by Lorna Luft
The wedding ceremony was held at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Park Avenue, in Manhattan. The place was a cavern; it was so empty it echoed. Only a few people were there, family and a couple of Liza’s closest friends. Her father attended, and Vincente’s lady friend Lee Anderson (later his wife) came with him. Jake and I were there, and Halston, and Steve Rubell. And that was pretty much it, besides Liza and Mark, of course. I kept wondering why they had chosen such a big church for such a small wedding.
Afterward we went to Halston’s house, where he gave her a big reception, and then on to Studio 54 to finish the evening. The comic point came when Liza threw the bouquet. Lee really wanted Vincente to marry her, and she was by-God determined to catch that bouquet. The minute Liza let go of it in the crowd of women at the reception, Lee, a tiny little woman not much bigger than my mom, suddenly turned into a Green Bay Packer. She went flying through the crowd and beat all comers to catch those flowers. It was hilarious, but I guess it worked, because Vincente did marry her. Lee loved Vincente with all her heart, and all these years after his death, still does.
I wasn’t exactly thrilled about Liza’s choice of husbands the third time around. I didn’t like Mark; however much he cared about Liza at the beginning of their relationship, it soon seemed to me that he was more interested in the money and fame than in my sister.
At the time I blamed Mark for other things, too. As a sculptor with no real demands on his time (and access to plenty of Liza’s money), Mark spent a lot of his days and nights partying. The fact that I’d spent my life at the same party until recently somehow still managed to escape my attention. Liza tried to get his sculptures some attention in the art world, but I didn’t see anyone very interested in his work. The tension between Liza and Mark grew visible. The relationship was becoming deeply troubled; stories of their fights abounded. Sick of being “Mr. Liza,” Mark retaliated with harsh criticisms of Liza and her life.
It was also clear that Liza’s drug use was out of control, and I blamed Mark for that too. Stories were circulating about Liza’s drug problems, and hardly a day passed that someone didn’t call to tell me about this or that “incident” involving my sister. But what could I say to her? Until recently my own drug use had been so heavy that I was hardly in a position to cast the first stone at her. And although rumors reached me constantly, I had never seen any erratic behavior from Liza myself. I couldn’t very well tell her I couldn’t stand Mark; that kind of thing never goes over very well, no matter how troubled the marriage. So I kept my mouth shut, concentrated on my baby, and worried.
It wasn’t until Jesse was almost six weeks old that I came face-to-face with Liza’s unhappiness myself. Liza and Jesse were chosen to be knighted by the Knights of Malta, a charitable organization we’d been involved with for years. I had been knighted the year before, and now Jesse was also being knighted in my honor. We had a tiny tux made for Jesse that matched Jake’s, and he looked adorable.
We were all supposed to appear together at a special ceremony at a church in Manhattan. Jake and I went by Liza’s house to pick up her and Mark, but when we got there, Mark wasn’t around and Liza was in bad shape, high and out of control. I was angry with Mark for leaving, and worried about whether Liza could get through the evening in one piece. She made it through the knighting ceremony pretty well, but by the time we got to the reception at a private club, she was starting to go over the edge. She became extremely effusive, hanging all over people and inviting total strangers back to her house, passing out her private phone number to everyone in sight. It was the same sort of thing our mother had done so many years ago, at the end of her life. I kept thinking, “Oh, God, this is really bad.” I followed her around all evening, “uninviting” people and trying to retrieve her phone number by saying, “Oh, no, that’s not her number. She got it mixed up with another one.” It was the first time I’d been with Liza when she was really stoned and I was completely sober. It was sad and frightening to watch her.
By midnight I was exhausted and well ready to go home to my baby, but when I told Liza it was time to leave, she said, “No, I can’t go home. I don’t want to be alone.” There was panic all over her face. I didn’t want to leave her like that, so I told her she could come home with me and Jake to spend the night.
