It revealed the inner strength of each song, as it did with the Judy Garland standards (with their famous Nelson Riddle and Conrad Salinger charts), which is something he learned from his parents. Wainwright did the home concerts, initially, out of economic necessity - his tours to promote “Unfollow the Rules” were canceled by the pandemic - and it forced him to strip his often lavishly orchestral arrangements down to piano and guitar. “They were all dressed up in their finery, and then they lost their minds and they ran towards the stage.” Luft was 8 at the time and was hoisted on stage by Rock Hudson. “Being a child and seeing adults act like that was very sort of scary and odd to me,” said Lorna Luft, Garland’s daughter, by phone. Some even rushed the stage, just trying to make contact. Men and women, many of them showbiz elite, gathered at the feet of Judy Garland as she doled out numbers from the Great American Songbook, getting lost in her one-of-a-kind warble.
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Those who were at Carnegie Hall on April 23, 1961, described it as like a religious experience. It was a kind of seance, summoning the ghost of a night from 50 years ago. On a recent Saturday morning at Hollywood’s Capitol Studios, Rufus Wainwright stepped up to a microphone once used by Judy Garland and belted out the 1928 song “When You’re Smiling (The Whole World Smiles with You).” The 47-year-old singer-songwriter was performing a setlist made famous by Garland orchestrally in a packed house, but here with a four-piece ensemble (piano, bass, guitar and drums) and an audience of one: Renée Zellweger, who won an Oscar in 2020 for portraying Garland in “Judy,” tapping her feet to the rhythm.