by Lorna Luft
As Joey and I sat there watching television, it was very quiet in the other room. Then, all of a sudden, we heard my mother yell, “He hit me! He hit me!” Joe and I nearly jumped out of our skins.
I thought, “What is going on?” I’d never seen my father hit my mother. What could have happened? I was completely confused. Joey and I crept into the other room to see what was going on.
All hell had broken loose. My mom had had bodyguards waiting just outside the door, and her yell was their entrance cue. The guards rushed in, grabbed my father, and picked up Joey and me. Some of the guards pinned my dad down by both arms as others carried me and Joe toward the door. I remember Dad struggling to get to us, screaming, “No! You can’t! I’m calling a lawyer! You’re not taking those children away from me! You’re not taking them to England!” I think he was afraid that once my mother got us to another continent, he’d never get us back.
Joey and I looked at our mother. She was perfectly calm. I remember thinking, “Mama’s not upset, so I guess everything’s all right.”
She told me, “Put your shoes on; we’re leaving now,” but I couldn’t remember where my other shoe was in all the confusion. Finally, accompanied by my mom and Joey, the guard carried me to the elevator, still wearing just one shoe.
My mom seemed completely relaxed, so I wasn’t that scared. I just asked her, “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to England now,” she replied. “Isn’t this exciting?”
It was exciting. When we got in the elevator, I remembered her yelling earlier, so I asked her, “Mama, why did you say Dad hit you?”
She said, “Oh, I was only joking. He didn’t really hit me.”
“Oh.” It never occurred to me to question her. Whatever my mother said, I accepted. As long as Mama was there, everything would be fine.
Only one thing worried me. I didn’t have my other shoe. So I said to my mother, “But I can’t go to London, Mama. I only have one shoe.” My mother told me not to worry, that she’d buy me more shoes in London; in fact, she’d buy me all new clothes. Then we got into a cab, where Liza was waiting for us, looking as though she’d just thrown on some clothes, and we went to the airport. I still remember climbing the steps up into the airplane with one shoe on and one shoe off.
Mama, me, Joey, Liza, the nanny, my mother’s hairdresser, and all thirty-odd pieces of my mother’s luggage were off for London. I was still excited by the events of the day. When the stewardess served dinner, I tried to open the little carton of milk she gave me, but I’d never seen that kind of carton before. I lost my grip, and the carton went flying through the air. I found myself sitting in the plane seat with milk streaming down my face and clothes. My mom took one look at me and burst out laughing. My dress was soaked, but I couldn’t change because I didn’t have any clothes to change into. Everything I owned was back in New York.
The other thing I remember about that flight is turning to the stewardess and saying, “Do you know who my mom is?”
Liza overheard me and was furious. She turned around, fixed me with those dark eyes of hers, and said, “Don’t you ever say that again.”
I shut up immediately, but I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong. Other kids could brag about their mothers. Why couldn’t I?
Somewhere over the Atlantic I fell sound asleep. When I woke up, we were in London.
Once we got to England, we moved into the Savoy Hotel, and my mother hired a proper British nanny for us—Mrs. Elizabeth Ann Colledge. Mrs. Colledge was very sweet, young and attractive, with a little boy my age. I liked her immediately. I saw her son recently, and he gave me a picture of Mrs. Colledge and me together with a note I wrote at the time, saying, “To the nicest person in the world. Love, Lorna.” Mrs. Colledge took wonderful care of us, and we were perfectly content.
Joey and I had no idea that we were actually in hiding. Mama was afraid that Dad would fly over and try to find us, which of course he did. With her usual flair for the dramatic, she had us declared wards of the High Court of Britain so that my father couldn’t take us back to America. It’s a wonder my mom didn’t have the guards from Buckingham Palace guarding our hotel.
