LIZA WITH A "Z" FOR ZANY -- AND ME

An Andy Warhol auction and a wedding like no other

I've had two memorable journalistic encounters with Liza Minnelli.

The first time, during my New York Daily News days, she told me to shut up. The second time, when I was with the National ENQUIRER, I joined a team of sneaky tabloid colleagues who got exclusive details and photos of Liza's incredibly wacky wedding to producer David Gest.

You know it's wacky when Michael Jackson is the Best Man, Liz Taylor is Matron of Honor and PeeWee Herman is wearing pink tights.

The "shut up" moment came on Feb. 23, 1987, the day after artist Andy Warhol died in a New York Hospital.

As it so happened, a set of three silkscreens he did of dance legend Martha Graham were up for bid at Christie's auction house in Manhattan. Proceeds were to go to a planned dance studio in Florence, Italy.

If Andy were still alive, the auction would be a smaller story, but it drew much more coverage in light of his death.  

I had written the Daily News story about his passing and I got sent to cover the auction. I wished I wasn't in T-shirt and jeans. Everybody there was really dressed in their best.

Fashion king Halston, who owned the silkscreens and donated them for the affair, was present. So was Mayor Ed Koch, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and as the Washington Post put it, "elegantly coiffed, fur-wrapped women."

Also there, mourning Andy, was 93-year-old Martha Graham herself.

As for Liza, she was swaddled in furs and holding a red rose. Judy Garland's daughter was a guest and did some of the auctioneering. A hat she wore in the movie "Cabaret" was among the items up for sale.

I stood at the back of the auction theater watching the goings-on and taking notes. Maybe I could get a quote from Liza if I was lucky.

At the auction, a pair of Madonna's spiked-heel shoes -- black, size 7 1/2 and signed "Love, Madonna" — went for $500. A woodcarving of Woody Allen by the sculptor Marisol brought $2,000. Liza's "Cabaret" hat snared $4,000 and $800 was the winning bid for a lunch for four with her and Halston at the Russian Tea room. A watercolor by "60 Minutes" correspondent Morley Safer (who knew he could paint) sold for $1,600.

The Graham silkscreens went to New York real estate tycoon Sam Lefrak for $5,500. The art-loving businessman, a friend of Warhol, said he would have bid as high as ten grand.

Lefrak told me that Warhol actually designed the bathrooms of the model apartments shown to prospective renters at his massive Lefrak City complex in the borough of Queens. Who would have thought that?

Andy Warhol was indeed a strange, gentle, wonderful New York treasure.   

During a break in the auction and since it was still a time you could smoke pretty much everywhere, I lit up. A woman to my left came over and asked to bum a cigarette.

"Tammy Grimes!" I said. It was indeed the actress and two-time Tony winner, stage and cinema royalty, standing there, asking for a smoke.

Tammy Grimes

So I gave her one, lit it like a gentleman and asked what she was doing there.

The actress explained she had a few paintings in the auction. I asked if they were to be sold all together. She didn't know. I told her I thought she'd bring in more money if they were auctioned one at a time. Tammy thought so too and was going to check.

At that point, Liza walked up to us as I was still chatting. Hey, this was fortunate. I'll get a quote.

But she had something to say to Tammy, so she looked at me and said, pretty loudly, "Shut Up!"

I started to ask her a question but she said shut up again and I sort of walked away. It wasn't the quote I wanted for the story.

Okay, flash forward to 2002 when it was announced that on March 16 of that year, Liza was going to marry husband number four, producer David Gest, a very strange individual who was rumored to be gay. Drag queens dressed as Liza attended his bachelor party.

The couple had been introduced to each other by Michael Jackson when Gest produced a documentary about the pop idol.

The Minnelli-Gest event was to be a New York affair to remember -- 900 guests, vows exchanged in Manhattan's beautiful Marble Collegiate Church, followed by a star-studded reception in the fancy ballroom of the fabulous Regent Wall Street Hotel (now a pricey condo complex).

Marble Collegiate Church

At The ENQUIRER, we learned that Liza had sold exclusive photos of the bash to OK! magazine. Security was going to be tight. No cameras in the church. And no press or photographers allowed at the reception.

