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No Carbon Copy. The almost eerie resemblance to her mother is more than superficial. Her notes sometimes wobble with Judy's vibrato, and she has the same warming urgency and involvement in her performance. Says Singer Gail Martin, Dean Martin's daughter and Liza's childhood friend: "Her mannerisms are like her mother's. The gestures, that whole nervous thing—not quite getting the words out, and the fingers all over the place."
Still, Liza is far from a carbon copy. "She has a style of her own and a better range in her voice than
Judy did," Martin observes. Adds Gene Kelly, who acted with Judy before Liza was born: "Every once in a while you see flashes of Judy that you can't escape, but she had more of Judy earlier in her career. Now she's more her own person. I think there are thousands of sons and daughters of great artists who couldn't even carry a tune. I don't think it harmed her having two talented parents, but I don't think you can say it gave her her talent."
Maybe not, but it certainly helped her to develop what she had. When Liza was born, Judy was still at the height of her career. It was 1946, and for postwar Americans she still evoked the simpler times when Andy Hardy was in love and the Land of Oz was rainbow hued. Meanwhile, Liza's father, a courtly, cultivated man whom she still idolizes, was busy creating such polished movie musicals as Ziegfeld Follies and Meet Me in St. Louis. Though sometimes frenetic, family life was full of laughter, flowers and music. It was also somehow unreal.
Dressing Up. "Our environment was on the highest level of the absurd," recalls Candice Bergen, another childhood friend. "Our birthday parties, for example, were organized follies. There had to be trained-dog acts, magicians, cartoons, triple screenings of new movies—every imaginable extravagance. One of our friends even had an electric waterfall. It was all highly surrealistic, like living in a big playroom." Liza adds: "I remember a picture flashed through my mind, like a painting, at one of the parties. I had a feeling: This is not the average. This isn't the ordinary life.' "
That is the least that could be said. Liza's friends liked coming to her house because they could play dress-up better there than anyplace else in Hollywood—or the world. Their dresses might be miniature versions of costumes from movies, for example a replica of a waltz gown worn by Deborah Kerr in The King and I.
After school Liza would run over to MGM to watch the shooting, the way any other kid might go to her father's office. "It seemed like a factory to me," she says. "I loved it. I got so that I knew every inch of it, all the short cuts to different stages and all the underground passages. And all the people there knew me." Minnelli let her ride the boom with him when he was lining up a shot, giving her a view of film making that very few actresses have had. "What really interested me, though, was watching people dance," she says. "I used to go over to Rehearsal Hall B or C and watch Cyd Charisse, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and I'd learn all their numbers. Then I'd go home and practice for hours in front of the mirror."