Product Description

The question follows Lorna Luft to this day: "What's it like to be Dorothy's daughter?" Although by appearances glamorous and truly thrilling, growing up as the daughter of Judy Garland was anything but a journey over the rainbow.

With unsparing candor, Lorna Luft offers the first-ever insider portrait of one of Hollywood's most celebrated families: a rare story of a little girl, her half-sister Liza, and her baby brother trying desperately to hang on to the mother whose life seemed destined to burn brightly but briefly. Lorna makes an extraordinary journey back into the spiral of love, addiction, pain, and loss that lurked behind a charmed facade.

Filled with behind-the-scenes dramas, hilarious untold stories, and little-known details of Garland family life, Me and My Shadows is a tribute to Lorna's victory over her own past, a story of hope, of love and its limitations, and a deeply moving testament to the healing powers of embracing one's past and charting a course of self-love and discovery.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128568 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780671019006
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Booklist
Luft, often identified as Judy Garland's "other daughter," steps center stage to describe what life was like as the child of an icon. For the first nine years of her life, Luft was protected from the vagaries of her mother's prescription-drug abuse and downward-spiraling mental health. But after her parents' divorce, Luft found herself in the role of chief cook and bottle washer--in charge of cleaning up her mother's messes. The horror stories from this period include breakdowns, breakups with almost everyone who was close to Garland, paranoia, and even knife-wielding episodes in which Garland went after her young son. After Luft had her own breakdown at 16, she left her mother's home and never saw Garland alive again. Despite all the horror, Luft is kind to her mother's memory, seeing the star as sick, not evil, and remembering all the many loving times shared between mother and daughter. Sister Liza Minelli doesn't fare quite as well. Although Luft has many nice things to say about her, Liza's drug abuse has left the pair estranged. Oh, yes, Luft had her own life, too, but not unexpectedly, her affairs with even the likes of Burt Reynolds and Barry Manilow and her own drug problems don't make for nearly as fascinating reading as her tales of Judy and Liza. Dishy--and sure to be popular. Ilene Cooper

From Kirkus Reviews
Breathless writing, tight structure, and an endless A-list of stars make this memoir by the younger Garland daughter a movie fan's parfait. Daughter of Garland and businessman Sid Luft, Lorna writes this book neither to glorify nor to vilify her family, but to tell ``a truer . . . story'' about ``a group of people who grew up in the public eye and got through it all the best way they could.'' Thankfully, understatement ends there. Beginning with Frances Gunn's first steps onstage at age two and ending with her daughter Lorna's happy second marriage, the book is rife with dramatic events. Skillfully divided into two partslife with Mama, life after her deathit details Garland's decades-long chemical dependency (including her first studio-sanctioned Benzedrine) and Lorna's early life as her caregiver, her emotional swings, and especially her great love for her two daughters and her son, Joe. Lorna also charts Garland's hard-won sobriety and attempts to bring Liza to detoxification programs. Throughout, the book brims with famous friends: Uncle Frank Sinatra, girlfriend's parents Bogart and Bacall, JFK and his sweet-voiced wife Jackie, early love Barry Manilow. Everything is presented in a pleasingly sustained voice that blends once-stylish phrasings, self-help lingo, and quirky if awkward locutions to create a linguistic world in which ``damn straight, ``dysfunctional,'' and the kooky line ``For every camel, there's a last straw, and there was for me'' coexist. It also suits the writer, for as she presents herselfby turns mature, facile, feeling, and graciousshe is a '90s everywoman, the person you'd see yourself being if you had been the child of a troubled movie legend. Confessional yet affectionate, this grants weight and closure to an overdiscussed film family. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Literary Guild selection; author tour; TV satellite tour; ABC-TV miniseries) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
New York Post A loving memory of growing up in a dysfunctional household. -- Review

Customer Reviews

What's that whistling sound?
Why, it's Lorna Luft, dropping another famous name. Incoming!

If you bought this book to learn more about Judy Garland, as I did, save your money; or better yet, buy Gerald Clarke's excellent biography "Get Happy."

The first half of the book, up until Judy's death, is nothing we haven't heard before, except painted with a whole lot of whitewash. Vincente Minelli's relationships with men? Didn't happen. Sid Luft lost money gambling? Totally false. Judy resented Louis B. Mayer and her mother? Of course not. Most of the other stories we've heard over the years? Not true. Her proof for any of this? None; the stories are, it seems, not true mostly because she doesn't want them to be.

One thing I found quite offensive is Luft's characterization of her mother's gay fans as "Garland Freaks." She goes on to mention later that there's nothing wrong with homosexuality, but by then the damage was done, in my opinion. According to Luft, pretty much everyone who was around her mother at the end was a sleazy hanger-on. Well, at least they were there; by her own admission, Luft did not see Judy at all for the last 10 months of her life, having decamped to California to live with her father.

