Just ask Liza Minnelli's stepmom.
The 94-year-old Beverly Hills doyenne on Monday dropped her scandalous elder-abuse lawsuit against her famed stepkid, in part, because Liza promised to take her to--yes--Spago.
Lee Anderson Minnelli told reporters that she and Liza patched things up during a recent phone call.
"She just said, 'Hello, Mummy. Be out there in two weeks and we'll go and have dinner at Spago,' " Lee Anderson Minnelli said.
The promise of pizza with duck sausage and the like apparently was good enough for Mummy Minnelli. "I love her," she told reporters outside the Los Angeles courtroom Monday. "She's my daughter."
Inside the Los Angeles courtroom, Lee Anderson Minnelli asked to have her lawsuit, filed April 2, dropped. The move didn't seem to sit well with her attorney. ("I could weep," lawyer Tamara Green told reporters following the hearing.)
But Mummy Minnelli was adamant, even when the judge reminded her that if she dropped the lawsuit she well could be forced to move from her longtime 90210 residence--the property being the cornerstone in the dispute between the two Minnellis.
Said Lee Anderson Minnelli: "I can't sue Liza."
Liza wasn't looking so untouchable just a month ago. That's when Lee Anderson Minnelli's lawsuit was causing yet another P.R. headache for the multi-honored (Oscar, Emmy, Tony) entertainer. (To review Liza's previous P.R. headache of 2002, please refer to The Wedding That Ate Cleveland.)
Mummy Minnelli's lawsuit, which also alleged breach of contract, accused Liza of cruelly forcing her from the Beverly Hills home that she shared with Liza's dad, the Oscar-winning director Vincente Minnelli.
Mummy Minnelli said that Vincente, who died in 1986, intended for her to live in the house for the rest of her life. Problem was Liza was the owner of the property, and when she sold it earlier this year, according to Mummy Minnelli's suit, Liza stopped keeping up the grounds, leaving the hard-of-hearing, wheelchair-bound Mrs. Minnelli minus her gardener, housekeeper, errand-runner and pool guy.
The rift between the two led to Mummy Minnelli being disinvited to Liza's March 17 wedding to music producer David Gest--no small feat considering the entire blinkin' world (all right, 1,500 people) got into that shindig.
Lee Anderson Minnelli took a swipe at the wedding in her lawsuit, noting that while Liza was "honeymooning all over the world having fed 850 of her closest friends a 12-foot cake, [Mummy Minnelli was] alone in a cold, dark house."
While there was no official comment from Liza Monday on the dropped lawsuit, Mummy Minnelli said her stepkid was accordingly pleased: "I'm so glad you're not suing me, Mummy!," Lee Anderson Minnelli says Liza told her.
No word on where Mummy Minnelli will live now--Liza previously said she offered to buy her stepmom a condo.
Maybe they can work something out on the way back from Spago.