The Los Angeles Times’ profile took place a year before Lee’s drama with Liza imploded. One can only imagine how humiliated the former socialite felt. But, at the time, it was to be the last peek inside before deterioration to utter decay set in.
Today’s images depict a disheveled property that looks like it ought to be condemned. The landscape is so overgrown it has been reclaimed by nature. No one has tended the grounds in years.
In 1999, Lee Minnelli welcomed the Los Angeles Times inside of her intriguing home for an interview. Within the doors, details like python skin-covered foyer walls and a den punctuated with Vincente Minnelli’s Oscar for 'Gigi' greeted the observer.
Lee’s closet, an inventory of designer clothing, reflected the widow’s preferences—Chanel, Adolfo, Givenchy and De la Renta. The closets themselves were vast and accessed through glass doors from expansive dressing rooms. She showed off Vincente’s suite, a large, bright bedroom, preserved since his death.
Lee left everything exactly the way it had been. After 13 years, she didn’t alter a thing.
Even his easel and oil paints were sitting in the middle of the room, just as he had left it after having painted his last stroke.
The state-of-the-art swimming pool, previously a vision of A-lister splendor, is now an eyesore.
It’s been left empty, except for a mossy accumulation of old rain for so long that taggers have had time to fill the pool with graffiti. The signs of former splendor are imperceptible. It’s all gone.
In one area, Romanesque pillars litter the grounds like dead soldiers of previous pomp and stature. The marble columns remind one of the renowned designer Elgin’s work, and of the decline of his former client.
In the 1970s, Vincente Minnelli’s prominence as a Hollywood director waned. During that same period, coincidentally, Liza’s fame was hitting its heights. It’s rumored that she assisted her father financially during those times.