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The Real Story Behind Liza Minnelli’s Hamptons Yard Sale — Yes, She Was There
“Hey kids, we’re having a tag sale!” – Liza Minnelli. June 2011
Spark editor Angela LaGreca shares the surreal day Liza Minnelli showed up at her East Hampton yard sale — and started selling her own things.
No one believes me when I say that a huge yard sale of Liza Minnelli–owned personal items — dance shoes, glassware, jewelry, boas, couture clothing, sequined costumes, furniture, lampshades with her father Vincente Minnelli’s face from the set of Minnelli on Minnelli — was held at my humble, pre-renovated house in Springs years ago.
Did Liza really stand in my driveway and sell a book about hip replacement surgery signed by her surgeon? She did.
It was too fantastical. Why would the legendary performer and Academy Award–winning actress want to come all the way out to the woods in East Hampton and do this? All these years later, I still ask myself that question. I do know she has a great sense of humor. And she sold some pretty cool stuff.
So yes, the Liza Tag Sale happened. Those of us who were there, and those folks out east who stumbled upon the Liza Yard Sale that day because they had read the yard sale ad I placed in The East Hampton Star at the time know it happened.
Few pictures were taken, but there is a short video. The New York Post and TMZ got wind of it. TMZ was calling my neighbors after word got out that Liza was there selling her wares and signing autographs, asking, “When is the next celebrity tag sale?” Years later, my friend David (Emamuele) at NBC helped me edit a video for a TV show pitch called Celebrity Tag Sale using some of the footage. It made us laugh.
Some of Liza’s jewelry that sold at the sale even made its way to Palm Beach where a headline in the Palm Beach News read: “Loot From Liza Lands in Palm Beach.” David Rattray at The East Hampton Star wrote about “Celebrity Tag Sales!” and the calls he got from television producers asking about the Liza Yard Sale and enquiring if other celebrities, like Martha, were having tag sales.
Another publication out East stated, incorrectly, that I had placed the ad in their publication when I had indeed placed it in The East Hampton Star. The Guardian got wind of the sale. A British tabloid picked up the story.
A lot of people/outlets wrote about Liza’s yard sale but I never did, even though the event took place at my house.
So on the occasion of Liza’s 80th birthday this month, I thought it was a good time to finally share the story of that memorable day when I held a tag sale of Liza’s belongings at my house.
The year was 2011. The month, June.
The Hamptons Tag Sale Circuit
The backstory is that I had decided to hold a yard sale in my yard because I wanted to unload some of my own stuff. I’d spent so many seasons traipsing around the Hamptons with my friend and tag sale pal Joy Behar going to tag sales on Saturday mornings that I figured it was time to get ride of some of my clutter instead of buying other people’s discards.
Tag sales, yard sales — no matter what you call them — they are all about the hunt. You scour the ads, you pick the address, you get there early, sometimes you score something great, unusual, cheap, a real bargain. Then you go home and try to find a place for it. Or give it away. Or sell it down the road. Or throw it out. Sometimes you just go on a house expedition — you pick a fancy address and snoop around to see how the well off really live. It’s a fascinating excursion. COVID kind of ruined yard sales. They haven’t been the same since. But I digress.
My First Encounter With Liza
I had met Liza in 1992, many years before this tag sale. It was the year I received a Backstage Bistro Award — a rite of passage for performers in the cabaret world. The awards show was held at Eighty Eight’s in the West Village, a jewel of a club on West 10th Street that is still talked about and missed.
Anything could happen at Eighty Eight’s (named for the 88 piano keys on a full-size piano) and so often it did. Many of us in the late 1980s and ’90s who cut our performing chops in cabarets and clubs — when NYC had a truly thriving cabaret and club scene — did shows in the intimate velvet banquet cabaret room upstairs at Eighty Eight’s. The room was a magnet for magic. Downstairs in the piano bar, you could set your watch by the enthusiastic weekend show-tune singalongs.
The wild part — you never knew who in a stretch limo would drop in to Eighty Eight’s unannounced, grab the mic, and blow the room away. Like Liza. (Or the night Liza dropped in to with her pals Shirley MacLaine and Bella Abzug.)