“You can sleep on the nanny’s cot, in Jesse’s room.” Liza agreed, but when we got back to my house, she was still bouncing off the walls, unable to sleep and afraid to be alone. I kept saying, “Liza, I have to go to sleep, and so do you. You have a show to do tomorrow.” After a while she went into Jesse’s room and started talking to him, and I drifted off to sleep in the room next door. Two or three hours later I woke up to the sound of the television set. I went in the living room, and there was Liza, curled up in front of the television, sound asleep. It was three A.M. I put a blanket over her, made sure the shades and drapes were pulled tight so the dawn wouldn’t wake her, and went back to bed. It was so sad—my sister, the big celebrity, scared and lonely there in front of the TV. It was Mama all over again. When Jesse woke up hungry at seven A.M., I took him into the bedroom to nurse so he wouldn’t wake Liza.
At nine A.M. the phone rang, and all hell broke loose. It was Liza’s secretary, Roni, saying they couldn’t find Liza, that she hadn’t come home. I told Roni that Liza was with me, but a second later Mark called to say, “Where the hell is she?” I put Liza on the phone, and she and Mark started screaming at each other. This was the first time I’d witnessed one of their fights. Clearly, Liza’s marriage was in trouble.
After that it became a regular pattern. Liza would show up at our house late at night, after her performance at the Broadway show The Rink with Chita Rivera, and stay over. At first I would ask her what was wrong, but all she would ever say was, “I just don’t want to be alone.” It was clear she didn’t want to go home to Mark, either. After a while I quit asking. I would make up a bed for her on the couch, and she would settle down with the television on. Like my mom, Liza couldn’t sleep without a radio or TV on. Most of the time she was high when she arrived, so she’d take two or three pills, presumably sedatives, and eventually she’d fall asleep with the TV on. In the morning she’d gather her things and take a cab to her apartment. She never talked about what was wrong, but she was painfully unhappy. It made me so sad to see her like that.
Life was strange; all those years ago Joey and I had taken refuge with her and Peter at their apartment in New York when our mother was out of control, and now Liza was taking refuge with me and Jake. For the first time in our lives, I felt like the older sister instead of the other way around. On the nights she didn’t come to our house, friends told me she would sleep in her dressing room rather than go home. It was heartbreaking. Her personal unhappiness was also affecting her performance. She was going onstage with little or no sleep, constantly coming up or down from drugs, sometimes barely able to function for the performance. The other actors were running out of patience; their initial sympathy was turning into frustration and anger. This couldn’t go on.
That became clear to me one night in a Manhattan restaurant. Jake and I met Liza after her performance for a late dinner with Chita Rivera and her family and several friends. We were talking and having a good time when someone at the table said, “Did you read that funny story in the paper about spontaneous combustion?”
We started to talk about it, but Liza interrupted saying, “I can’t hear this. Stop talking about it.”
We looked at Liza, and someone said, “What is your problem?”
Liza repeated, “I can’t hear this!” I looked at Chita’s face, and she was tense with anger. Liza started to lose it; she jumped to her feet, yelling at us and crying hysterically. Everyone in the restaurant turned around and looked at her.
Carrying on at the top of her lungs, she finally ran out into the street, calling for a car. Chita’s daughter ran after her and tried to calm her down, to talk to her, but Liza just kept yelling at her. By that time everybod
y in the street was watching the scene, too; Liza Minnelli yelling at the top of her lungs in the middle of the street at midnight has a way of attracting attention. Finally her car came, and she got in and roared away as the other patrons watched in fascination. In the silence that followed her exit, I looked at our friends and said, “Well gee, I guess we better not talk about spontaneous combustion, huh?” Everyone broke up laughing.
Then it all came pouring out. “Do you see what we have to put up with every night?” someone said. Someone else said, “Oh, this is nothing. You should see one of her big scenes.” Finally Chita said, “Why doesn’t she just get ahold of her goddamned self,” or something to that effect. I couldn’t believe the anger at that table. Clearly, Liza’s friends were fed up. All I could think was, “What was that? What the hell was that?” None of it made sense to me. Only one thing was clear to me: Liza was in trouble. Real trouble. It was only a matter of time before it all fell apart.
