Sid Luft, film producer, 89; was Judy Garland's husband
LOS ANGELES -- Sid Luft, Judy Garland's third husband, who produced her Oscar-nominated 1954 film ''A Star Is Born" and staged her triumphant comeback in concerts in the 1950s, has died. He was 89.
Mr. Luft died Thursday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica of natural causes, said John Kimble, a longtime friend and business partner.
Born in New York, Mr. Luft moved to Los Angeles in the late 1930s and launched Custom Motors, a custom car company on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
He had worked briefly as a talent agent and produced the B-movies ''Kilroy Was Here" and ''French Leave" when he first met Garland in 1950. The same year, Mr. Luft divorced his second wife, B-movie actress Lynn Bari, whom he had married in 1943 and with whom he had a son, John.
Garland, the star of MGM classics such as ''The Wizard of Oz," in which she sang her signature song, ''Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and Mr. Luft were married in 1952.
Mr. Luft, who joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940 and later served as a World War II test pilot for Douglas Aircraft, was known as a heavy drinker and barroom brawler and claimed to have broken four noses in various altercations. During the war, he also survived a near-fatal plane crash that caused severe burns to his legs and hands.
The rugged, streetwise Mr. Luft was in marked contrast to Garland's previous two husbands -- composer David Rose and director Vincente Minnelli -- and prompted one media wag to sarcastically ask, ''So, Sid Luft is what a girl finds over the rainbow?"
When Mr. Luft first met Garland, the chemically dependent and depression-plagued MGM star had just been released from her contract at the studio and was, in Mr. Luft's words, ''on the slippery slope to a fade-out."
''I loved her and didn't want to see her kicked around," Mr. Luft said in the 2001 interview. ''If MGM couldn't handle her, that was their problem. But she was so incredibly talented that I knew she could land on her feet if she had some help. So what if the movies didn't want her? She could always sing."
Mr. Luft, who became Garland's personal manager and producer, engineered her sellout performances at the London Palladium and the Palace Theatre in New York.
''I wasn't going to let her fail," he said. ''As a way to cap her live show each night, I had this idea that she should come down to the edge of the stage and sing 'Over the Rainbow.' It worked like a million bucks."
Coyne Steven Sanders, a longtime friend of Mr. Luft's and the author of ''Rainbow's End," a book about Garland's weekly television variety series of the 1960s, said Mr. Luft deserved credit for transforming Garland into a stage performer and creating the Garland legend.
''Sid was a great showman," Sanders told the Los Angeles Times on Friday. ''I think he understood Judy better professionally than anyone else did. He knew how to produce her shows, which were lavishly, full-blown productions.
Mr. Luft also got Garland briefly back into films with ''A Star Is Born," the Hollywood-set musical-drama directed by George Cukor. It earned Garland and James Mason Academy Award nominations, in addition to four other nominations.
Mr. Luft and Garland had two children, Lorna and Joe. But the couple's personal life was not as successful as Garland's professional comeback. After 13 stormy years of marriage, five of them marked by separations and legal battles, they were divorced in 1965.
Garland, who was briefly married twice after divorcing Mr. Luft, died of what was ruled an accidental overdose of sleeping pills in 1969 at age 47.
Mr. Luft, who was married and divorced after splitting with Garland, leaves his fourth wife, Camille; his three children; stepdaughter Liza Minnelli; and two grandchildren.
