A Luft letter to her mom

For the family of legendary entertainer Judy Garland, some of the most significant memories are wrapped up with Christmas.

Garland's very first vaudeville performance as a precocious two-year-old was of Jingle Bells.

When the singer/actor was 21, she filmed the 1944 movie musical Meet Me in St. Louis. It includes an iconic Christmas Eve scene in which Garland's character sings the touching Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas to comfort her five-year-old sister, who is upset about moving away from St. Louis.

"It was such a magnificent and beautiful role for her," recalls Lorna Luft, who is often called Garland's "other daughter" because of the greater fame of her older half-sister, Liza Minnelli.

The song, written for the movie, originally had much more depressing lyrics, including, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas/ It may be your last."

Garland objected. "My mother said, 'I can't sing that to that little girl!'" says Luft, 59, who gives three performances of the pops show A Judy Garland Christmas: Songs My Mother Taught Me with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra this weekend.

The movie's composer reluctantly changed the lyrics to make them more hopeful. The song was released as a Garland single, and with lyrics such as, "Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight" was embraced by Second World War soldiers and their families.

The composer altered the lyrics yet again in 1957 at the request of Frank Sinatra. He changed "From now on we'll have to muddle through somehow" to "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough."

Garland performed the Sinatra version on the 1963 Christmas episode of her short-lived CBS TV series, The Judy Garland Show. Sitting at a window that echoed the movie scene, Garland sang it to 11-year-old Luft and her younger brother, Joey. During the song, which can be viewed on YouTube, "Mama" appears on the verge of tears. The troubled star, who was plagued by alcoholism, drug addiction and emotional demons her whole adult life, would only live to see another five Christmases. She died at age 47.

On that same TV special, Luft made her performing debut singing Santa Claus is Coming To Town. Although the big-voiced Luft -- a natural brunette who now colours her hair blond -- looks a bit hesitant in the solo, also viewable on YouTube, she says her mother didn't pressure her to perform and was never critical of her efforts.

"I wanted to do it," says the performer, whose own 21-year-old daughter and 27-year-old son want nothing to do with show business.

The Garland tribute Luft performs this weekend is the same one she has been touring for more than a decade and did with the WSO in 2005, with the addition of four seasonal songs, including Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Her husband, Colin Freeman, will conduct the orchestra. The show includes projected video clips that allow Luft to sing "duets" with Garland.

The California-based Luft is currently in the midst of another festive production. Right up to Dec. 24, she's performing eight shows a week of White Christmas, the stage version of the 1954 movie musical, at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Milburn, N.J.

Her character is the busybody hotel desk clerk who gets to strut through a Garland-style solo, Let Me Sing and I'm Happy. An understudy will take Luft's place while she's here this weekend. She has appeared in various productions of White Christmas since 2006.

"I love this show," she says. "Every August I wait for the phone call (to hear) where we're going to do it next."

Luft says she doesn't remember playing Winnipeg, attributing her blank memory to being worn out from White Christmas.

Being so close to Manhattan, she says, she'll spend Dec. 25 with the 65-year-old, four-times-divorced Minnelli for the first time in five years.

Luft, who wrote about Minnelli's drug problems in her 1998 tell-all Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir, has had periods of estrangement from the Cabaret star. She says nothing about their sisterly relationship now except a forceful "It's fine."

Luft says the biggest misconception about their mother is that she was a tragic figure.

"She really wasn't. She was a very, very funny human being. She was very self-deprecating. She had great joy and love of life.

"I mean, listen, she had tragedies in her life, but she wasn't tragic."

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

Concert Preview

A Judy Garland Christmas: Songs My Mother Taught Me

Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

Centennial Concert Hall

Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m.

Tickets $23 to $87 at Ticketmaster

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 8, 2011 D3