LORNA LUFT
Judy’s actress and singer daughter
Lorna Luft — Judy Garland’s daughter and Liza Minnelli’s younger ( half) sister — tells David McGillivray about her life- long love affair with the UK, fighting addiction, and her affinity with the LGBTQ community. All in time for a new film, chronicling her mother’s final days…
When the brief is to interview a singer and actress whose family is more famous than she is, it’s as well to tread carefully. But all credit to Lorna Luft. She doesn’t seem to mind talking yet again about her mother: Judy Garland, one of the biggest stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, whose film The Wizard of Oz introduced a song, Over the Rainbow, that became a gay anthem. Lorna’s sister, Liza Minnelli, also comes up in conversation — her most famous film, Cabaret, became iconic to a new generation of gay men. Perhaps inevitably because of her relatives, Lorna has never missed an opportunity to support the LGBTQ community and she has been involved in a number of gay- friendly projects.
In the short- lived animated TV series Rick and Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World, she voiced the character of Joanna, Steve’s homophobic mother. Even A Tale of Two Sisters, in which Lorna and Liza sobbed as they recalled their misfortunes, aired on a British TV station as part of its so- called Big Gay Weekend.
Lorna has spoken often about her family’s addictions.
Famously, the MGM studio fed young Judy pills to keep her working and hold her weight down. She felt she needed artificial stimulants throughout her life and died of an overdose aged 47 in 1969. Meanwhile, no documentary about Studio 54, the hedonistic disco that was at the heart of New York City night life at the end of the 1970s, is complete without both sisters wide- eyed on the banquettes. Both were heading for rehab ( and both now say they are clean and sober).
Lorna is due back in London for a new show at the intimate cabaret venue Crazy Coqs. She’s no stranger to the UK. In the past, she’s said that she spent half her childhood here, accompanying her mother on tour. She’s an extra in I Could Go On Singing, Judy’s last film, shot in London in 1963. Later, Lorna played the London Palladium and the Royal Albert Hall and for a while she was a fixture on TV’s Loose Women.
But her most unhappy memory of London occurred only last year. Having come through two bouts of cancer, she was performing at the Pizza Express Jazz Club when she collapsed from what was later diagnosed as a brain tumour, which she says has been successfully treated. Considering what she’s been through, Lorna Luft comes across as level- headed and unusually honest.
You might think that at 66 she’d have had enough of the press sniffing around for gossip. But she certainly doesn’t give that impression. “What would I be doing if I weren’t talking to you?” she asks from sunny Palm Springs, California. “Probably just wondering what time I could go out of this house because it’s going to be 117F today, that’s 47C!”
It would be nice to separate fact from fiction because the press tells lies about you.
When you go into the entertainment business, people have a tendency to make up stories about you. Maybe it’s because they want to feel better about themselves. It’s up to you, the person who is in the limelight, to let it roll off you.
It’s difficult when talking about you not to discuss your family.
It’s part of who I am. I’m sometimes perplexed because people want to know what it was like and I don’t have anything to compare it to. They can be a little disappointed because they want me to come out with stories I can’t provide them with because I didn’t know any different.
Do you mind answering the same questions again and again?
I’m used to it. I never want to make anyone feel they’ve done something wrong so I try to answer them as honestly as possible.
Me and My Shadows
A strap line of your memoir is “living with the legacy” and you’ve spoken about that legacy being overwhelming. When were you most overwhelmed by being Judy Garland’s daughter?
Gosh, if you grow up where someone in your household is really famous and you’re the child of that person, something’s going to walk into the room before you do. It’s difficult because you’re trying to make your own footsteps in life. There’s no one to ask, no one to tell you how to handle all of that, so you have to find it yourself. I’m 66 years old and I’ve had a long time to deal with it.
The impression we get is that you and your sister feud like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Is that true?
My sister and I used to call each other and I’d say, “Do you know we’re not talking?” And she’d say: “We aren’t?” and I’d say, “No.” So we’d laugh at it because we knew the people who wrote it weren’t there.
So, you and Liza are friends?
Yes. I talked to her yesterday.
You and your family have had tumultuous lives that involved a lot of addiction. Do you believe you inherited it?