It didn’t take my father long to track us down. He flew to London and moved into a small, cheap flat on the top floor of a building with a slanted roof. My mother couldn’t keep him away completely, but she wouldn’t let him see us often. When he missed us, he would write us letters, wonderful letters. I wish I still had some of them. My dad is a talented artist, and he would illustrate our letters with hilarious cartoons of Joe and me. Sometimes my mom would let Mrs. Colledge take us over to his flat to visit, and we’d beg him to draw more cartoons for us while we sat next to him, his tall frame hunched under the slanted roof. He always did.
Incredible as it seems, I still had no idea my parents were on the brink of divorce. With the exception of the incident at the Plaza, they’d never fought in front of us, and they’d never criticized each other to us, either. That would come later. Joe and I were still well protected from all the trauma. As long as we were with one parent or the other, we were content. We actually enjoyed our time in England. My mother made her movie, and Joe and I got to be extras on the ship. It was our movie debut.
Years later I learned that the time in England was anything but peaceful for my parents. Mama was in and out of the hospital with overdoses and related health problems the entire time we were in London, but I was never aware of it. Mrs. Colledge took care of us when my mother was gone; as far as I knew, Mama was just working. It was a heartbreaking time for my father, but the pain had yet to touch me or Joey.
My false sense of security didn’t last. A few months later we returned to the U.S., and my safe little world began to crumble.
As soon as Mama finished shooting her movie, we went home to the U.S. My father returned, too, separately. By then we were living from hotel to hotel, and we saw my father less frequently.
Shortly after our return, we all went to Las Vegas for my mother’s appearance at the Sahara. Not long afterward my aunts, Jimmy and Suzy, joined us there. For the first time in a very long while, all three Gumm Sisters were together. I knew their names, but I barely remembered them. While they got reacquainted, Joey and I played.
My mom was worried about leaving me and Joey at the hotel all day. Apparently she was afraid that my dad would try to take us away while she wasn’t watching. My mother had developed almost an obsession about losing us to him by then. Thinking we’d be safer there, she had Mrs. Colledge take us to a friend’s ranch for a little while.
The ranch was in the middle of the desert, somewhere near Las Vegas. It had a main house, three guesthouses, and a big fence all around it. The only way in or out was by the main gate. The whole place was a cross between a resort and a fortress. Joey and Mrs. Colledge and I stayed in one of the guesthouses. The rooms were pretty rustic; I remember Mrs. Colledge making us shake out our shoes every morning before we put them on. She was afraid there might be scorpions in them. It wasn’t an idle fear on her part; there were plenty of scorpions on the ranch. Mrs. Colledge trapped one with a water glass one day.
What I remember most about the place, though, is the dogs. There were two white German shepherds named Saber and Whitey. Whitey and Saber were guard dogs, and they were dangerous, really dangerous. They bit my brother one day when he bent down to pick up their ball and throw it. Joey was only seven, and when he bent over, Saber bit him in the side. We were both terrified of the shepherds.
Apart from the dogs, the ranch was pretty nice. There was a swimming pool and plenty of room to play. No matter where we went, though, there were always those two big dogs watching. When we went swimming, they’d sit on two chaise lounges and growl every time someone walked by. They gave me the creeps.
We were staying at the ranch the day I turned ten, in November 1962. I don’t remember celebrating my birthday that year, but I vividly remember my dad coming to see me the next day. That particular moment is
etched in my memory. Apparently he’d asked to see me for my birthday the day before, but my mother had refused. Naturally, Dad was hurt and angry. Never one to give up easily, he got a friend of his, a guy named Bullets Durgom (Jackie Gleason’s former manager), and they came out to the ranch to take me and Joey back with them. My father hadn’t been allowed to see us in weeks, so he’d decided to take matters into his own hands.
When Sid and Bullets drove up to the main gate in Bullets’s convertible, Joe and I saw them coming. We were completely taken by surprise, so when we saw Dad, Joe and I got very excited. We ran to meet him before the convertible even stopped, yelling, “Dad! Dad! Dad!” and jumped into his arms the minute he got out. He scooped us up and gave us a huge hug. We were so happy to see him.
