Liza Minnelli has claimed that her mother, Judy Garland, once angrily asked for her to be taken off the “f***ing stage” during their performance together.
In her forthcoming memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This, the 79-year-old actor wrote about her rise to fame and complicated relationship with her late mother, who died from an accidental overdose in 1969 at the age of 47.
Minnelli, also the daughter of the late stage director Vincente Minnelli, recalled that when she began her career as an actor at the age of 18, she had the opportunity to sing with her mother at the London Palladium.
“After my first song [on opening night] I heard her shout, ‘Yeah, baby! Go get ’em!’ After the second song, another ‘Yeah!’ but not quite as strong,” she wrote in the excerpt of her memoir, obtained by People. “By the third song, let’s just say she was losing enthusiasm.”
“I heard her whispering to our producer, Harold Davison: ‘Harold, get her off my f****ing stage!’ I just kept singing to wild applause as Mama fumed. I had a stunning realization. I had begun the night as Mama’s daughter. Now, I was onstage with Judy Garland.”
The pair had performed together before. In 1963, she appeared on The Judy Garland Show, where she and Garland did their famous duet of “Together (Wherever We Go).” They often did other duets on the show in the early 1960s, including “We Could Make Such Beautiful Music Together/The Best Is Yet to Come.”
Minnelli has previously spoken about the challenges of growing up with famous parents, calling her father the “most glamorous” part of her childhood and her mother the “most challenging,” during a conversation published with Interview Magazine in 2024.
“I bounced back and forth because they were divorced, but I loved them both so much,” she explained. “My mother was fascinating because she knew so many fascinating people who would come over. And my father used to let me go to the set and watch him direct. I’d go to the dance room where they choreographed stuff and learn it. I’d watch people like Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly.”
According to Minnelli, her mother had a different approach to parenting than her father. “My mother was strict, and it depended on what mood she was in or whether she was working too hard and they were pushing her too much.”
“Or whether she didn’t like who she was married to at the time. Stuff like that. Every kid goes through that,” she explained.
In her new memoir, the Cabaret star disclosed what it was like to be a caregiver for her mother, who had a severe addiction to prescription drugs and alcohol.
“At 13, I was my mother’s caretaker — a nurse, doctor, pharmacologist, and psychiatrist rolled into one,” she wrote. “I lost count of the times I called doctors to say she’d run out of pills. I’d say: ‘I’m a kid! Please fill my mama’s prescription!’”
