From Liza With Love: A Fond Tribute to Her Dad, Vincente Minnelli

After she spent 45 minutes serenading an audience with great Vincente Minnelli movie musical numbers, Liza Minnelli tilted her face heavenward and wished her father a happy Father’s Day.

It was one of the many sentiments expressed as a tribute to director Minnelli at a kickoff gala Saturday night for “Directed by Vincente Minnelli,” an eight-week retrospective at Los Angeles County Museum of Art co-sponsored by AT&T.;

Some 600 black-tie-clad guests gathered at the museum for seven hours, a party marathon of sorts, to pay homage to the director of such films as “Cabin in the Sky,” “An American in Paris,” “Gigi,” “The Pirate,” “Lust for Life” and “Brigadoon.”

Cocktails and dinner took place under heat lamps in the courtyard. Guests rushed to finish their “Piano Concerto in Chocolate” dessert (little chocolate molds in the shape of grand pianos) to see the restored print of “Meet Me in St. Louis” in the theater nearby. That was followed (at 12:30 a.m.) by a live performance by Liza Minnelli and Michael Feinstein.

“What was he like to work with?” said Gene Kelly of Minnelli, who directed him in “An American in Paris. “If you had an hour and a half, I’d tell you.

“He just loved to make beautiful things, entertaining things, and he had an incredible eye,” said Kelly. A rare sight on the social circuit these days, Kelly said he’d come out any time for a Minnelli tribute.

“He made magic,” said singer Barry Manilow, who listed his favorite Minnelli films as “Meet Me in St. Louis” and “An American in Paris.”

“(Those musicals) were so much better than those clunky ‘40s movies.”

“When I worked with him,” said Kirk Douglas, “he always smiled. He was always beaming at me--I was teacher’s pet.”

Among other guests were Minnelli’s widow, Lee (she was honorary chairwoman with Liza), Cyd Charisse and Tony Martin, Margaret O’Brien, George Peppard, Nina Foch, Bob and Dolores Hope, Ginny and Henry Mancini, Gregory and Veronique Peck, Luis Estevez, Jimmy and Gloria Stewart, Tony Curtis, Robert and Rosemarie Stack, Sherry Lansing and Jack Haley Jr., Peter Sellars, Dana Delany, museum director Rusty Powell and wife Nancy, “Directed by Vincente Minnelli” author Stephen Harvey, Shirlee Fonda, Douglas Cramer, Ricardo and Georgiana Montalban, LACMA film department head Ron Haver and AT&T; vice-chairman Randall Tobias.

Although most guests were comfortably familiar with Minnelli lore and trivia, there were some novices left. Someone asked Henry Mancini if he scored “Meet Me in St. Louis,” and the composer replied, aghast, “Are you kidding? I was a baby !”