Lorna Luft is Judy Garland’s second-born daughter, the product of her 13-year marriage with producer Sidney Luft. Like her half-sister Liza Minnelli (not to mention her mother), Luft is an actor, singer, and dancer, having appeared in stage shows like “Promises, Promises” and the film “Grease 2.” In 1998, she published a memoir detailing her star-studded childhood, her mother’s addiction, and the countless under-reported cheerful moments in the Garland-Luft household.
In 2016, on the 47th anniversary of her mother’s passing (and the Stonewall riots), Luft performed an emotional rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at Manhattan’s 54 Below. “I said I would never sing this song, and it’s not because it was too emotional for me. But my mother died when she was 47 years old, and it has been 47 years since the Stonewall Uprising,” she said onstage, adding, “If there was ever a time to sing it, now is the time” (via Playbill).
Garland was a beloved queer icon, and her funeral was long-rumored to have been a catalyst for the Stonewall Uprising, although this has been largely disproven.
Post source: The List