That, however, didn't stop Barry Levine, ENQUIRER's New York assignment editor. He was good at his job and had a plan.

Here's how it went. A week or so before the wedding, Barry flew in one of my colleagues -- let's call him "DW" -- who was really good at sneaking into places.

He once hid in a church organ for 48 hours so he could snap photos at the wedding of model and "Law and Order" star Angela Harmon to pro football player Jason Sehorn.

DW's task was straight out of the "Godfather" movie -- the part when a secret gun is taped behind a toilet tank in a restaurant bathroom so Michael Corleone can kill Sollozzo and McCluskey.

In the days leading up to Liza's wedding, Barry had DW get a room at the Regent Wall Street. At some point, he snuck into the hotel's ballroom where the guests would be celebrating. There, he went into the men's room and taped several throw-away cameras under toilet seats.

Ballroom of the Regent Wall Street Hotel. The hotel is now a condo complex.

One of our reporters, Courtney Callaghan and freelancer Bob Hartlein, were tasked with dressing in their finery and getting into the church -- hopefully with a camera -- grabbing some shots of the ceremony and jotting down details of the nuptials.

I wasn't really involved at first but then I got a call from a security firm exec I knew. He told me he was going to head up the security team for Liza's wedding.

An inside man, just what we needed. Barry Levine was thrilled, until my guy got fired because he was always suspected of leaking stuff to the tabloids.

He did, however, give me the name of his replacement, a New York cop who'd be working off-duty and hiring members of the security force.

I knew, and still know, many New York press buddies and on the off chance that one of them knew this cop, I called a good friend who had many police contacts.

They say, in this business, you make your own luck and when I mentioned Liza's wedding security chief to my friend, he said, "Yeah, I know him. I grew up with him. He lived on my block."

He made a call, and his cop friend asked if he wanted to work security with his team at the affair. Barry agreed to pay him $5,000 if he worked the reception and $10,000 if we got photos inside. It was an offer he couldn't refuse.

Barry then ordered me up to New York from the ENQUIRER's main office in Florida and put me up at the Regent.

Came the wedding day. And so did the limos. Dozens of limos, depositing their passengers at the church and then, at the reception.

It seemed that every freaking star that Liza and Gest knew or that her mother Judy Garland knew, showed up, an endless list of celebrities from the present to the distant past.

Mickey Rooney. . .Petula Clark. . .Rosie O'Donnell. . .Joan Collins. . .David Hasselhoff. . .Lou Gossett Jr.. . .Arlene Dahl. . .Hugh O'Brian (of TV's "Wyatt Earp" fame) . . .Robert Wagner and his wife Jill St. John. . .Kirk and Michael Douglas. . .Mia Farrow (and her clan of kids) . . .Gina Lollobrigida. . .Jane Russell. . .singer/songwriter Mya. . .

. . .the Doobie Brothers. . .Little Anthony and the Imperials. . .Donny Osmond (he was staying at the Regent and I bumped into him in the elevator). . .Natalie Cole (who sang "Unforgettable" as Liza walked down the aisle). . .Esther Williams. . .Andy Williams (who sang "Our Love is Here to Stay" for the newlyweds' first dance). . .Disco Queen Gloria Gaynor (who belted out her hit "I Will Survive" at the reception). . .stage and screen star Topol (who sang "If I Were a Rich Man" from "Fiddler on the Roof"). . .

. . .former child star Margaret O'Brien (who co-starred with Judy Garland in the 1944 flick "Meet Me in St. Louis"). . .'60s sex kitten Carroll Baker. . .Gale Storm and Anne Jeffreys, stars of the long-ago TV series "My Little Margie" and "Topper" respectively. . .Dionne Warwick. . .Luther Vandross. . .Janet Leigh. . .Carol Channing. . .Elton John. . .Diana Ross. . .Lauren Bacall. . .Tony Bennett. . .Roberta Flack. . .and Donald Trump with his then-girlfriend and future wife Melania.

Wow! And that's just some of them.

Okay, so our reporters who went to the church couldn't get photos. Security was checking for cameras.

