Lorna Luft

Lorna Luft was born on November 21, 1952, at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, the daughter of entertainer Judy Garland and producer Sidney Luft, Garland's third husband. She is the sister of Joey Luft and the half-sister of Liza Minnelli. Luft attended University High School in Los Angeles during her senior year, where she sang in the school choir, and later studied theatre at HB Studio in New York City.

Her introduction to show business came at age eleven, when she sang "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" alongside siblings Liza Minnelli and Joey Luft on the 1963 Christmas episode of Garland's CBS series The Judy Garland Show. The following year, on episode 20 of the same series, Garland performed "Lorna," an original number composed by Mort Lindsey and Johnny Mercer at Garland's request specifically for her daughter. The song was later included on the 2006 compilation Great Day! Rare Recordings from the Judy Garland Show. Luft subsequently joined the family on a summer concert tour, which culminated in Garland's third and final engagement at New York's Palace Theatre on Broadway in 1967. During that month-long run, Garland shared the bill with Luft, then fourteen, and Joey, then twelve. The performance was recorded live and released on ABC Records as Judy Garland at Home at the Palace.

Luft made her Broadway debut in 1971 at the Shubert Theatre, joining the cast of Promises, Promises as a replacement. The musical was adapted from the 1960 Billy Wilder film The Apartment and is best known for the song "I'll Never Fall in Love Again." She went on to star in They're Playing Our Song, appearing in the 1981–82 national tour of the production. In 1992, she took on the role of Adelaide in the national and worldwide tours of Guys and Dolls, a part with particular resonance given that she had previously played the daughter of Vivian Blaine — who originated the role of Adelaide on Broadway — in a 1985 episode of Murder, She Wrote. Luft also starred in Irving Berlin's White Christmas, performing in the U.K. premiere from November 2006 through January 2007 and reprising the role the following season at the Edinburgh Playhouse and the Wales Millennium Centre. Her Broadway activity spanned from 1967 to 2019.

On October 7, 1981, Luft performed at Carnegie Hall in New York, a venue she described as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. In June 2006, she returned to Carnegie Hall to perform a duet with Rufus Wainwright on "After You've Gone" at his tribute concert honoring Garland's 1961 comeback at the same venue. In 1983, she played Peppermint Patty in the off-Broadway production of Snoopy! The Musical, a sequel to You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and later that year costarred with Farrah Fawcett in Extremities. In 1996, she appeared in a production of Follies in Dublin alongside Mary Millar, Dave Willetts, and Millicent Martin, among others. She portrayed the Wicked Witch of the West in a stage version of The Wizard of Oz at The Lowry in Manchester, England, and in April 2009 completed a U.K. tour of Hugh Whitemore's Pack of Lies, playing Helen Kroger alongside Jenny Seagrove, Simon Shepherd, and Daniel Hill. Between May and July 2015, she toured the U.K. in Judy – The Songbook of Judy Garland, a show built around Garland's signature songs and recreations of scenes from her MGM film years.

Her television credits include a recurring role as Nurse Libby Kegler on the CBS series Trapper John, M.D. during its 1985–86 final season, and a guest appearance in the 1985 Murder, She Wrote episode "Broadway Malady." She also appeared in four episodes of the 2007–2009 Logo animated series Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World. Her film work includes Grease 2 (1982), in which she played Paulette Rebchuck, Where the Boys Are '84 (1984), Fear Stalk (1989), 54 (1998), and My Giant (1998). She and her brother Joey also made cameo appearances in the 1963 film I Could Go On Singing.

In December 1995, Luft released a cover of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" reworked as a virtual duet with Garland, issued as a CD single in the U.K. by Carlton Sounds and produced by Gordon Lorenz. In October 2007, she released her debut album, Lorna Luft: Songs My Mother Taught Me, in the U.K., produced by Barry Manilow and her husband Colin R. Freeman. The album draws on Garland's music. To promote it, Luft appeared on the October 29, 2007 edition of the Ken Bruce Show on BBC Radio 2.

Luft is the author of the 1998 memoir Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir, published by Simon & Schuster, which was adapted in 2001 into the Emmy-winning television miniseries Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows, starring Judy Davis, Tammy Blanchard, Hugh Laurie, Victor Garber, and Marsha Mason. She co-authored Judy Garland: A Portrait in Art & Anecdote with John Fricke in 2003, and in 2018 co-authored A Star Is Born: Judy Garland and the Film That Got Away with film historian Jeffrey Vance.

Luft was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012 and completed her final chemotherapy treatment in 2013. In July 2015, her U.K. tour concluded early when the cancer re-emerged and she returned to the United States for surgical treatment. In March 2018, she collapsed following a performance in London and was diagnosed with a brain tumor; she underwent successful surgery to remove it later that month. She has two children, Jesse and Vanessa, from her first marriage to Jerry Mamberg, and four grandchildren. She resides in Palm Springs, California, with her second husband, British-born composer and arranger Colin Freeman.