All For Love—Judy Garland

By the time you read this, Judy Garland may be honeymooning with her third husband. If she isn’t, then it’s only a question of time and legal procedure before she becomes Mrs. Sidney Luft.

Before Judy left for London, where the Palladium is paying her $70,000 for a few weeks’ work, she and Sidney were virtually inseparable. For a while, Judy denied that they were anything more than the usual “good friends,” but a few weeks ago she admitted that they were serious about each other. “We have plans,” she said. “And I won’t date any other man. Sid is a wonderful guy. He has a great sense of humor and I feel so happy when he’s around me. I just know we’re going to hit it off. Right now I’m interested in only three things—my daughter Liza, my career, and Sid.”

Judy is convinced that this trio of interests will give her life direction and meaning. “I’ve never been any happier or healthier,” she said before she left Hollywood. “After London, we’re going to tour the Continent, then I’m coming back to Hollywood, and I think I’ll probably play opposite Bing Crosby in Famous. Honestly, I’ve hit my stride. Things have been pretty rough these past few years, but I’ve snapped out of my depression. I’m in fine voice, I’ve loads of energy—and well, the future looks fine.” Everyone in Hollywood wishes Judy happiness. She, more than any other person, deserves a break in her personal life. Yet, somehow, the feeling circulates that if and when she becomes Sid Luft’s wife, she will be embarking on a marriage that cannot possibly last. A marriage, whose eventual dissolution may prove too much for Judy to bear.

Hollywood is jammed with jaded characters who specialize in cynicism and disillusionment, but in matters of love, these characters are usually hopeful. They’ve seen improbable marriages last, and they don’t particularly like to prophesy gloom; but where Judy and Sid are concerned they are almost unanimously fearful of failure.

Sid Luft, better known to nightclubbers as “One-Punch Luft” because he’s handy with his fists, is one of those personable young men who’s been around Hollywood for years. He’s 34, comes originally from New York, and served as a flying officer in the Canadian Air Force during World War II. Recently he was divorced from actress Lynn Bari, who says he is connected with a horse-racing business of sorts.

Charming, witty, and a great pilot, he has no special entertainment talent. Judy’s former husbands, Dave Rose and Vincente Minnelli, possessed tremendous creative ability, but Sid Luft is essentially a businessman. He is probably a very shrewd and successful one, but the chances are that his income will not match Judy’s.

Judy earns $5,000 a broadcast, $250,000 a picture, $20,000 a week for personal appearances. It is doubtful that Luft will top that.

A close friend of Judy says, “One of the reasons she was happy with Vincente Minnelli for a while was that she respected him not only as a man but as a director. When he directed her in Meet Me in St. Louis she was so taken by his sensitivity and understanding that she fell in love with him. Last year when Summer Stock and Father of the Bride were released, Judy went around town saying, ‘Two of Metro’s biggest grossers were turned out by the Minnellis.’ She was very proud of that.

“I’m not saying that Sid Luft won’t do something to make Judy proud of him. But certainly his past accomplishments don’t indicate that his creative contributions will equal either Vincente’s or Dave Rose’s.”

It is rather difficult to track down Luft’s past accomplishments. On August 3, 1941, when he signed up with the Canadian Air Force, a few Los Angeles newspapers ran his photograph and under it these words: “Pilot Officer Sidney Michael Luft, 24, of 856 Devon Avenue, has owned “his own plane and chalked up 400 hours while working for a garage in Beverly Hills.”

Two years later, Luft married Lynn Bari at the home of producer Bill Perlberg. It was a wartime marriage. Lynn was under contract to 20th Century-Fox at a good salary, and the marriage was reasonably happy.

Not long after, Lynn became pregnant, but three weeks before it was due, her child died.

Both Lynn and Sid were distraught, but their doctor told them that Mrs. Luft was still capable of bearing other children and advised them not to be discouraged.

