Liza Minnelli: A Star Was Born

The new documentary,  Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, made me curious about the movie career of one of Broadway’s favorite song-and-dance divas, Liza Minnelli. After all, Liza (still alive and kicking at age 78) is the daughter of two charter members of the Hollywood pantheon, director Vincente Minnelli and the incomparable Judy Garland. 

Liza made her first screen appearance as a babe in arms at the end of one of her mother’s musical films, The Good Old Summertime (1949). Her first credited role came in 1967’s Charlie Bubbles, as an ingenue opposite Albert Finney, who both starred and directed. But it was in 1969 when she truly made a splash: her role as a needy college co-ed in something called The Sterile Cuckoo led to her nomination for a Best Actress Oscar, along with such dramatic icons as Genevieve Bujold (Anne of the Thousand Days), Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?), Jean Simmons (The Happy Ending) and ultimate winner Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). The following year she was featured as a disfigured young woman in another highly emotional dramedy, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. The death by overdose of forty-seven-year-old Judy Garland on June 22, 1969 had left Liza bereft just as she was entering young womanhood. Judy’s own youthful screen career had seen her frequently cast as a girl-next-door type, even though her huge singing voice contained paradoxical notes of what one critic has called “fragility and resilience.” For Liza, I would choose the word “waif.” Directors seemed to see in her someone who was hurting, but knew how to cover her grief with sheer pizzazz.

It all came together for Minnelli in 1972, when she snagged the female lead in the film version of Cabaret. Director/choreographer Bob Fosse knew how to capitalize on her combination of little-girl-lost pathos and brassy insouciance (as well as her musical skills and her long, long legs) to fill out the character of Sally Bowles. Sally, who first appeared in Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, was portrayed as the top chanteuse at the city’s seedy Kit Kat Klub, at a time when Hitler and his thugs were taking over German life. It was the perfect melding of performer and role, and it won her the Best Actress Oscar in 1973.. (Also in 1972, Minnelli scored another triumph with her televised concert film, Liza with a Z.)  

Though after 1972, Minnelli’s continuing screen success would have seemed assured, she ran into a series of roadblocks. Projects that looked good on paper—like 1975’s Lucky Lady and 1977’s New York, New York—turned out to be expensive flops. Liza herself faced health crises (exacerbated by recreational drug use) and went through a pack of mostly unsuitable husbands and lovers. She craved motherhood, but it was not to be. 

It wasn’t until 1981 that she had another bona fide hit movie, 1981’s Arthur, in which she plays a scrappy waitress who unexpectedly becomes the love interest of a childish (and generally drunk) millionaire, portrayed with gusto by Dudley Moore. To be honest, I watched Arthur again recently, and found  much of it rather repugnant. To me there’s nothing particularly hilarious about a falling-down drunk, even if he generally means well. But the film won an Oscar for John Gielgud’s portrayal of a cranky but endearing butler. And Minnelli and Moore have some charming moments—notably when, upon first meeting, they instantly launch into spritely husband-and-wife banter to conceal the fact that she’s just been apprehended for shoplifting an expensive tie. The waif, it seems, also rises. 

 

Liza Minnelli: Getting By With a Little Help from Her Friends

I have a faint recollection of seeing Liza Minnelli perform on television when she was a mere teenager. She was coltish, even gawky, and I suspected that she owed her spot on the tube to her legendary parents, singer/actress Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli. It’s certainly true that Liza has had, all her life, the twin advantages of money and connections. But the label of Poor Little Rich Girl truly fits her. She was all of twenty-three when her mother died of a barbiturate overdose. True to form, she jumped in to make the necessary arrangements, while also taking in hand her younger half-sister and half-brother.

Bruce David Klein’s new documentary, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, captures the now seventy-eight-year-old Minnelli in all her ebullient glory. We see her as she is now, still chain-smoking, still belting out that memorable cackle, still enjoying life to the fullest, and we also catch glimpses of her back when she was just starting out. Klein is a veteran TV writer, director, and producer whose work has explored a number of wildly assorted topics. I heard him speak at a screening presided over by my long-ago UCLA film critic buddy, Stephen Farber, and it was clear that Klein—like most of the world—had fallen under Liza’s spell. 

In crawling out from her mother’s shadow, Liza was blessed by a series of formative friendships. Always modest about her own accomplishments, she does credit herself with a talent for choosing mentors. Her godmother,  Kay Thompson, helped teach her to put pizzazz into her life. (Thompson, known for her “Think Pink” role in the film Funny Face, was also the author of the Eloise books about a precocious child who lives at New York’s Plaza Hotel. Minnelli herself is often considered one model for this supremely self-assured tyke.) The musical theatre team of John Kander and Fred Ebb were strong influences on her performance style, leading to her Oscar-winning performance in the film Cabaret as well as the much-lauded TV special, Liza with a Z. Bob Fosse served as her choreographer, finding unique ways to showcase her dance skills. When she needed to develop a personal style that distinguished her from her mother, Halston was on hand to create for her the glittery costumes that showed off her long dancer’s legs. (I learned from Klein that Liza, when on stage before a live audience, performs with such intensity that she tends to get sweaty. That’s why Halston turned to sequins to detract, with their sparkle, from her inevitable perspiration.)  

Though Liza’s circle of friends may seem glamorous, she doesn’t only hobnob with fellow celebrities, Much featured in the documentary are a retired dentist and his wife who’ve been close friends of Liza’s for decades. Over the years, she’s been closely connected with their children as well, and everyone who knows her speaks of her generosity. An example: when one Kander and Ebb musical, Chicago, was playing in its original Broadway run, star Gwen Verdon had to leave the production for several weeks to undergo surgery. There was a very real chance that her absence would cause the show to close. When she learned of the situation, Minnelli jetted in from Europe to play the Roxie Hart role, but insisted there be no big press release to tout her appearance. This was simply, in her mind, something she wanted to do to help friends who had always been there for her.  

Minnelli’s instruction  to documentarian Klein: “Don’t put in anything foolish.” What we see is the unvarnished Liza, not foolish at all.