But they did get in and later provided a lot of details about the ceremony, including why there was a delay in the service. It seems Matron of Honor Liz Taylor forgot her shoes and wore slippers to the church. Someone had to go get her footwear before things got started.

Later, at the hotel reception, spotlights beamed into the sky as the guests entered the Regent’s ground-floor grand ballroom under a white canopy.

Editor Barry, myself and a journalist friend of his parked ourselves in the hotel's third-floor cocktail lounge and restaurant where we proceeded to drink a lot and eat while I took phone calls from my buddy who was doing security inside.

He gave me descriptions of the wedding cake, the food and exclusive antics of the stars gathered in the ballroom.

The liquor was definitely flowing.

"Wyatt Earp" Hugh O'Brian, 76, at the time, fell twice and had to be helped to his feet.

David Hasselhoff was pretty wasted. He greeted Joan Collins loudly as she arrived but the actress said she didn't know him. "Joan, we were in a movie together," he told her. She still didn't know who he was.

I checked. They really did do a movie together.

The "Knight Rider" and the "Dynasty" babe were the two big hot lover co-stars of a forgettable made-for-TV movie, “Cartier Affair," which aired just three years before Liza's wedding.

In another weird reception moment -- when Robert Wagner and Jill St. John went to use the restrooms -- he followed her into the ladies' room.

Wagner was inside there for quite a while and security had to stop a couple of lady guests from using it.

They were all set to go in and see what was up when Wagner came out.

As part of the ENQUIRER's plan, our photo editor on the story had an actor acquaintance flown in from Hollywood.

He took a seat in the lounge with Barry, me and his friend. The fellow was touted as a known party-goer, who could easily mingle with the celebrities.

He was in a tuxedo and the plan was to have him get into the reception, do his schmoozing act, get one of the cameras that DW had planted in the bathroom and snap away OK! magazine's exclusive.

It turned out the plan initially worked. My security buddy inside called to say that guests had been given an American flag pin to wear in case they left the ballroom and wanted to get back in without a hassle.

"They're all over the floor," my pal said. "I'll grab a few and meet you outside."

One was then given to our actor infiltrator and off he went.

Barry, his friend and I continued to imbibe and at one point, one of the guests came into the lounge and sat nearby.

Boy, she looked familiar. Then I realized it was former child star Margaret O'Brien. You couldn't mistake the face. It was the same, even though she was in her 60s.

I asked if she was indeed Miss O'Brien. And she nodded.

Then I made a mistake naming a film I thought she starred in. "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, right?"

"No," she said. "That was Peggy Ann Garner. I was always being mistaken for her."

Later I recalled I was trying to think of Margaret's film, "The Canterville Ghost."

She didn't take offense, however. And gave me a quote for the story.

Margaret O’Brien at Liza’s wedding and the child star of “The Canterville Ghost”

Wasn't much left to do. We had exclusive details of the church ceremony and the reception. All we needed now were exclusive photos of the bride and groom and others inside the ballroom.

It didn't happen. Our actor retrieved one of the cameras from the bathroom but never took any photos. He sat down with the Doobie Brothers because he knew them and just never took any shots.

Barry was furious. Why, I asked him, didn't we have a photographer actually go in? Why did we use this guy?

We knew. Photo editor fucked up.

DW who'd been in his hotel room was told the "Godfather" plan had failed. He'd been having a few and wasn't about to let the operation go under.

As the reception was ending and guests were leaving, DW donned a flag pin, snuck past them and got another camera from the bathroom.

Before he could take any photos, however, security spotted him.

I was actually in the hotel lobby and watched as DW -- being held by his armpits -- was hauled out of the ballroom and out of the hotel.

The next day, I gathered all our notes and started writing. I told Barry not to worry. We had photos of the celebs arriving at the church. And we did have exclusive details of the church ceremony and the reception.

I told Barry the score was Barry: 2, Liza 1.

He wanted it 3-0 -- and he got it. A call came in from someone who was at the church ceremony with a hidden video camera.

Pics of the bride and groom no one else had were offered and Barry bought.

Of course, the marriage only lasted 16 months. In the end, Gest said crazy Liza beat him up all the time. She said he tried to poison her.

I wonder if she told him to shut up a lot.