Liza Minnelli is opening a family archive filled with photographs, letters and recordings she has kept for decades. She began with a letter from her father about Judy Garland and a promise Garland tried to keep during their honeymoon.
Director Vincente Minnelli wrote that Garland acknowledged before their 1945 marriage that she was taking too many pills and told him she would stop with his support. During their honeymoon in New York, she turned that promise into a dramatic gesture beside the East River.
While the newlyweds walked near Sutton Place, Garland asked Vincente to hold her hand and gripped it tightly enough for her fingernails to break his skin. She then reached into a handbag he had given her, pulled out bottles of prescription medicine and swept them into the water, according to the letter Liza shared and Entertainment Weekly.
Liza did not present the moment as the end of her mother’s struggle with substance use disorder. Instead, she said she hoped the letter would show “how hard, how long” Garland fought an illness that remained part of her life until her death in 1969.
Vincente Remembered Garland Gripping His Hand Before She Threw the Bottles
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Garland and Vincente married on June 15, 1945, after working together at MGM, most famously on Meet Me in St. Louis. They traveled to New York for their honeymoon and stayed near Sutton Place.
Before the wedding, Garland had already acknowledged her dependence on medication. In the letter, Vincente recalled her telling him, “I know I’m taking too many pills,” before promising that she would try to stop if he helped protect her.
The honeymoon walk became the physical expression of that promise. Vincente said Garland reached into an elegant handbag he had bought her, asked him to hold her hand and squeezed so tightly that her fingernails broke his skin. She then pulled out the medication and sent the bottles into the river with one sweep of her arm.
“Until you were born, it was the best present of my life,” Vincente wrote to his daughter, according to PEOPLE.
Liza Says the Rest of the Letter Is Too Intimate to Share
Vincente wrote the letter while working on his 1974 autobiography, I Remember It Well. Liza said she asked her father to put his memories of his relationship with Garland on paper, but she chose to make only part of what he wrote public.
“The rest of what my father wrote is too intimate to share,” she explained. Rather than publishing everything, she said she wanted the excerpt to give people a better understanding of her mother’s long struggle with substance use disorder.
Liza followed the honeymoon story with another memory involving her own birth on March 12, 1946. Garland required a cesarean section, and Liza said her mother became worried as doctors began administering anesthesia because she had been avoiding medication.
“I haven’t taken anything! Please make sure the medicine doesn’t hurt my baby,” Garland said, according to Liza’s account.
Garland’s problems with medication continued in later years, and Liza has never hidden what that meant for their family. Garland died in London on June 22, 1969, at age 47 from an accidental barbiturate overdose.
The East River Story Had Been Told Before, but With Fewer Details
The basic honeymoon episode is not entirely new. Vincente included a shorter version in I Remember It Well, describing a walk beside the river when Garland asked him to hold her hand, produced a vial of pills and threw it into the water.
Liza’s newly shared letter preserves a more personal telling. It describes the handbag as a gift from Vincente, Garland’s fingernails breaking his skin, multiple bottles of prescription medicine and the importance he attached to the gesture before his daughter’s birth.
Her memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, published in March, describes the instability created by Garland’s dependence on medication while emphasizing the affection between mother and daughter.
By the time Liza was 13, she writes that she had become her mother’s “caretaker,” taking on responsibilities far beyond her age. She monitored medication, contacted doctors for prescriptions and at times replaced pills with aspirin when she feared her mother was taking too much.
Minnelli Is Opening More of Her Family Archive
Liza introduced the letter as the beginning of a new social media series built around material she has kept from her family’s history. She said she plans to share photographs, letters, recordings and stories that can offer followers “a glimpse of what really happened.”
The project comes six months after the publication of Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, in which she wrote at length about growing up as the daughter of Garland and Vincente while eventually confronting addiction in her own life.
Her first archive post remained centered on both parents rather than only Garland’s illness. Liza wrote that despite the films they made and the lives they led in Hollywood, her parents always told her that she was their “best production.”
She closed with one final memory of Vincente. “Embraceable You” was his favorite song, Liza said, and the last song she ever sang to him before his death in 1986.