It wasn’t long after that night that I got the call. It was Roni Agress, Liza’s longtime secretary, friend, and confidante. Roni was an extraordinary woman, competent and deeply loyal to my sister, way beyond the call of duty. But lately even Roni had been in over her head with Liza. She had put up with Liza’s temper tantrums, the late hours—sometimes staying in Liza’s dressing room with her all night. She’d handled every conceivable problem for my sister by then, but the morning she called me, she was at the end of her rope. Very calmly, but with deep concern, Roni said, “Lorna, I don’t know what to do anymore. Your sister’s in the hospital.”
Shocked, I said, “What?”
Roni said, “She thinks she has cancer. She’s completely out of control. I’ve already had a car sent to your house to get you. You’re next-of-kin; you’re going to have to deal with this.” She went on to explain that the night before, Liza had given a huge party for a group of Cuban and Brazilian people she barely knew, and Liza had gone out of control. She’d found a mole on her back and become hysterical, thinking she had cancer. One of the party guests, a guy named Barry Landau, had taken Liza to the hospital for the “cancer.” “You’ve got to come now, Lorna,” Roni repeated. “All hell is breaking loose. Get a sitter for the baby and get over here.”
I called Arlene Lazare, told her what little I knew, and asked her to come and take care of Jesse for me while I went to the hospital. Jesse was still very small, only two months old, and I didn’t want to leave him with a stranger. By the time I’d thrown on some clothes and Arlene had arrived, the car Roni had sent was waiting for me downstairs. I jumped in, and we took off. The driver headed straight for a part of downtown New York I’d never been in before, and pulled up at the emergency entrance to a strange hospital in a rundown neighborhood. What was Liza doing there? Why hadn’t she gone to a hospital she knew?
By that time I was a nervous wreck. I had no idea what I’d find when I got inside. What I found was Barry Landau, talking on the phone. I had already had an unpleasant experience with Barry. When I’d first met him at Studio 54, he’d volunteered to work as my road manager on one tour, and I’d wound up with a huge bill for all the people Barry saw fit to wine and dine. He’d also been one of the first to testify against one of his “friends” at the Studio on drug charges when the Feds came in, and he had a reputation as someone with connections to the New York gossip columnists. To say he wasn’t my favorite person is a real understatement. So when I saw him talking rapidly on the pay phone, the first thing that popped into my mind was, “That son of a bitch! He’s calling the New York Post!” It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I literally jumped on him, screaming in rage, “You son of a bitch! I’m going to kill you!”
Roni, who had met me at the entrance, literally had to pull me off Barry. She kept saying, “Let’s not do this now. Come with me. We have to see your sister.”
I was still shaking with rage, but Allen Eichhorn, Liza’s press agent who was there with Roni, stepped between me and Barry and said, “It’s okay. You go to Liza. I’ll take care of this guy.” Between the two of them, they got me away from Barry. Sure enough, the next morning a notice about Liza appeared in the Post. I never was able to confirm who placed it, but to say the least, I have my suspicions.
Meanwhile a doctor had come out to see what all the noise was about, and I told him I needed to see my sister. They took me down the hall to an examining room, and when I walked in, Liza was lying there on the table. I was shocked by what I saw. She looked as though she hadn’t been to bed in days, with mascara smeared all over her big eyes, and her face as white as death. She was also out of her mind with whatever she’d taken—pills or coke or liquor—probably all three. But what disturbed me the most was that she didn’t know me. When I walked into that room, she looked at me blankly, with no recognition whatsoever. After a moment she said to me, “Who are you?”
Terrified, I stepped close to her and said, “Liza?”
The sound of my voice seemed to snap her out of her confusion for a moment. Her eyes focused, and she said, “Oh, my God, Lorna,” and she started to cry and cling to me. She kept saying, “I have cancer, Lorna; I have cancer. I think I’m going to die.” She kept holding onto me as tightly as she could, mascara streaming down her face, desperate for reassurance.
