Liza Minnelli turns 80. The voice of New York celebrates its birthday today, Thursday 12 March, with a new memoir released worldwide at the same time (I, Lizais the title in Italian by Rizzoli, an autobiography written with the pianist Michael Feinstein, one of her closest friends for over 40 years) and the career award from Glaad, the association of the LGBTQ+ community that has always been dear to her.
His name has been around for a long time in the history of cinema as an interpreter of two masterpieces such as Cabaret (1972) by Bob Fosse, which also earned her an Oscar, and New York, New York (1977) by Martin Scorsese. Raised on stages and film sets, the very small Liza, 1 meter and 63 centimeters tall, demonstrated from a very young age her innate qualities as an energetic, but always impeccable in style, of theatrical musicals and songs linked to the Broadway traditionfollowing a very personal path on the big screen: she thus became an icon for her voice, for her extraordinary talent and also for her unruly life.
Born in Los Angeles on March 12, 1946, Liza is the daughter of an artist: her mother was the singer, actress and dancer Judy Garland (The Wizard of Oz, A star is born), his father the director Vincente Minnelli (The father of the bride, An American in Paris, A girlfriend for dad); the godfather was Ira Gershwinnthe librettist of Porgy and Bess. At 2 and a half years old he made his first film appearance: in the film The unknown boyfriends (1949) by Robert Z. Leonard, practically playing herself, in the arms of her mother and Van Johnson.
The separation of her parents, which occurred when she was 5 years old, affected her emotional life (with her mother addicted to alcohol and drugs, so much so that she had to take care of her two younger half-siblings, Lorna and Joe Luft) but did not affect her innate talent, allowing her to enter the world of song at a very young age when in 1953 she attended her mother’s concert at the Palace in New York.
But it was in 1962, at the age of sixteen, that he began to show a real interest in artistic activity by working in the theater in revivals of famous musicals, Take Me Along e The Flower Drum Songand also winning an award for Best foot forward (1963), as well as in Carnival, The Pajama Game e The Fantasticks. The first real success came in 1964Liza when she appeared again alongside her mother at the London Palladium, a concert from which an album was made, Lisa! Lisa!which sold more than 500,000 copies. A year later she won the Tony Award for Best Musical Actress for her performance in Flora, the red menacewhich was staged on Broadway and also marked the birth of the partnership with John Kander and Fred Ebb, composer of the music and author of the lyrics respectively.
When her career seemed destined for musicals and song (her first concert at the Plaza Hotel nightclub in New York, in 1966, had received an enthusiastic reception), Liza made her second film debut, in The mistake of living (1967) di Albert Finney. In 1970 he earned his first Oscar nomination as the protagonist of the comedy Pookie (1969) by Alan J. Pakula, and in the same year he played Tell me you love me, Junie Moon by Otto Preminger.
Cabaret and consecration
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Her great success dates back to 1972, when the director and choreographer Bob Fosse called her to work on a film version of Cabaretmusical comedy by John van Druten inspired by Joe Masteroff’s show (I am a cameraalready brought to the big screen by Henry Cornelius, in 1955, with the same title), based in turn on the novel by Christopher Isherwood Goodbye Berlin.
In the film Liza perfectly plays the character of Sally Bowles, an American cabaret singer in the dark Berlin of the early 1930s, over which the nightmare of Nazism is already looming. Sally, who leads a free and disenchanted life, begins a relationship with a young English student, Brian Roberts (Michael York), but their love will inevitably clash with the demands of two worlds that are too distant.
Liza’s great expressive strength, a sort of contagious vitality and her undisputed singing talent have contributed to making Cabaret one of the most successful musical films. The overwhelming success of the film, also thanks to the famous numbers based on the original songs by Kander and Ebb, including the eponymous Cabaret e Money, Money, Moneywas sanctioned by the otto Oscar obtained, including that of the actress to whom the prestigious covers of “Time” and “Newsweek” were dedicated on that occasion, acclaimed as a superstar. For that role he also received a Golden Globe, a Bafta and a David di Donatello.
In the following years, punctuated by television specials (“Liza with a Z'”, 1973, directed by Fosse), new recordings and great musical shows (in 1973 he won a Special Tony Award for the show “Liza at the winter garden”), his film career continued intermittently. In 1975 she was the protagonist of In tre sul Lucky Lady by Stanley Donen, with Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds, and the following year it was directed by his father in Nina in the role of a movie star. Also in 1975 he starred in the musical on Broadway Chicagothen into The Act (1976), for which he received his second Tony Award, and later in The Rink (1984), Love letters (1994) e Victor/Victoria (1997).