After writing of her mother's death, Luft launches into the story of the rest of her life, which sadly isn't all that interesting. She did a lot of drugs. She hung out at Studio 54. She performed. Oh, and she knew famous people. A *lot* of famous people. Whose names are mentioned. Often. Every one of them is, of course, a "dear friend." She'll show you pictures to prove it. Yada yada whatever.

Luft is honest about her drug problems, but much more honest, in much more detail, about her sister Liza's drug problems. Luft "treats" us to every sordid detail about Liza's problems and attempts at rehab. Luft's own rehab? To hear her tell it, not much to write home about. It's a pretty blatant attempt to whitewash her own problems while making her sister look as bad as possible.

Save your time. Luft's intentions may have been good (and I have my doubts about that; ride the coat tails much?), but she falls short of the mark here.

Very Interesting Life
The book starts off with the story of Lorna Luft's grandparents (Judy's parents) Frank and Ethel Gumm and tells the story about how they met and the family they raised. The book then goes into the story of Lorna's mother Judy Garland growing up baby Frances Ethel Gumm. Lorna tells how her mother loved to perform and loved living in Grand Rapids, Minnesota (were she was born) and hated living in Lancaster, California where they moved when Judy was 4.
Lorna then goes into the story of the MGM years of Judy's life going from a radio singer to the star of The Wizard of OZ, one of the greatest hits of MGM's history all in the space of a year. After that, it was all pretty much down hill as far as MGM goes for Judy according to Lorna. Judy started on drugs to help her lose weight and help her sleep, and they soon controlled her life. Lorna tells that when Judy was 18 she got married to David Rose and after only a short period of time divorced him. She did this to get out of Ethel's hair because she could not stand being near her after the death of Frank, and Ethel's marrying a man exactly four years to the day after her father's death.
Lorna then goes into the sorted affair that was Judy's marriage to Vincent Minnelli and the birth of their daughter Liza. After only a few years though they divorced and Lorna goes on to talk about the next man in Judy's life, Lorna's father Sid Luft.
Lorna tells the story about her father being raised by a bon-vivent and a Russian Jewish designer in New York City. Lorna also tells a ridiculous story that her father once heard his father tell his mother about a mysterious note a woman wrote to him when his family was in Europe one summer.
Lorna tells about her parent's early relationship and how she never knew that she was actually on the way when they decided to get married. She describes the story about her early years in the house and then the hubbub of having little Joey come into the world. Lorna also writes about how when Joey was a little boy she actually went into his crib and scratched him so hard that to this day there are still scratch marks on his face, because she did not want him in the house anymore
This leads into the story about Lorna's own life. She writes about her early life at first staying at one house, but by the age of nine being shuffled from England to New York to California. She then elaborates about her parents separation and how a Psychiatrist used Lorna's fear of needles to get her to admit that she did not want to live with her dad, that she did not even love her dad. After this thing got a little better but she was still going from one step-father to another constantly moving, never being able to see her father, until at the age of 15 she moves in with her dad and several months later finds out that her mother was dead.
After her mother died, Lorna moved to New York to work in plays and things and had some love affairs (one with Barry Mataloe.) She tells about her dabbling with cocaine for several years and the diabolical that was her relationship with Burt Reynolds until she found the absolute wrong man for her-her husband Jake Hooker.
Lorna vividly details her relationship of almost 20 years with her husband. She tells about at first they were fine, and then after their son was born it was more like they were client and clientele instead of husband and wife and their daughters birth only made it worse. She details how their marriage broke up when their daughter was an infant and how only a week later she met the next man she was to marry.
Last, but not least Lorna describes her relationship with her sister Liza Minnelli. She tells that because Liza was seven years older than her she does not really have any memories of her when they were young, but she has a lot when they were older. Lorna details the struggle Liza had with drugs that culminated in Lorna virtually kidnapping her sister and taking her to the Betty Ford Center in about 1984.

An honest, anecdote-filled memoir.
Lorna Luft's book exceeded any expectations I had about how interesting or entertaining it would be. It was by turns illuminating, funny, sad, wistful, and ultimately hopeful. She is truly learning the lessons of her (often tragic) heritage, and this book is a tribute to that process, as well as an honest portrait of her amazingly talented mother. She includes anecdotes you won't read anywhere else, and anyone interested in Judy Garland will find these stories revelatory. Luft has been accused of merely name-dropping here, but if her career and life-experiences have taken her into the paths of numerous famous individuals, why shouldn't she mention them? It would be ridiculous to expect her to write an honest memoir about her life and her mother's without naming names along the way. Ditto for her comments about Liza, who, judging from recent public appearances, looks to be headed further down that road of addiction and chemical dependency. More's the shame. There isn't anything extraordinarily graceful or eloquent about this book, but it is better than you'd expect it to be. And if you get the chance to see Lorna live doing her tribute to her mother, don't miss it.