Garland husband Sid Luft, 89

LOS ANGELES — Sid Luft, 89, 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.

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.

The New York City-born native moved to Los Angeles in the late 1930s and started 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 met Garland in 1950. The same year, Mr. Luft divorced his second wife, B-movie bombshell Lynn Bari.

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 married in 1952.

"When we got married in the early '50s, Judy was still very beautiful," Mr. Luft told The London Daily Telegraph in 2001. "She was only 5 foot tall — just a shrimp of a girl, really — but she had a very sensuous body and, up close, her skin was like porcelain, pure white. I was crazy about her. She had incredibly kissable lips."

Mr. Luft, rugged and streetwise, 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 met Garland, the chemically dependent and depression-plagued MGM star had just been released from the studio and was, in his words, "on the slippery slope to a fade-out."

"I loved her and didn't want to see her kicked around," he said in the 2001 interview. "If MGM couldn't handle her, that was their problem."

Mr. Luft, who became Garland's personal manager and producer, engineered her sell-out performances at the London Palladium and the Palace Theatre in New York City.

"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 said Friday. "I think he understood Judy better professionally than anyone else did. He knew how to produce her shows, which were lavish, 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.

Mr. Luft and Garland had two children, Lorna and Joey. But the couple's personal life was not as successful as Garland's professional comeback. After 13 stormy years of marriage, five marked by separations and legal battles, they 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.

"Whatever bad things happened, you don't fall out of love with somebody like her," Luft told the Daily Telegraph. "All I know is that if anyone tried to save a woman who was breaking apart, I did. I know that I did the best I could do, and it still wasn't enough."

Mr. Luft, who married and divorced after splitting with Garland, is survived by his fourth wife, Camille; his three children; stepdaughter Liza Minnelli; and two grandchildren.