The Lufts, however, weren’t getting along any too well by then, and on May 27, 1947, Lynn Bari sued for divorce. She agreed to a reconciliation, however, and soon she was pregnant again.

After the birth of her son, John, she went back to work. Like most actresses she earned a good deal more money than her husband. Lynn toured the country in several stage attractions, and from time to time, Luft joined her on the road.

But when Lynn Bari returned to Hollywood last year, she decided to divorce Sid. She told the judge that he was not interested in maintaining a home, that he preferred to spend much of his time in night clubs.

“If I didn’t want to go out in the evenings,” she testified, “he’d say he was going out to get the morning papers and he’d remain away all night. He’d get home at 6:00 A.M. and when I asked where he’d been, he’d say ‘I was out with the boys.’ ”

Lynn’s petition for divorce from Luft also stated that he had used separate funds belonging to her to develop business interests “of which he now refuses to account to her.”

Lynn also said that she had advanced her husband $16,000 in cash for an investment in a motion picture, and had later given him “her $13,000 equity in Coldwater Canyon property for the same purpose.” She then charged that Luft had threatened to sell or mortgage the properties “in order to deprive her and their child of a share in the proceeds.”

Lynn’s complaint further asserted that Luft was currently associated with a horse-race enterprise and that his income was more than $2,500 a month.

The judge decided that Luft would have to pay $500 a month for one year for the support of his two-year-old son John; and $300 a month and 10% of his income thereafter.

At the time Sid started going out with Judy Garland, Lynn Bari said that he was behind on his support payments.

That is briefly Sid Luft’s background in Hollywood.

Judy’s is too well-known to bear repetition. Her chronic unhappiness, her childish attempt at suicide, her inferiority complex—all of these have been rehashed countless times, and there is no need to re-examine them here.

That Judy was unable to continue her marriage to Vincente Minnelli may be attributed to many factors, but the deciding one was that she no longer loved him.

Minnelli was a model husband, tolerant, understanding, hard-working—but the attraction he had for Judy simply faded.

Judy separated from Minnelli several times in the past few years, and on each occasion there was a reconciliation. But they could never: recapture what they felt for each other in the days when he was directing her in The Clock.

When Judy went to New York last year, she didn’t go with Minnelli. She went with Myrtle Tully, her secretary. Vincente remained at work in California. Judy did the town with several attractive escorts, and everyone was quick to point out that Minnelli was the most broad-minded husband in the land. Actually, each had stopped caring for the other, and it didn’t matter with whom they were being seen.

Judy told everyone that she would escort Vincente to Paris where he was scheduled to direct An American in Paris, but Minnelli never went, and Judy never escorted him. Instead, she entrained back to Hollywood, signed a new contract with the William Morris Agency, and began making guest appearances on the Bing Crosby radio show.

She also started being seen in public with Sid Luft. When reporters questioned her, she quickly denied any fondness for him and kept referring them to her marital status. Finally, she was seen so much with Luft that she was compelled to move out of the Minnellis’ hillside house to the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Then it was out in the open. Judy was going to divorce Vincente Minnelli.

Ordinarily, a girl is somewhat saddened when she makes that announcement, but the opposite was true of Judy. She was obviously in love with Luft, and she didn’t care who knew it. People kept telling her that she was gaining too much weight, something she formerly worried about—but this time, she merely smiled. “Some people are born to be heavier than others,” she said.

Today, Judy’s in a better frame of mind than she has been in years. She knows she’s desirable to Luft, and that she’s desirable to the public. To be thus wanted has been the need of her life.

Whether she and Sid Luft will be permanently happy together, or whether their love will flicker out—no one can really say. Although too many observers anticipate the latter situation, it is in Judy’s favor that observers were equally distressed when Bing married Dixie, Spencer Tracy married Louise Treadwell, and Alan Ladd married Sue Carol.

THE END

—BY IMOGENE COLLINS

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE MAY 1951