What you need to know
The Wizard of Oz is a movie that stays with you long after you’ve seen it.
Lorna Luft, daughter of the film’s star, Judy Garland, will always remember the first time she saw the film. That was when the 1939 classic first aired on television in 1956. Luft’s famous mother was not at home.
“We had a very well-meaning nanny. My mom was in New York, and she kept saying, ‘Your mom’s on TV tonight. Your mom’s on TV tonight,'” Luft, 73, tells PEOPLE at the pop-up QVC Holiday House in New York City.
The singer and actress added, “My brother, sister and I sat down and started watching. When the flying monkey part came, we started getting so hysterical.[My mom]called me from New York and I said, ‘Monkeys are taking you to New York!'”
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Luft laughs as he recalls what happened decades ago and quipped that he was no longer afraid of flying monkeys. But Ms. Garland was so distraught by how scared her children were during their first movie night that she vowed never to let them watch a movie without her again, she said.
“And she didn’t,” Luft says.
She also notes that even though movies were shown in color at the time, many people didn’t have color televisions, so they didn’t understand the magic of Oz’s Technicolor. Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in the movie and hosted the TV special, had to explain the colors to viewers who missed it.
Ms. Garland, who died in 1969, starred as Dorothy Gale in the film, based on the book by L. Frank Baum, which tells the story of a young girl who enters the wonderful world of Oz and attempts to return home. Along the way, she meets the Cowardly Lion (Lahl), the Tin Man (Jack Haley), and the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger).
Dorothy also meets two other witches: Glinda the Good Witch (Billy Burke) and the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton). These two characters became central figures in Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked and its subsequent Broadway show and two-part musical film adaptation.
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Luft says he has been immersed in the world of Oz ever since he was a child. She revealed that she considers her mother’s co-stars friends and that they have remained in her life over the years. “Growing up, I was lucky enough to call Margaret Hamilton a friend, and I knew a lot of the little guys[who played Munchkin],” she tells PEOPLE. “For years, I’ve grown up in Oz with the people who made this movie, and it’s been amazing.”
Luft is capitalizing on her mother’s affinity for movies in another way: a fashion collaboration with Jill Martin. The duo will launch their Wizard of Oz-themed collection on QVC on December 6th, after offering a preview of the collection at QVC’s Holiday House.
Martin tapped Luft to choose designs and lines from the movie for his work. Martin joked to People that Luft was writing notes in a pretty “old-fashioned” way, using a pen to circle things he liked on the pages Martin provided. Eventually, they settled on a few pieces to sell through their shopping platform.
“It’s amazing to me that I spent my entire adult life watching this movie,” said Luft, who said she always enjoyed the film her late mother was so famous for. “It’s important for me and Jill to express hope, like the line ‘There’s no place like home,’ because that’s what we need. We need to feel like we can cross that rainbow.”