But when he started to put us in the car, all hell broke loose. Guards came running from everywhere, some of them with guns, and lunged at my dad. There was a lot of pushing and shoving; I remember someone telling my father he wasn’t going to take us. Bullets was trying to calm my dad down, but when the guards grabbed me and Joey too, Dad completely lost control. Desperate to get to us, he kept screaming, “Don’t touch those children! Those are my children! Don’t touch my children!” It was one of the worst moments of my life.
I was absolutely terrified. Those men were hurting my dad, and I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t know why he was trying to take me and Joe, or why the men were hurting him, and this time there was no Mama there to turn it into an exciting game. Joey and I were sobbing uncontrollably by then in fear and confusion. Mrs. Colledge managed to pull us away and get us back inside the guesthouse. Joey was hysterical, so I started trying to calm him down, but all he would say over and over to Mrs. Colledge was, “Please call my mom. Please call my mom. Where’s my mom?”
It was terrible. I wanted my mother desperately. I wanted her to explain what was going on and to tell us that everything was going to be all right. Because if she said it was all right, it would be true.
After a while the shouting stopped, and it grew very quiet outside. We heard a car drive away. Mrs. Colledge went to the main house to call my mother, and eventually she got a call through. When Joe and I finally got to talk to her on the phone, she told us that everything was all right, that nothing really bad had happened, and tried to calm us down. She told us Dad was really upset, and that she didn’t want us to see him right then because he might try to take us away from her.
Take us away from Mama? That idea frightened us more than anything else that had happened that day. Take us where? Why? “We don’t want him to take us away from you, Mama,” we kept telling her. That was our biggest fear, that someone would take us away from our mother. It was also her biggest fear. Until that day, though, she’d never said anything like that to me or Joe.
Later that night Mrs. Colledge took us to the Sahara to be with my mother for a little while, and then we were taken back to the ranch and put to bed. I couldn’t sleep. At ten years and one day old, I’d just had the worst day of my life. It was also one of the biggest turning points of my life. The bubble of protection surrounding me and Joey had finally burst. I couldn’t ignore the reality of what was happening to our family any longer.
The painful irony of that day is that my father wasn’t taking us away from our mother. She was taking us away from him, and he was helpless to stop it. Strangers had taken his children and locked us away from him. My father was succumbing to despair and to sheer terror as the inevitability of it all sank in with him.
Our safe little world was crumbling around him, and my father, the strongest man in the world, couldn’t do anything about it.
© CBS, Inc.
Liza, Mama, me, and Joey on the CBS Christmas show in 1963.
CHAPTER 7
Treading Water
After the incident at the ranch, there was no turning back for my parents. There were several more attempts at reconciliation, but the situation was hopeless. If it had been up to my father, my parents would have kept on trying, but my mother’s condition made a lasting reunion impossible. The illness that would take her life six years later was too far advanced. The prescription drugs had taken their toll. First they take over your body, then your mind, and eventually your whole life. The family is one of the first casualties. My mother had been handed her first dose of medication when she was just a kid herself. That same medication was slowly but surely beginning to destroy my childhood as well.
The years of sheltering and protection were over for Joey and me. We returned to Los Angeles with our mother and lived in a brief series of rentals, the most memorable being a creepy little house on the beach in Malibu with an ugly wooden tiki out front like some sort of household god. Somehow the grisly look on his face seemed all too appropriate. Joey and I were pulled in and out of various schools with each move (I eventually attended more than seventeen schools) before we finally landed on Rockingham Drive. Nobody but the locals had even heard of the street back then, but it wasn’t far different then from what it is today. Even then it was a refuge of the elite, nestled in the hills above Sunset Boulevard only a mile or two from the Pacific Ocean. My mother’s management team made sure my father’s name wasn’t on the mortgage.
