EXCLUSIVE: Inside Judy Garland's Hollywood Stardom and Private Mistakes — 'Wizard of Oz' Actress' Daughters Hit Back at Claims Their Mother Was a 'Tragic Figure'

Judy Garland had extremely complicated relationships with her two daughters, Lorna Luft and Liza Minnelli, but they've been careful to focus on the good times along with the bad in the decades since her death.

Days before the 57th anniversary of the Hollywood starlet's passing, RadarOnline.com looks back at the Wizard of Oz actress' life, her past mistakes and what she looked like through the eyes of her children.

Minnelli described her mother as someone who "got so much out of life."

"She’s the only person I think I ever knew that really understood that there’s just one life to live, so don’t put it off," she continued. "If there’s possibly a way of accomplishing something, do it."

Meanwhile, Luft pointed to her tragedy-filled life and the public's perception of who the late actress was.

"People like to play her as a tragic figure but she wasn’t," Luft explained at the time. "She was funny and warm and incredibly generous."

Still, Garland suffered from her own demons, from substance abuse to wild mood swings. So much so that Minnelli said she became "used to" the rollercoaster of their lives, that included "screaming attacks" and "excessive love bouts," ebbs and flows of money, and sometimes not seeing her mother "for weeks at a time."

Luft and her younger brother, Joey, even once woke up to a confusing and violent scene while on vacation in Hawaii.

“I heard screaming and cursing and the sound of things being thrown. When I got out of bed to listen, I heard my mother screaming for help,” Luft recalled in her memoir, Me and My Shadows. “I’ll never forget the scene before me. There stood my mother and Mark ... He was very drunk and my mother was far from sober. Both of them were covered with blood.”

The sisters also claimed they had decent early childhoods, regardless of the volatile ups and downs they experienced.

Luft claimed she had a "real Hollywood princess upbringing," that included trips to Disneyland and "all the things" Garland "never got to do when she was a child."

She also clarified that the Meet Me in St. Louis star "protected" them both from "pressure" she had been put under from a young age.

Minelli agreed, despite the fact that she claimed there was "nothing" she could say to "convince people" she really had a "happy childhood."

"Part of the reason for that is because Mama said, 'I don't want them to believe that I'm happy or else they won't cry when I sing Over the Rainbow," Minelli continued. "But she ensured my happiness as a kid."

Reflecting on some of the "dearest memories" she had with Garland, Minelli said that when they sat and chatted, "you really felt that nobody else existed, that nobody was funnier, that nobody was wiser, that nobody could ever love you more, and that you never could love anybody more."

Still, she admitted that it was sometimes difficult to get the attention of the famed movie star at times.

"Back then, I'd have to go through long-distance operators and all that to get through to where she was on a boat or someplace," she explained. "Mama's death took that away, because now I just look up and ask. I just ask in my own head."

Minnelli was 23 years old when Garland died of an accidental drug overdose in 1969.

Lorna and Joey were only teenagers at the time.