So Eighty Eight’s was special. And at the 1992 Bistro Awards, 65 people were squeezed into the upstairs cabaret room — award recipients (singers, comedians, songwriters, musical directors) and their supporters. We were all nervous because we heard cabaret legends like Julie Wilson and Margaret Whiting and Liza Minnelli would be in the room. Liza was dating Billy Stritch at the time — her musical director and pianist — and he was getting an award that night, so she was there with him.
In the Room Where It Happened
As Bistro award winners, we each had to perform a few minutes in front of the crowd and then we were presented with our trophy. I remember after the show meeting Liza briefly. She seemed a little skittish, almost shy, trying to protect her aura from the crowd who was keenly aware of her presence. It was a tight space, and all I could think was that people should leave her alone. As a fellow Pisces, I felt I knew the challenge of the sign: the swimming of the fish in opposite directions. The ‘on side’. The shy side. The sensitive side that feels too much. Leave her alone.
Liza at 30 Rock
Years later, when I was a producer at the Today show, I produced several of Liza’s appearances (around 2007–2012) with Meredith Vieira in the 8 a.m. hour and Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb in the 10. I always got a kick at the way Liza would grab my arm and walk through the concourse at 30 Rock, pointing at the ornate ceiling and purposely talking gibberish as though she were a tour guide commenting on the surroundings.
I knew she did that to keep people at bay. A way to feel safe. Engage in busy, faux conversation and people won’t come up to invade your space or ask for an autograph. I understood it. I wanted to protect her — which I realized years later is why I barely told anyone at the time that we were having a yard sale at my house with her stuff. Or that Liza would be there, at the yard sale.
Actually, I did tell one friend, a former dancer and colleague at NBC who I knew adored Liza. She later confessed that she didn’t make the drive to East Hampton because she thought I was making it up about Liza having a yard sale. (I saved her a pair of Liza’s dance shoes, anyway.)
How the Liza Tag Sale Was Born
The Liza Yard Sale was not my idea. All I did was say out loud in 2011 to Nicole (Guest), my (now) ex spouse, who I was dating then and who was Liza’s longtime personal assistant at the time, that I was going to have a yard sale at my house. Nicole happened to say to Liza, “Ange is having a tag sale next weekend in East Hampton,” to which Liza replied, “What’s a tag sale?”
Well, the next thing you know, Liza decides that my yard sale is a perfect opportunity to unload some of her stuff she had sitting in storage houses in Queens. OK, I said, she can tag along on the tag sale. What was I supposed to do — tell Liza she can’t bring her stuff to my house? I couldn’t believe she was game. Would she show up?
I amended my yard sale ad so it read: “Books, furniture, home goods, plus a truckload of celebrity-owned items. Don’t bother coming early. Entertainers sleep in.” That was the big hint. I played it down and buried the lead.
When Liza Pulled Up the Driveway
The ad appeared in the Star on Thursday. On Friday, the day before the sale, a large truck driven by Matt (Berman), our friend and Liza’s sound designer for Liza at the Palace, pulled into my long wooded driveway. There was Liza, sitting in the front seat, riding shotgun like a fashionable hillbilly in the country, waving from the truck. She was wearing a bright red fedora and smoking a cigarette. “Hey kids, we’re having a tag sale!” she said. And we were off.
I had to go with it. Surreal. In a good way. I also had to call Joy Behar, who of course insisted that she be the only early bird allowed on property before the sale. We’d been to a lot of yard sales, and we both knew this was no ordinary sale, even though my house was pretty ordinary at the time. It looked more like the set of Deliverance with all those trees on that wooded lane and my cedar siding in need of a power wash or replacement. The “lawn”, pre-sod days, pathetic.
Opening the Liza Yard Sale
Once Liza showed up in that truck, her stuff, of course, became the headliner and I, and a few carefully chosen friends, did everything we could to make the Liza Tag Sale happen. That meant pulling an all-nighter indexing and pricing her jewelry. Dafna (Priel) and Leslie (Gelb) were in charge of jewelry, which included beaded epaulets given to Liza by Michael Jackson. Alex (Haas) prepped the tables for Liza’s glassware and dance shoes. Hannah (Cohen) organized the couture and sequined gowns on racks, along with a few boas. Matt kept unloading from the truck and moving furniture and sculpture from her days living in Lake Tahoe.
