Heartbreak Ahead?—Judy Garland & Sidney Luft

When Judy Garland returned to Hollywood after a five-month European tour during which she’d earned some $200,000, reporters at the train asked her how she felt.

For a minute, Judy wouldn’t answer.

Her glance swept across the train station, and came to rest on her little daughter, five-year-old Liza Minnelli. Liza ran into her mother’s arms. There was a joyful, kissing reunion, and only after that was over would Judy answer the eager press.

“I’m feeling great. I don’t worry about my figure any more.”

In England, Judy had been amazed by all the comment concerning her weight. Practically every newspaper describing her appearance at the Palladium, included such items as “a surprisingly heavyweight Judy Garland made her vaudeville debut last night,” or, “Judy Garland, fatter and rounder than ever, arrived in London yesterday,” or, “Never before has talented Judy weighed this much.”

Talking about it later, Judy good naturedly said, “For a while they had me feeling like the fat lady from Barnum & Bailey. But they were really a wonderful audience. The crowds I played to in England were simply magnificent. So understanding. So warm. They bring out the best in an entertainer.

“I remember the opening the opening night at the Palladium. After the fourth number, I was ready to make my exit. I was so nervous, I slipped and fell on my fanny. Instead of laughing. at me, the audience laughed with me. I knew then that the people out front were more interested in my voice than in my weight.”

A good deal of Judy’s past neurotic behavior has been tied up with her weight. An RKO producer who is himself a mountain of fat, once told the young actress, “There are certain people who are naturally fat. When they try to diet all the time they become nervous and irritable. Forget about dieting. It’ll restore your peace of mind. Concentrate on something else.”

A plump, happy Judy, home from her triumphant European tour, greeted Liza.

Judy forgot about dieting and began to concentrate on Sid Luft.

Even though her weight sometimes shoots up past 140, Judy is sure that Sid Luft loves her. This certainty, many of her friends believe, is destined to bring Judy more heartache. They feel strongly that Luft is not the man for her. Judy insists that he is. “I can’t tell you,’ she says, “how much fun we have together. Sid’s my fellow and I don’t care who knows about it.”

When Judy is asked if she intends to marry Luft, she says, “His divorce isn’t final until December.”

When Luft is asked the same question, he answers, “Maybe you’d better ask Judy.”

There is little doubt that eventually Judy Garland will take Michael Sidney Luft, aged 35, as her third husband. But first the four legal charges brought against him will have to be decided in court.

These charges are the result of a three-car collision in which Judy played a small part.

One night late in September, Luft’s car, traveling south, crashed into two cars traveling east. The accident took place in Los Angeles at a major intersection.

When he was apprehended by the police, who charged him with drunken driving, Luft insisted that Judy wasn’t in the car with him at the time of the accident. He said that Judy was in a restaurant two blocks away when she heard the crash and came running.

One of the college boys whose car was hit, however, told the police that Judy was definitely in Luft’s car immediately after the accident. “She disappeared for five minutes,” he said, “and then came back. Both of them shaken and talking incoherently. Miss Garland kept telling Luft to beat it, and I kept telling them they’d better hang around until the police came. That’s when she swung at me and knocked my glasses off and broke them. I told her she’d better leave because she didn’t belong in a spot like that.”

Another victim in the brawl that night was an innocent witness, a Los Angeles dentist. “I saw the entire accident,” he said, “and I stopped to be a witness for the boys when this man, Luft, came up and threw a punch which landed on my nose. He shattered one of the lenses in my glasses.”

“He uses his fists too much,” people say of Sid Luft, here with his lawyer (left). He answered four legal charges in October.

By the time the police arrived, Judy had left the scene of the accident. The police took Luft down to the Wilshire jail where they quoted him as saying, “I had a beer—well, maybe three. I can feel it. But I’m not drunk. The only guy I belted was the guy in the tux. Did someone see my gun, a .38 revolver? I was target-practicing a few days ago, put the gun under the seat. Did I pass the sobriety test?

Luft was booked at 2:15 A.M. and seven minutes later was released on $100 bail in the custody of Robert Agins, his attorney.

After Luft asked about his gun, the police searched his car and found a 38-caliber revolver which, previously, had been reported as stolen from the director of plant protection at the Douglas Aircraft factory.

The next day all Hollywood was buzzing about Judy and Sid.

“Luft seems to get in an awful lot of trouble,” one Hollywood veteran remarked. “He uses his fists too much. When he came back from England with Judy, he was served with a summons because he hadn’t paid for the support of his son by Lynn Bari. He settled that one out of court. A few days later he had to get in another mess.”

Other observers doubted the story about Judy’s being in a restaurant two blocks away when the crash occurred. “How come she heard the accident,” one of them asked, “when all the other customers in the place didn’t?”

Through her attorney, Judy said, “I’m a human being, and have emotions just like anyone else even though I am an actress. When I saw Sid in trouble I just had to go to him.”

A day later when the city district attorney read the police reports on the accident, he charged Luft with more than being drunk. He added the charges of drunken driving, carrying a concealed weapon, and driving without an operator’s license.

Luft pleaded innocent to all these charges and asked for a jury trial, which may or may not result in his going to jail.

When Luft was asked if Judy would testify at his trial, his attorney quickly intervened and said, “Miss Garland certainly is not going to let anybody down. I’m sure she’ll testify if asked to do so.” The attorney also denied that Judy had been drinking. “She was just in a highly emotional state,” he explained.

