Liza's Wedding Vow: Never Again

Nov 11 2007 By Billy Sloan

Liza says only Scotsmen can tempt her now

SUPERSTAR Liza Minnelli yesterday revealed her wedding vow...never again!

But the singer, who's tied the knot four times, revealed she might not say no to a Scottish lover.

She said: "I'm never going to have another husband again. If I do I want you to hit me over the head with a shovel, kidnap me and take me to Scotland.

"I'm not saying I'll never have lovers... I'm just saying I'm not getting married."

But unlucky-in-love Liza has clearly not lost her interest in top-class talent.

She told me: "The way you talk is so sensual and sexy. I'd love you to take me around Scotland. Let's go on a date."

The 61-year-old legend plays her first-ever concert on Scots soil at the Clyde Auditorium on June 6, 2008.

The show comes just four years after her divorce from US concert promoter and 2004 I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here finalist David Gest. They were married for just 15 headline-hitting months.

Liza, who won an Oscar in 1973 for the movie Cabaret, has put the split behind her and come out fighting for her first UK tour in almost 20 years.

She said: "Why am I performing in Britain? Because I want to. It's one of my favourite places in the world. I love the immediacy of being on stage and the response from a live audience.

"Usually, we've got one foot in tomorrow and the other in yesterday...and we're p****** all over today."

Liza is the daughter of Hollywood legend Judy Garland, who died in 1969, and top movie director Vincente Minnelli, who passed away 17 years later.

She said: "We're the only family I know where the mother, father and the kid have won Oscars.

"She got hers in 1939 for The Wizard Of Oz and his was for Gigi in 1968."

I first met Liza at the famous Savoy Hotel in London in 1989 when she recorded an album with The Pet Shop Boys and I was bowled over by her bubbly personality.

Dogged by health problems and drug addictions, Liza almost died back in 2000 of encephalitis - acute brain inflammation - and doctors feared she'd spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

But Liza's fiery determination proved them wrong.

She recalled: "I lay in bed and thought 'Holy Christ, I don't know how to do anything else other than sing, dance and entertain people.'

"When somebody says you'll never walk or talk again you want to say bulls***...but I couldn't speak.

"Nurses came in to move my position and when they turned my head to face the wall I counted the pattern on the wallpaper. That's how I learned to talk again.

"When I tried to walk I took one step and nearly broke my back.

"But I fought my way back to good health. It was out of the question I'd never sing and dance again. I had to completely retrain my brain.

"Now, I feel great. I've been dancing full-out rehearsing for this tour."

It's 58 years since Liza, aged three, made her screen debut in the movie In The Good Old Summertime opposite her mum, Van Johnson and Buster Keaton.

She remembers the experience vividly.

"The studio gave me this beautiful little dress but forgot the underwear.

"My expression when Van lifts me out of my mother's arms is a picture. He unwittingly had his hand onmy ass," said Liza, shrieking with laughter.

"Don't worry, when I appear in Scotland I'll put my knickers on."

Liza also has fond memories growing up in the Minnelli family home in the star-studded Hollywood hills.

She said: "Making movies was an industry so I was just like a coal miner's daughter. In Hollywood everybody went to work at six in the morning and returned home at six at night, so you're not impressed. It was a scheduled upbringing."

She added: "Our neighbours were Lana Turner, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Bing Crosby and Sammy Cahn.

"On Monday nights they played poker in our house and called themselves 'The Rat Pack'.

"That's where it came from. Frank Sinatra was always trying to get an invite.

"I didn't know these people were famous, they were just the folks next door."

During a career spanning five decades, Liza has won countless awards and was recently presented with an honourary doctorate by a New York university.

But pride of place in her Manhattan home is reserved for the Best Actress Oscar she won for her performance as Sally Bowles in the classic movie Cabaret.

Liza told me: "Sally is somebody I still have a great affection for.

"I didn't think I was going to win but when they read out my name my father, who was a very quiet man, screamed.

"I keep my Oscar, along with my Tonys and Grammys, at home and give them a dust if somebody comes over."

In 1989, Liza toured the world with her "uncle Frank" - Ol' Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra - and Sammy Davis Jr.

The show, billed as The Ultimate Event, broke box office records.

She said: "It was such a thrill. I said to Sinatra: 'What are we going to sing?'. He replied: 'Sing whatever you want'.

"I put a medley of songs together and he loved it.

"One of his biggest hits was New York, New York, from my 1977 movie with Robert De Niro.

"I was thrilled Sinatra sang it too. Every time he did he'd say: 'This is Liza's song'."

The star also revealed she never planned to follow in her famous mother's footsteps as a singer and actress and, instead, dreamed of being an ice skater.

She said: "My mum once said to me: 'When you're rehearsing, learn your lines then fill in - in your head - all the things you're NOT saying'. It was valuable advice.

"I hope my mother would have been proud of me. That would have meant so much.

"When I hear her records on the radio I'm just like everybody else, I get goose-bumps. But you've got to remember that's NOT Judy Garland...that'smy mother. It's a little different."

TICKETS for Liza's show at the Clyde Auditorium on June 6 are priced £35-£95 and are available from the SECC Box Office on 0870 040 4000.

I loved Sinatra singing New York New York..he said this is Liza's song

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