LGBTQ+ people. In the face of these challenges she pressed forward, "explaining her enduring popularity among LGBTQ fans". She also endured "self-doubts about her capabilities, suffered crippling stage fright", yet beamed on stage. Onstage "she 'came out', expressing through her skills the real person she was meant to be". LGBTQ people notice this, "admiring her courage and resilience, adopting it as their own". One psychiatrist's explanation: "Judy was beaten up by life, embattled and ultimately had to become more masculine. She has the power that homosexuals would like to have, and they attempt to attain it by idolizing her." Gay men, particularly older ones, were among her biggest fans: According to United Press International's Marilyn Malara, "In the 1950s and 1960s, Garland acted as an unofficial mascot for a generation of gay men, who flocked to Garland's many performances, referring to themselves as 'friends of Dorothy.'" In September 2019, in reporting on the resurgence of interest in Garland due to the biopic Judy starring Renée Zellweger, Louis Staples analyzed Garland’s story, to "understand how and why some gay men look to famous women to help them navigate the world." Both Dorothy and Garland are taken from ordinary lives into the spectacular, LGBTQ people perceiving themselves as abnormal, different, or "other" could relate to not being ordinary. Once in the Hollywood movie business, Garland’s body was a battleground for never being sexy enough, or slim enough; LGBTQ people can relate to dealing with "body dysmorphia, harm[ing] their bodies, attempt[ing] suicide and suffer from eating disorders." Richard Dyer argues that, after her artistic success in, but commercial failure of A Star Is Born (1954) "Garland’s work and life tells a story of survival, and of someone trying to assert some form of control in a world that was set up to destroy her." Garland also had a number of gay men in her life including her father Frank Gumm who "preferred the company of very young men". There was speculation for years in the entertainment community that her second husband Vincente Minnelli was gay or bisexual. A biography, Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood's Dark Dreamer, claims he lived as an openly gay man in New York prior to his arrival in Hollywood, where the town pressured him back into the closet. According to the biographer: "He was openly gay in New York – we were able to document names of companions and stories from