When February 22, 1952, rolls around, and Judy’s divorce from Vincente Minnelli becomes final, her friends (and she has many) hope that she will be in a less emotional state.

They hope she will think over marriage to Sid Luft very carefully.

A former secretary of Judy’s has this to say: “Sid Luft may be the most wonderful man in the world, but I don’t think he’s the type for Judy. She needs an older man of position and experience who can keep her in line. So far, Sid has been responsible for Judy’s being hounded by a lot of process servers.”

This last remark has reference to the fact that when Judy alighted from the train in Pasadena last September, she was served with a subpoena. Luft owed back alimony of close to $3,000, and Lynn Bari’s lawyers wanted to get Judy into court to find out exactly how much money she ad paid Luft as her personal manager during their travels.

Judy didn’t have to go into court because Luft paid up with a check for $2,889.

Two days before she left for New York and her stint at the Palace Theater, Judy again was the object of a search by subpoena servers. Again agent-manager Sid Luft, ex-husband of actress Lynn Bari, was the cause.

According to a court ruling, Luft has the right to see his three-year-old son, John, for 48 hours, and keep him in custody for that length of time.

When Lynn Bari read of Luft’s traffic crash and his subsequent citation on a drunk count, she obtained an order for Luft to show cause why his 48 hours’ custody of their little boy should not be curtailed to protect the child’s safety.

“The reason we were trying to subpoena Miss Garland,” Lynn’s lawyer explained, “is that she was present at the time of the accident. We want the court to determine whether Luft’s drinking might endanger the welfare of his son.”

“Since the granting of said (custody) order,” read Miss Bari’s court affidavit, “defendant has been drinking intoxicating liquors to excess, and specifically on September 30, 1951, defendant was involved in an automobile accident in which he is charged with driving while intoxicated, among other things: affiant (Miss Bari) is fearful that harm will come to minor child when he is in custody of the defendant.”

Miss Bari asked the court to permit Luft to visit his son only in the presence of a person designated by her.

Judy’s friends feel that she has a big enough job looking after herself without getting mixed up in Luft’s affairs.

“Judy is a grown-up woman,” says a Metro producer who’s known her since she was a child, “but she knows absolutely nothing about love, and very little about men. She shouldn’t have married Dave Rose; she shouldn’t have married Vincente Minnelli; and she shouldn’t marry Sid Luft. As a matter of fact, she shouldn’t get married for the next two or three years until she straightens herself out completely.

“Right now, no Hollywood producer in his right mind will take a chance on putting Judy in a picture. A Garland picture means a lavish Technicolor musical, and that costs lots of dough. If Judy should have a breakdown in the middle of it, as she did in Annie Get Your Gun, it would cost a mint. Making personal appearances two and three times a day is a whole lot more difficult than making motion pictures, at least for a star. If Judy can continue to bear up under the vaudeville routine, film producers will beat a path to her door.”

Judy Garland needs to be loved. Unfortunately, she isn’t the easiest girl in the world to love. She demands constant attention. She suffers from many fears.

In years gone by, she received much aid and comfort from her mother, but not too long ago there was a break between them. While their relationship is still friendly, it isn’t the very warm, inseparable combine of years ago.

Sid Luft is very good for Judy’s ego, but is he very good for Judy’s heart, or life, or career?

According to Lynn Bari, he wasn’t of very much help to her. She married him on November 28, 1943. Less than two years later, Luft made the headlines by getting into a night club brawl with Dead End kid Bobby Jordan. A few months later, Lynn Bari sued for divorce, but there was a reconciliation. After the birth of their son, Luft was involved in another fist fight with an unidentified stranger. By that time, Lynn had had enough. She filed for divorce.

“He had a standard routine,” Lynn told her attorney. “I’d ask him where he was going and he’d say, ‘Just out to get the papers.’ And then he wouldn’t come back until the next morning. When I asked him where he’d been, he’d say, ‘Oh, just out with the boys.’ ”

Lynn also accused Luft of spending her money to develop business interests he refused to tell her about.

The judge awarded Lynn $500 a month for the support of her child, and $300 a month after the first year, plus 10 per cent of Luft’s income.

When Luft began dating Judy last year, his source of income was a popular mystery, and he failed to follow up on his support payments. When Judy left for England, however, she hired Sid as her personal manager, and supposedly paid him a pretty good salary. At least, it was reported that he was stacking up on a new British wardrobe.

When the pair returned to Hollywood they returned to a load of heartache in the form of Luft’s legal encounters.

This is no attempt to make Sid Luft a “heavy.” He did yeoman work for Judy in England. He acted as a buffer between her and all the celebrity seekers. He said no when no had to be said, and he kept Judy in excellent mental health.

There are some men who do excellent work in overseeing their wives’ careers and supervising their outside interests. Freddie Brisson has been overseeing Rosalind Russell’s career for some years now. Ben Gage takes care of Esther Williams’ outside interests, and Tom Lewis keeps a watchful eye on Loretta Young’s. Whether Sid will do the same for Judy is still to be seen.

Right now Judy is in the process of making a comeback. Many of her friends doubt that she can make a comeback with happiness by marrying Sid Luft.

Whether Judy will listen to friends, or follow her own instincts is something no one will know until February 22, 1952.

At that date Judy will be free to marry again, and if past performance is any indication, she probably will. Whether or not she marries Luft—her friends are keeping their fingers crossed for happiness.

THE END

—BY CAROLINE BROOKS

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE JANUARY 1952