JUDY GARLAND
THE ICON BROUGHT JOY AND KINDNESS TO HER CHILDREN’S LIVES, BUT EVEN THEY COULDN’T SAVE HER
The legend’s kids remember the “mama” who took them on fun trips and taught them to be kind — and how they tried to save her life.
No matter how many miles separated them, Liza Minnelli and her mother, Judy Garland, always did the New York Times crossword puzzle together. “We’d call each other all over the world to say, ‘Have you figured out what 29-Down was?’ ” remembers Liza. “Back then, I’d have to go through longdistance operators to get through to where she was on a boat or someplace.”
Sweet memories of Judy, who died of a drug overdose at 47 in 1969, have kept her alive in the hearts of her kids, Liza, 73, Lorna Luft, 66, and Joey Luft, 64. (The new biopic Judy, starring Renée Zellweger, mostly takes place during the year of her death.) While so many tales about the beloved Wizard of Oz star dwell on tragedies — including a prescription-drug addiction, five marriages and financial difficulties — her children choose to remember her as a caring, nurturing mother. “There’s nothing I can say to convince people that I had a happy childhood,” admits Liza. “But she ensured my happiness as a kid. [I had] a swell time growing up.”
Of course, Judy’s children, who called her “Mama,” didn’t have an ordinary upbringing. Liza says she went to 14 schools before she left home at 16 to follow her own dreams of stardom. “We were a bit like gypsies,” Lorna tells Closer. “We lived in London, Paris, New York. We lived wherever she was making a film.” Lorna admits it was hard always being the new kid at school, but Judy tried to make moving to a new city fun. “Our favorite thing to do was to get on an airplane,” says Lorna. “It always became a game and an adventure.”
GLAMOROUS LIFE
As the baby of the family, Joey traveled with his mother the most. “I loved going on the train with my mom. You’d wake up early, open the shade and you’d be going through Germany. It was huge mountains covered in lush green,” he tells Closer of cherished mornings laughing with Judy over breakfast as their train sped across Europe. “I remember having a lot of
“She was just tired, like a flower that blooms and brings joy, then wilts.”
— Liza Minnelli on Judy
fun with her when we were alone,” he says. “She had a great sense of humor.”
Judy’s celebrated 1961 concert appearance in New York, which was recorded for the Grammy-winning live album Judy at Carnegie Hall, left deep impressions on Lorna and Joey. It was the first time they realized their mother was someone special. “At Carnegie Hall, they were just losing their minds and standing up and screaming and rushing toward the stage to touch her,” recalls Lorna. “It frightened me a little bit.”
Joey, who was 6 at the time, also looked at the commotion over his mother with awe. “I walked into her dressing room and saw a room full of roses and telegrams, wall to wall,” he remembers. “We’d go out to dinner and there would be all these stars — I wondered what they were doing there. They were friends with my mom! The energy she generated was amazing.”
HOLLYWOOD KIDS
Judy never pushed her children into performing the way she had been as a child, but she encouraged them to sing and proudly showed them off. A 2-and-a-half-yearold Liza made her screen debut in Judy’s 1949 musical In the Good Old Summertime. All three of her children made guest appearances on The Judy Garland Show, which ran from 1963 to 1964.
Liza knew from a young age that she wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps. When Liza was 18, her mother invited her to perform at the London Palladium. “It was like Mama suddenly realized I was good,” Liza says. “One minute she smiled at me, and the next minute she was like the lioness that owned the stage and suddenly found somebody invading her territory!” Feeling her mother’s competitive spirit scared Liza, but she also called it “a great compliment.”
There were other rough patches that interrupted the sweetness of Liza’s, Lorna’s and Joey’s childhoods. Judy’s marriages
were passionate, explosive and all-consuming — and the kids witnessed it all. “There were no middles,” says Liza, whose father, director Vincente Minnelli, was wed to Judy from 1945 until 1951. “I was used only to screaming attacks or excessive love bouts.”
The star married her third husband, Sid Luft, the dad of Lorna and Joey, in 1952. “My father was a producer and sort of a tough guy,” Lorna says, noting that Sid was the opposite of the urbane Vincente. Sid and Judy “had a bond, but the relationship was volatile,” Lorna adds, because they both had hot tempers.
A LOSING BATTLE
Judy also couldn’t hide her prescription pill addiction from her kids. Joey remembers being a teenager and pleading with his belligerent, drug-addled mother to get onstage. “There was one night at the Palace Theatre [in New York City]. We were on the phone with her for 45 minutes and she just kept saying, ‘Not tonight — it’s not going to happen.’ And then she would hang up,” says Joey. “The stage manager was saying, ‘She’ll never work in this town again.’ ”
Joey recalls quizzing his father about Judy’s unpredictable behavior. “I asked ‘Is Mom sick?’ So he explained it to me,” says Joey. “She was a great person, but she had that addiction. I was powerless. It was really hard to deal with as a kid.”
Liza and Lorna also tried to help. The girls would reportedly break open their mother’s sleepingpill capsules, empty out three quarters of the contents and refill them with sugar. “I remember my father calling it ‘a mystery illness,’” says Lorna. “He’d go see doctors and psychiatrists, but none of them knew what to do for her.”
No one could save Judy from her demons. She and Sid divorced in 1965, and Judy had married for a fifth time when Joey, who was living with his father in Los Angeles, received a plea for help in 1969. “My mom called me and was begging me to come to Europe and live with her again,” says Joey, who was only 14. “I just couldn’t live like that anymore. I was worried about my future and worried about her.”
Judy died on June 22, 1969 of an accidental drug overdose, but her children stress that she should be remembered for her remarkable talent and sweetness, not the lurid manner of her passing. “We all have incidents in our lives that are not great, but that shouldn’t define us,” says Lorna. “My mother was one of the most selfless people. She taught me that the most important thing in life is to be kind. She believed that if you were kind to someone else, they would be kind to you. That was how she raised us.”
Despite her heartbreak, Liza also wouldn’t trade her childhood with Judy for anything. “It’s your life, and there aren’t any comparatives. I mean, how do you ask a princess what it’s like to be a princess? She doesn’t know. It’s the only thing she’s ever been,” says Liza. “I made the choice to be proud of my heritage. I just had too much respect, and I was raised with too much love.”
— Reporting by Amanda Champagne
“People called her a genius performer. To me, she was the lady in the white bathrobe.”
— Lorna Luft