One of the world’s most famous and celebrated entertainers, Judy
Garland, died almost 40 years ago of an accidental drug overdose.
She was 47. For her daughter, the singer and actor Lorna Luft,
fantasy and fact have collided ever since in publications
dissecting the Hollywood legend.
No sooner was Garland found dead in the bathroom of her rented
house in Chelsea, London, in 1969 than torrid accounts of her life
came off the conveyor belt. Biographies hastily appeared, many
written by authors claiming inside knowledge or purporting to be
close family friends.
Luft, who fastidiously investigated her mother’s life and death
in her 1998 autobiography Me And My Shadows: A Family
Memoir, wasn’t the least bit interested in hagiography or
censorship. “When I wrote Me And My Shadows, people asked me
if it was cathartic but no it wasn’t,” Luft says. “There was a
finality about it because I was able to say, ‘Read this, I have
answered all the questions [that] I’ve ever been asked about Judy
Garland’. There’s something like 30 books written by people about
my mum and none of them ever came to my house. I simply told my
story and how my family affected me. I never expected it [the
memoir] to become a mini-series but I was very proud of making
that.”
Luft is on the tail-end of a tour of Britain with her show
Songs My Mother Taught Me - a concert version of her recent
album bearing the same name co-produced by her musician husband,
Colin Freeman, and long-time friend Barry Manilow. Her voice is
warm, full and effortlessly commanding as she interprets classic
songs written for Garland, including Rock-A-Bye Your Baby,
Come Rain Or Come Shine, Follow The Yellow Brick
Road, The Trolley Song and, of course, Somewhere Over
The Rainbow.
Unlike her exuberant half-sister Liza Minnelli, Luft resisted
performing the repertoire because she felt uncomfortable about her
legacy. “There was that sense of not being known for you and trying
to put your own footprints in the sand %26#133; I did some crazy
things in my 20s to stamp my own ground; I even dyed my hair purple
once %26#133; You only really begin to discover your parents when
you’re 40; their frailties, flaws and the hard things you learn to
forgive but don’t forget.”
Buoyed by the acclaim for her album and shows, Luft is enjoying
the responsibility of keeping her mother’s memory and music alive.
“The stars lined up when we made the album and Barry [Manilow] was
the taskmaster %26#133; He knows that when you do a show for a long
time you can go on auto pilot, but he demanded a performance from
me as though I was singing the songs for the first time.”
The night before this interview the entertainer performed
Songs My Mother Taught Me in a theatre in Wales. “It was
bitterly cold. I felt like smashing the piano in pieces and using
it as firewood.” She brightens when reminded of her forthcoming
trip to Sydney for a concert this month and for Mardi Gras where
the temperature will be considerably warmer. A short season in
April is on the cards.
Luft has starred in many Broadway musicals, including Neil
Simon’s Promises, Promises when she was 19, Snoopy,
Little Shop Of Horrors, Mame, Gypsy and
Guys Dolls. Recently she featured in White
Christmas: The Musical at the Edinburgh Playhouse co-starring
Australia’s Craig McLachlan. Luft was last in Sydney in 2002 to
sing at a gala for the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute
hosted by the former US president Bill Clinton. After the
formalities she took her place on a Mardi Gras float trailed by 30
Judy Garland lookalikes singing Get Happy. “That was
surreal,” she deadpans.
Though an infrequent visitor to these shores the singer has
close connections with several Australian identities, including
Hugh Jackman, who played her brother-in-law Peter Allen in The
Boy From Oz, and Judy Davis, who starred as her mother in the
Emmy Award-winning Me And My Shadows. “I love her [Davis]
and we became friends. She’s an extraordinary person and is
absolutely fearless as an actor. It’s like watching a football
player as they back up and back up, their heel hits the ground and
they kick a goal %26#133; The idea [of playing Garland] scared the
hell out of her but she didn’t do some horrible impersonation. She
embodied her and it was amazing. It helped that she came in with a
clean slate, and Cate Blanchett exhibits similarly fearless traits
in the way she plays Bob Dylan [in the film I'm Not
There].
“The thing about Cate Blanchett and Judy Davis is that they are
talented, gifted and very smart, and that’s what Dylan and my
mother were. These women have that same genius.”
Luft’s abiding memory of her mother, an American of Irish and
Scottish parentage, has little to do with music. “I always remember
her sense of humour. There is this myth of Judy Garland being a
tragic figure. Sure, she had tragedy in her life but she wasn’t
tragic. Lucille Ball insisted that she herself wasn’t funny but
that her writers were, and came out with the line, ‘Judy Garland
makes me look like a mortician’ %26#133; You
know, what you have to remember is that this was my mum, the
most important person to me when growing up and you owe it to tell
the truth.”
Luft has two children, Jesse and Vanessa, from her first
marriage. She takes pride in family, and in being honest and open
no matter how painful the situation. When Jesse was seven he was
playing Trivial Pursuit at school and found out that his
grandmother had overdosed on drugs. “I got a phone call from him
sobbing and I said, ‘Sweetheart, let’s talk about the word drugs.
We grow up in America and are told that drugs can kill and yet we
go to the drug store - we’re the only country in the world that
uses that word, and words assume different meanings.’ I explained
it to him that way and he understood,” she says.
“The term drug overdose always has horrible connotations, then
they say accidental as though you’re not being smart and don’t ask
questions. But in America we live in a complete drug culture. The
TV is full of drug companies pushing things - take this, take that,
we are told. They list the side effects, almost so awful as to be
comical but people still take the drugs %26#133; I would never
comment on how Heath Ledger passed away and my heart is broken for
his mother, father, sister, daughter and Michelle [Williams]. We
should remember Heath Ledger for making us feel and love the
characters he played. That was his gift and we don’t need to know
the rest.”
In Luft’s own life and career she has avoided many of the
hazards of celebrity and credits her family with keeping her feet
planted firmly on the ground. If only, she surmises, her famous
Beverly Hills neighbour didn’t attract so much attention. “I live
right below Britney Spears and it means I live 24 hours with chaos.
There are between 20 and 30 car loads of paparazzi in the street
and me and my neighbours have had enough.
“The paps won’t move their cars; they are abusive and
despicable. When she [Spears] was taken to hospital, there were
helicopters and police cars. %26#133; I don’t feel sorry for her but
I feel sad for her kids. She has to take responsibility now.”
Luft says that at the height of Garland’s fame there were no
photographers jumping out of bushes or tail-gating celebrities.
“‘There’s no line in the sand any more; no respect. That’s what my
mother would have hated.”
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