being Judy Garland’s daughter. I had tremendously interesting childhood years — except they had little to do with being a child,” Minnelli said, according to www.cmgworldwide.com, “After school, other kids went to the playground. I went to MGM.”

Garland attributes some of who she is to her mother, “if my mother gave me weaknesses, Minnelli said, according to www.cmgworldwide.com, “she also gave me strength.”