I think it’s a lot of things. I always want to focus on my mom’s career and her legacy. But I can talk about the addiction situation because I went through it in the Seventies, and we all went out to have a good time. We got wrapped up in the whole cyclone of that era. I’ve always
said we didn’t realise what we were doing to ourselves. Then Aids came along and it hit us that the fun and the innocence were gone. We had to say, “How do we help one another?” I got sober 37 years ago. Do I regret Studio 54 and all that? Hell, no. We had a great time. Then I started to learn about the disease of addiction. It answered a lot of questions for me. Why I thought the way I thought, why I did the things I did. I’m grateful that I went through rehab. With my mom there wasn’t anything like that and no education. Now it’s not such a stigma.
Your connections with the UK go way back.
Yeah, we first visited in 1960 so I know the UK really well.
Do you remember appearing in your mother’s film
I Could Go on Singing?
Yeah, I remember being on the boat and having the cameras and going up the Thames with my mom and the young guy who played her son [ Gregory Phillips]. In a weird way I was going to my mom’s office.
Your husband Colin Freeman is British. How did you meet?
We met 26 years ago. He was the musical director of a show I was doing. I’d been separated from my first husband and had two kids. I was looking to have a relationship like I was looking for a third eye. But when it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. He’s an extraordinary musician and human being. I am eternally grateful for the way he has taken care of me in the past seven years because I was diagnosed with cancer. Colin jumped right in and has been through hell and high water with me.
We’re going to have to talk about gay stuff.
I should hope so.
Rumour has it there’s a connection between your mother’s funeral and the Stonewall riots. Is that true? Were you aware of this at the time?
No, I wasn’t aware that it was going on. I was 16. I didn’t know about Stonewall for many years. I was doing an interview with a gay publication and the journalist said, “We’d like to talk to you about Stonewall” and I said, “Jackson?” [ the American Civil War general]. He burst out laughing and said: “No, the riot.” I replied, “I don’t know about that.” Then he told me. I’ve talked to people who were there that night. In 1969 being gay was against the law [ in the US]. But [ the Stonewall Inn] was owned by the Mob and, if they didn’t get their payments, they’d call the police who would bust the bar and drag out these wonderful men and women. It was awful. When my mom’s funeral took place, everybody was grieving. The police went in, and [ the patrons] said, “No more, not tonight.” They stood up for themselves, then the entire neighbourhood stood up and they rioted for three days. It was the beginning of Gay Pride. It’s a responsibility that I carry with me to make sure that people are treated decently. I’ve just been to New York and took part in Pride. I’ve never been in anything like that. There were 4.2 million people in the streets. I was on the Stonewall float with my friend Randy Rainbow and Donatella Versace and, when it passed by the Stonewall, hundreds of thousands of people burst into Over the Rainbow. I cried. I didn’t expect everybody, including the police, to start singing that. It took my breath away. It was extraordinary to hear the police commissioner apologise for how the police treated everyone. It took 50 years but he did it. That’s a big deal.
Did you ever meet Gilbert Baker, who was inspired by your mother’s song to design the rainbow flag?
Yes. When I told my children about it they looked at the flag and said, “This is cool.”
Why did your mother become a gay icon?
I don’t think there’s one definitive answer. She made characters who were not only likeable but lovable and relatable. You always thought that she was approachable. She touched your heart, she made you laugh, she knew how to communicate because she worked with the greatest writers, directors and choreographers, and she was like a sponge. So when she got on a stage she knew how much those songs meant to people. But it was after she [ died] that the gay community picked up the torch and said, “We’ll never let this go out.”
Have you seen the film Judy, which is about your mother late in life?
No. I’m so protective of my mother’s legacy. I feel I lived it so I know it. Thepowers- that- be of that film never came to any of us for input.
But you feel differently about the TV miniseries that was based on your book?
Well, I produced that, we used my mom’s recordings and I’m proud of that movie. I got five Emmy awards for it and Judy Davis was
“Hundreds of thousands of people starting singing Over the Rainbow”
extraordinary. To this day people tell me that it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever seen.
You’re returning to London to play at Crazy Coqs.
I like that room because it’s so intimate. There used to be rooms like that all over America but they died. There’s no place to try out new material any more.
What new material will you be trying out?
I want to speak about being 12 years old and the first time I saw The Beatles. I went to the Hollywood Bowl with my best friend and her mother [ the actress] Lauren Bacall, who said, “You are not allowed to scream. You are movie- star children.” We watched 18,000 girls go berserk but we had to sit there as movie- star children.