Judy Garland's mother has taken a lot of heat, mainly from Judy, and maybe fairly enough, for being a stereotypical stage mother, but I don't really know that other than by tacit approval, that she was in the system of getting Judy speed. From everything I've read, speed was available easily, but always from lower-echelon personnel like hairdressers, grips, make-up artists, etc. I do not buy for a second the excuse that nobody thought it was dangerous. If it was not dangerous, legitimate doctors would have been prescribing it in the wide open. This was not how that system worked. It was dangerous and shady and everybody knew it. It's like the old-timers today who say about cigarettes " nobody knew they were dangerous ". Absolute, unmitigated horseshit, and all you have to do to prove it is watch a couple of stooge episodes wherein cigarettes are referred to as "coffin nails". Coffin nails, for heaven's sake. This was a joke, yes, but a very small joke based on common everyday usage. How much more evidence do you need? Mark Twain referred to his chronic cough as "tobacco heart". That was around 1901. Anybody who buys into the picture of the olden days as innocent or scientifically uninformed is trying to fool himself.