Clearly, no one would care about my old records and books at this sale. I didn’t even care about them. We were on a wild adventure.
Of course the producer and performer in me was also planning a Salon Night performance at my house later — you know, for all the energy we would have after the yard sale. Everyone could sing and entertain each other in my studio room with the white piano mic setup, like we often would do, except our special guest would be Liza Minnelli. That was Part 2 of a momentous day. But there I go, jumping ahead of the tag sale.
At 8 a.m. on Saturday, the day of the sale, we secured a rope across the end of my driveway, with a Liza T-shirt attached to the middle of it. Bobby (Priel) manned the driveway to make sure no one came in early, except of course Joy and Steve (Janowitz), who we were expecting. Cars started to drive by and slow down.
We opened at 9 a.m. and the customers trickled in. Liza was sleeping in the guest room, which faced the front of the house where the tag sale was taking place.
People rifled through the shoes, tried on boas, picked up glassware as we did our best to explain these items belonged to Liza Minnelli. Side eyes. Eye rolls. Lots of quizzical looks. Sure, Liza danced in those shoes.
And Then Liza Walked Out
About an hour into the sale, Liza came to the front door with a cup of coffee. “Hey kids, what’s going on!” She really does have a great sense of humor. I was glad she got to sleep.
I do wish I had recorded some of the expressions on the faces of the doubting Thomases when Liza walked out onto my lawn and started chatting up the items. People were cool, but they did do several double takes: Is this who we think it is? Then the questions: “In what movie did you wear this gown, Liza?” “Um, Lucky Lady or Cabaret!” Sold. She might have been fudging, but who cared at that point. She was Liza and she was at the tag sale. Well, my tag sale. My hijacked tag sale.
Liza seemed at ease. It was her stuff collected over time and she was cool to talk about it — and part with it.
A wine goblet with Liza’s face painted on it, said Liza, “was painted for me when I was at the Palace Theater.” Sold. My friend Judy (Malone, may she RIP) was interested in the Vincente Minnelli lampshades. She didn’t have a place in her home to put them, but after hearing Liza talk about how much the Minnelli on Minnelli show meant to her — a Broadway concert at the Palace where Liza sang songs from shows directed by her famous father — she need a lampshade. Sold. Someone bought a brooch that ended up in Palm Beach. The dance shoes — sold. The beaded epaulets given to Liza by Michael Jackson? Sold.
Liza’s good friends Arlene and Allan (Lazare) were there, joking with her about the heavy book her surgeon signed about hip replacements. “Now if I only had a book about knees!” joked Liza, adding, “You gotta keep on truckin’.”
A Surreal Hamptons Day With Liza
And truckin’ she did. A few hours after the yard sale, Matt loaded up anything that didn’t sell back onto the truck, we made dinner — why didn’t I order out? Masochist! — and a second batch of friends arrived and we all sang in the studio. Vinnie (Menuto) came over and he and Liza made fettuccine Alfredo in my kitchen while swapping stories about the times they each spent with Frank Sinatra. Again, a little surreal, yet it felt completely normal — not celebrity and fake.
We certainly had our share of yard sale laughs. Or maybe it was the sleep deprivation. We pulled it off.
There are other Liza stories, yet untold, maybe never. Good memories. Liza singing at our bridal shower. Liza becoming our daughter’s godmother. The night Liza came to the Hamptons and Hurricane Irene hit.
We all have our stories. There are many more people who have longer Liza histories than I. But for that one day in East Hampton when we flipped some heads at that tag sale, and Liza got to unload a storage room onto my lawn, I must say we had a lot of laughs. And isn’t that really what it’s all about?
Keep on truckin’, Liza. Happy Birthday.
(And if you think I have stories, kids, that’s nothing. Liza’s new memoir is out: Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! Candid, behind-the-scenes tales of her life — the ups and downs, fame, sobriety, and her marriages.)
Liza Minnelli will be in conversation with her good friend and Grammy-nominated musician Michael Feinstein in person and online in New York City on March 23 at 7:30 p.m. at Temple Emanu-El. emanuelnyc.org.
