Lorna Luft Pens Book About Mother, Judy Garland, and A STAR IS BORN

Lorna Luft, daughter of Judy Garland and Sid Luft, has written a new book, A Star Is Born: Judy Garland and the Film That Got Away, which will be released by Running Press Adult on September 18, 2018.

A Star Is Born -- the classic Hollywood tale about a young talent rising to superstardom, and the downfall of her mentor/lover along the way -- has never gone out of style. It has seen five film adaptations, but none compares to the 1954 version starring Judy Garland in her greatest role. But while it was the crowning performance of the legendary entertainer's career, the production turned into one of the most talked about in movie history.

The story, which depicts the dark side of fame, addiction, loss, and suicide, paralleled Garland's own tumultuous life in many ways. While hitting alarmingly close to home for the fragile star, it ultimately led to a superlative performance -- one that was nominated for an Academy Award, but lost in one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. Running far too long for the studio's tastes, Warner Bros. notoriously slashed extensive amounts of footage from the finished print, leaving A Star is Born in tatters and breaking the heart of both the film's star and director George Cukor.

Today, with a director's cut reconstructed from previously lost scenes and audio, the 1954 A Star is Born has taken its deserved place among the most critically acclaimed movies of all time, and continues to inspire each new generation that discovers it. Now, Lorna Luft, daughter of Judy Garland and the film's producer, Sid Luft, tells the story of the production, and of her mother's fight to save her career, as only she could. Teaming with film historian Jeffrey Vance, A Star Is Born is a vivid and refreshingly candid account of the crafting, loss, and restoration of a movie classic, complemented by a trove of images from the family collection taken both on and off the set. The book also includes essays on the other screen adaptations of A Star Is Born, to round out a complete history of a story that has remained a Hollywood favorite for close to a century.

Click here to pre-order.

Lorna Luft made her performing debut singing on The Judy Garland Show. Since then, she's had dozens of starring and guest-starring roles in film and television, ranging from Grease 2 and Where the Boys Are '84 to the series Murder She Wrote and Sean Saves the World. Lorna was co-executive producer of Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows, the Emmy Award-winning miniseries based on her best-selling memoir.

For the past several years, Lorna has starred in American and British productions of Irving Berlin's White Christmas. Her other theatrical credits include her Broadway debut in Promises, Promises; Off-Broadway's Snoopy and Extremities; the national tour of They're Playing Our Song; a British tour of Pack of Lies; and Gypsy, Grease, Guys and Dolls, Mame, and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, among many others.

Lorna is also a gifted concert and cabaret artist, performing in the world's most prestigious venues, including The Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, The London Palladium, and L'Olympia in Paris. Her highly acclaimed multi-media production, Songs My Mother Taught Me -The Judy Garland Songbook, melds some of the world's most familiar songs with personal memories. It won two Ovation Awards, and a CD based on the show was released by First Night Records.