New York, New York written especially for her
It was director Martin Scorsese who offered Liza Minnelli, in one of his most engaging films, New York, New York (1977), a character built for her, that of Francine Evans, a jazz singer who tries in vain to reconcile the road to success and her relationship, both artistic and sentimental, with the saxophonist Jimmy Doyle (Robert De Niro, dubbed on saxophone by Georgie Auld). The film, which offers a sort of rereading of the musical and of an entire era by playing on the conventions of melodrama, took her to the pinnacle of her cinematic adventurethanks to a masterful interpretation of Kander and Ebb’s songs, in particular the now legendary one that gives the film its title.
The new cinematic success was followed by a new break, caused by sentimental and psychophysical problems linked to alcohol and drug abuse. In 1981 he starred in the comedy Arturo by Steve Gordon. He later had unmemorable roles in The Muppets conquer Broadway (1984), Policeman for rent (1987) e Arturo 2: On the Rocks (1988).
The concerts and the pop turning point
Having overcome a difficult phase on an artistic and personal level, in the second half of the Eighties she brought herself to the attention of the general public in a series of concerts: in 1986, again at the London Palladium, and above all, in 1988, in an international tour with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.
In 1989 he decided to print one pop breakthrough to his sound by collaborating with the Pet Shop Boys who produced the album Results from which the singles were extracted Losing my mind, Don’t Drop Bombs, So Sorry, I Said e Love pains, which climbed the hit parades. The following year, in 1990, he received the Grammy Legend Award. In 1991 with “Dance School” by Lewis Gilbert (1991) Liza attempted the path of a musical film again, bringing to the big screen the show that had sold out for three weeks at Radio City in New York: a musical centered on the figure of a former dancer who teaches tap dancing to the women of a small town in the American province, to help them overcome frustration. In 1992 she was the guest of honor at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert performing We Are the Champions. In 1996 he recorded the album Gently which also includes a duet with Donna Summer.
The ‘cameo’ in Sex & the City 2 and the latest album
Since then his appearances on the big screen have been increasingly rare: Sooner or later I’ll pass out! (2006) e Sex and the City 2 (2010), where she is seen dancing to the tune of Single Ladies. After a series of small television roles, in 2010 he recorded his last studio album, Confessions.
Private life between failures and excesses
For her triumphs in her professional life – she is part of the small group of ‘Egot’ artists who have won all four of the main awards in US show business: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award – Liza Minnelli has paid a high price in her private life: four failed marriages, three interrupted pregnancies, rivers of alcohol, drugs and psychotropic drugs and an endless list of admissions to the clinic for detoxification. Peter Allen, Australian singer-songwriter and pianist born in 1944 launched by Judy Garland, was the star’s first husband. The two met during a concert of her mother at the Palladium in London and the wedding was celebrated in 1967.
Their union foundered in 1974. Shortly after, the second marriage: in the same year Liza married the director Jack Haley Jr., son of the actor Jack Haley (who was in the cast of “The Wizard of Oz” with Garland), born in 1933, at her side until 1979. Another marriage collapsed in the space of a short time, shelved to unite with the sculptor Mark Gero, married in 1979 and left in 1992. Her fourth marriage dates back to 2002 and her last husband was the record producer David Gest, from whom she divorced in 2007. Among the flirtations attributed to the American singer and actress the names of Rock Brynner (son of the actor Yul Brynner), Mikhail Baryshnikov, Billy Stritch, Martin Scorsese and Desi Arnaz Jr., Peter Sellers stand out. His close friendship with the French singer Charles Aznavour was described by him as “more than friends and less than lovers”.
After years of unruliness, in the 1980s Liza Minnelli began to suffer from the abuse of alcohol and psychotropic drugs which forced her to repeat hospitalizations in clinics for detoxification. Then a succession of illnesses, too many for that small body, which debilitated her to the point of forcing her into a wheelchair: repeated surgeries on the hip, kneecap, jaw, wrists and vertebraeepisodes that exposed the slender Liza to numerous and continuous infections, including two serious pneumonias. But the most serious episode dates back to 2000: a rare encephalitis that left her with severe motor and verbal deficits.
Her last public appearance dates back to March 27, 2022, on the night of the 94th edition of the Oscars, confined to a wheelchair, and, accompanied by Lady Gaga, announcing the victory of What – The signs of the heart as best film. On the stage of the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles Liza Minnelli appeared to have evident difficulty in revealing the winner, thanks to the emotion of the moment in front of an audience of esteemed colleagues. With touching delicacy and discretion, Lady Gaga approached her, shaking her hand to give her peace of mind and security. Then he whispered to her: “I got you” followed by the response “I know” from Liza who achieved her goal by reading the card with the name of the award-winning film from the attentive hands of the pop star. (by Paolo Martini)
