Word: mama
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...eleven I was hiring the household staff. I'd tell them that the hours wouldn't be the same as in other households, but that they wouldn't be asked to do anything outrageous. I'd call the police to check the chauffeurs' references. I began answering Mama's fan mail when I was eleven too. She paid me $3 a week until I complained that the work was too much for me; then I got $5 a week. When I was 14, I drove my sister and brother to school and back because our chauffeur was drunk...
...tour, the whole brood, which eventually included Liza's half-brother and half-sister Joey and Lorna Luft, had to learn to put on layers and layers of clothing and waddle out of a hotel, leaving behind their luggage and an unpaid bill. "Just remember, I'm Judy Garland," Mama would say, or, "Well, I need a new wardrobe anyway," and the episode would be laughed off. The way Liza tells it now, it was almost like a little drama Judy enacted for the amusement of her family...
Reversed Roles. "I worried about Mama, but not in certain ways," she says. "I never saw her in a situation she couldn't handle, even if she was having a tantrum or hysterical crying. But when she'd get in a temper, it was frightening, because she'd yell a lot and I'd freeze. Lots of yelling. Now I avoid people who are screaming at all costs. My eyes glaze over when someone begins to yell, and my mind retreats back to someplace else so they can't get through...
Minnelli recalls that "Liza actually was a very calming influence on her mother. Their roles were reversed; Judy had some very childlike traits, while Liza was grown-up." Adds Liza: "Mama and I talked a lot. She'd put too much trust in somebody, then they'd do something slight, and she'd take it as a slap in the face. The thing I tried to get through to her was that none of it really mattered. Of course people were going to let her down. They couldn't help...
When Judy had money, she would entertain, and Liza stayed up and mingled with the guests. "Terrific people were there like Lauren Bacall, Bogart and Sinatra. And Mama always invited Marilyn Monroe, too, because Mama was very adamant about how rottenly people treated Marilyn. Marilyn talked to me a lot, and I remember knowing why: because no one else talked to her. We were really good friends when I was about ten. She used to tell me how lonely she was. I told her that she had to talk with people and let them know she didn't want anything...