Most of the time, though, life was still good that first year at Rockingham. My mother had just started her TV series, and that was a wonderful time for Joe and me. Mama was thrilled to be doing the show, and we got to spend time at the studio with her after school. The network had fixed everything up beautifully for her, even painting a yellow brick road from her dressing room to the stage. There were a lot of interesting people around, too; Bob Mackie and Ray Aghayan did my mother’s costumes, and I remember Carol Burnett was taping something next door. Joe and I got to watch a lot of the rehearsals, and we were always in the audience on the nights Mama taped, in the front row where the lighted ramps met. You can see our small shadows on the show tapes, just a foot or two from the stage.
The most memorable moment for Mama and us was the Christmas show, in 1963, since the whole family got to participate. Eight-year-old Joey wore a little suit and tie and sang “Where Is Love?” to my mother in a sweet, small, frightened voice. He’d loved the song ever since we saw Oliver! in London. I wore a velvet dress and a ribbon in my hair and sang “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Liza got to do the most numbers because she was the oldest (at seventeen she was already a veteran performer), and all four of us did a little chorus line number right out of the Gumm Sisters’ old routine. I was scared to death and very, very excited. I’d have done it every week if someone had let me.
The most memorable moment of The Judy Garland Show for me personally, though, was the night my mother pulled me out of the audience and sang to me onstage. She sang my song, “Lorna.” The lyrics had been written by Johnny Mercer, and the music by Mort Lindsey (years later Johnny gave me the lyrics, which I have framed and on the wall in my house). I didn’t know she was going to do it, and I was so surprised. She sat down on the edge of the ramp near Joe and me, reached down her hand, and pulled me out of my seat and up onto the stage next to her. I still have the tape of me sitting there in my little velvet dress and white tights. She held my hand and sang a love song just for me, looking into my eyes the whole time. She looked beautiful sitting there that night in a long, sequined, cream-colored outfit and diamond-and-pearl earrings. I gazed into her face and forgot all about the audience; it was just me and Mama and her voice, a pinpoint of light in the darkness. When she touched my face, I instinctively reached out and took hold of the arm she used to hold the microphone. When she finished the last note, she put down the microphone and reached out her arms, and I crawled into her lap while she held me close. I could dimly hear the applause from the audience as she rubbed my back and kissed me gently on the top of my head.
Sunday nights were the high point of the week during those months. There was always a party. The Judy Garland Show aired on Sunday evenings right opposite Bonanza, and every Sunday night a big group of people w
ould come to our house to watch with Mama and Joe and me. The regular cast and crew would be there, and usually that week’s guests would come, too. Mickey Rooney lived down the street from us then, and he would come down and entertain us on the piano during the breaks, with his four daughters along. It was so much fun. Sometimes the cast would also come to our house to rehearse, and there were a lot of parties on the set, as well.
Even the famous off-camera disagreements were often funny. George Schlatter, the producer, loved to call my mother Miss Gumm just to infuriate her. My mom would get angry and start yelling if things didn’t go well during rehearsal sometimes, and when she wouldn’t stop, George would put flatulence noises on the intercom and played them back at her so everyone could hear. Mama would always start laughing. Another time, when she was rehearsing at home, George got so mad at her that he threatened to drown her if she didn’t stop yelling. He pulled a chair up under the fire sprinkler in our kitchen, struck a match, and threatened to set off the whole system if she didn’t shut up. My mother, taken completely aback, said, “What are you, crazy?”
He said, “Stop yelling.”
She did.
Another time I came home from school and found Ray Aghayan sitting in a chair with a towel wrapped around his head and blood running down his neck. He had come to our house to fit a new dress for my mother. I asked him what had happened, and he told me that he’d accidentally walked through the plate-glass window in our dining room. The big bay window overlooking the patio was shattered, and glass was all over the room. I wasn’t really frightened by the blood, just interested, but then the thought crossed my mind, “I wonder if that’s what really happened?” Years later, looking back on the incident, I thought, “Geez, how bad could that dress really have been?” Poor Ray. What a sweet man.
I had no way of knowing it at the time, but November of 1963 would be the turning point in my life. On November 21 of that year, I celebrated my eleventh birthday. The next day someone assassinated John F. Kennedy. My life was never the same again.