My friend Lorna Smith, who has died aged 94, worked for 44 years as a civil servant, but her passion was running the international fan club for Judy Garland. Lorna established the club in the UK with Garland’s blessing in 1963 and when the star invited Lorna to be her backstage assistant for five weeks in 1969, Lorna took a sabbatical from her administrative job at the Inland Revenue for a glamorous sojourn in the West End. Born in Ilford, Essex, Lorna was the daughter of Stanley Smith and his wife, Lilian (nee Philpott). After leaving Ilford grammar school she joined the Inland Revenue as an administrator. Lorna was first entranced by Garland after watching Everybody Sing in 1938. In the years that followed she never missed a film, watching Garland evolve from a child star to a popular adult performer. By 1956 Lorna was the head of the British chapter of the international Judy Club and as a result she was invited to a Park Lane press reception in 1957 to mark Garland’s season at the Dominion theatre. This was their first meeting; they remained in contact, exchanging many letters. In 1963 Lorna relaunched the international fan club – previously based in the US – in the UK, with Garland’s blessing. It still has hundreds of members today. Lorna was also the founding editor of the Club’s journal, Rainbow Review, and ran it throughout the 1960s. In it, she documented Garland’s career with meticulous attention to detail. She coordinated and galvanised the Judy community, sending opening night telegrams, organising meetings, trips to concerts, birthday and Christmas cards and gifts. In return, Judy arranged for her to attend recording sessions, parties and backstage get-togethers. Garland seemed to identify a sincerity and integrity in Lorna. When, early in 1969, Garland performed for five weeks at the Talk of the Town nightclub in London, she asked Lorna to be her backstage assistant. So Lorna took a sabbatical from the civil service and spent each night helping the star to dress, assisting with fan mail, fixing her vodka and grapefruit juice and travelling with Garland by car from the Ritz. Lorna remembered searching for frequently misplaced reading glasses and trying to arrange flowers from the bouquets that regularly arrived, only to have Garland rearrange them. Sadly later that year, the star died from an accidental barbiturate overdose at the age of 47. Lorna’s biography, Judy With Love, published in 1975, was an intimate study of Garland stripped of Hollywood veneer and artifice. She kept in touch with Garland’s daughters, Liza Minnelli and Lorna Luft. After her retirement from the civil service in 1986 Lorna pursued an impressive list of hobbies and activities at her home in Eltham, south London, including classes in history, art and philosophy. There were frequent theatre and cinema visits. She loved classical music, classic movies and nature documentaries.