I just put my arms around her and kept saying, “No, it’ll be okay. They don’t think you have cancer. It’ll be okay. We’re going to deal with this. I’m going to make sure everything’s all right.”
My mind was racing. I was quite sure Liza didn’t have cancer, but I was equally sure it was a life-or-death situation nonetheless. I told Liza I needed to leave for just a few minutes to talk to the doctor, and I walked back down the hall to where Roni was waiting. I had already made a decision; it was one of the hardest decisions I’d ever had to make, and one of the fastest. There was no time to wait.
I found Roni in the waiting room and said, “Get me Chen Sam’s number.” Chen was Elizabeth Taylor’s longtime press agent, personal assistant, manager, and gatekeeper. She was a lovely South African woman who died of cancer at Elizabeth’s house not long ago. Elizabeth was in the Betty Ford Center at that very time, so I knew Chen would know what to do. Roni got me the number, and I got Chen on the phone. By then it was ten A.M. in New York, but still early in California, where Chen was. When Chen answered the phone, I said, “Chen, this is Lorna. I’m really in trouble, and I don’t know what to do. I need to find out who got Elizabeth into Betty Ford, the name of the doctor, or who to talk to.”
Chen said, “What’s going on?”
I said, “It’s Liza. I’m here at the hospital with her right now. I’m playing Beat the Clock. I’ve got to keep Liza here, and I have the press on my tail. I need help.”
Chen said the doctor’s name was Dr. Bill Skinner. It might take a while because it was still early, she said, but she’d track him down for me and get back to Roni or me at the hospital right away. And she did. Bless her heart, it must have taken considerable legwork on her part.
While I waited for Chen to call back, I still had Liza and the doctors to deal with. They were pressing me to admit Liza to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, but I knew that would be disastrous. I told them no, I would have Liza transferred to New York Hospital, where we knew some of the doctors on staff, and then I called New York Hospital. But they told me the same thing; if I wanted to admit Liza, I would have to have her admitted to the psychiatric ward, a locked ward, for a temporary hold and evaluation. They kept telling me Liza was exhibiting psychotic behavior and that legally, they had no choice.
Once again I refused. I knew the psych ward would terrify Liza, and if the press got ahold of it, there would be hell to pay. My mind was racing; I told Roni to give me the name of a doctor, any doctor, that Liza had seen in the last six months. She managed to come up with a name from one of Liza’s prescription bottles, and I called the doctor up and told him, “You’ve got to get Liza admitted onto a floor, any floor, just not the psych ward. Please.” Th
ank God, he agreed and made the arrangements.
Meanwhile, Chen had called back with Dr. Skinner’s number, and I called him immediately and said, “You have to come to New York, immediately.”
He said, “But I can’t. I have patients. Maybe in a few days . . .”
I told him, “No, now. You don’t understand. This is a life and death situation. If she gets out of here now, she’ll die. Elizabeth trusted you, and now I’m appealing to you. Help my sister. Please.” He finally agreed to take a plane out the next morning, and he told me he wanted to bring an interventionist with him. Not having the faintest idea what an interventionist was, I said, “Okay.”
By that time the press was breathing down our necks. Allen Eichhorn warned me, “The Post knows. They’re already on their way.”
I said, “Just keep them out of the way until we can get Liza out of here.” We were all running around at warp speed by then, making complicated arrangements, fielding calls. The ambulance arrived to take Liza to New York Hospital, and we managed to get her out the back way, literally just as the press was coming in the other way. We made it by a hair’s breadth. I pulled the covers over Liza’s head as she lay on the stretcher and ducked out the back way into the ambulance with her. It was like the great escape. Once in the ambulance, the situation became truly absurd. I was trying to keep Liza covered up, but she kept thrashing around restlessly, throwing the sheet off her face. There was an attendant in the back with me, and I kept trying to make light conversation, but he kept looking at Liza.
About halfway to the other hospital, he said, “You know who your sister looks like?”
I said, “No, who?”
He said, “She looks like Liza, you know, Minnelli.”
