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Never Say Die

14 March 1998 The Times Magazine
(part of The Times of London UK newspaper)

Reviving the Minnelli myth: It's 25 years since her finest hour in Cabaret, but Liza Minnelli's legions of fans haven't given up on her yet - and neither has she. Interview by Daniel Jeffreys. Photographs by

When Barbra Streisand made a memorable appearance at Madison Square Gardens last year, a small figure dressed in black with a red scarf moved slowly into a front-row seat. All arround, people started to whisper the name of the new arrival. The whisper grew louder and louder until, within a few minutes, 18,000 people were chanting "Liza, Liza" and stamping their feet. Streisand was reportedly somewhat put out, even though Liza Minnelli is her best friend (they talk almost every day). Minnelli simply stood, beamed and blew the audience a kiss with each hand. Such is the enduring star-appeal of Judy Garland's daughter.

Liza Minnelli has not made a movie that does justice to her talent since her Oscar-winning performance in Cabaret 25 years ago. As a singer she has had a few hit singles, and last yar's new album Gently did only modest business. Yet whenever she performs, all seats in the house are sold and people watch her sing with rapt attention, even if nowadays she rarely hits all the high notes without some mishap.

She was the New Year's Eve hit in Las Vegas last year with a packed show at the casino Circus Circus, where she come back on for four encores. "She is a survivor, somebody who has been through so much but has kept her energy and love of life," says Maria Berenson, the socialite actress who appeared with Minnelli in Cabaret and has been an intimate confidante ever since. "I think we all look up to her because she's still alive. With her mother's genes and everything she did to herself in the Seventies and Eighties, most people thought she'd be dead by now."

Dead she is not, although some days are better than others. Minnelli will be 52 this year; when we first met last September she looked older. At a movie premiere in New York she moved slowly on the arm of an assistant. Her make-up was so thick that it had taken on a life of its own and she seemed in pain. Yet that was to be the low point. By the time we parted company ten weeks later, after three further encounters, she had convinced me that her vibrant vaudeville heart is still strong. She remains a compelling star with abundant energy, but there's something fragile about her that was never there before. Yet despite her present state, Minnelli believes that her best is yet to come.

"1998 will be a wonderful year for me," she insists. We are having dinner in a smoke-filled New York restaurant, chosen especially so she can take elicit puffs of the cigarettes she is supposed to have given up. "I have my life organised."

She lives partly in Los Angeles and partly in New York. She has been known to call both places home with equal emphasis. "Manhattan is my spiritual home, where I feel my vibe," she says. "Los Angeles is home in the sense of where I come from. It's also about real estate; in New York my apartment is more like a hotel suite, in Los Angeles I have a home. That's where I am most nights - drinking tea, doing needlepoint. I also work with brain-injured children and I've been doing a lot of correspondence with them."

The travel from coast to coast is just one element of her hectic schedule. She bounces with energy on the banquette and her napkin flies to the floor as she explains. "There are four things I must do every day: I take exercise, I train my voice a little, I meet with my team of assistants and I walk the dog." She pauses. There's a smile creeping across her face as if she has a big surprise hidden somewhere. "You think I'm teasing? I'm not. Once these four are done, I know everything else will follow."

By that she means the Minnelli machine, an entourage of 14 -including a personal trainer, three assistants, a diary secretary, a nutritionist and a physiotherapist - who help to organise the 200 concert appearances a year, a back catalogue of over 30 albums and a new production company through which she is developing a musical tracing three generations of a showbusiness family. Minnelli aims to break with tradition if the show happens: "I will be a producer on the project, but I won't take one of the star roles. I think it would be a way of really accounting for my past, finally coming to terms with everything. What I've been thinking about a lot lately is how my family helped me get from there to here;" she says, drawing a line upwards in the air. "And what I can do with what I've been given to say thank you to them."

She stops and scribbles a note to herself on a napkin. She's dressed in a pair of tight black trousers and a black silk blouse with a large collar. It looks expensive. According to people in her entourage, Minnelli spends hours every day choosing her outfits, yet they always seem to come out black, with maybe a touch of red. It's like a uniform she puts on when she goes out in public; like a message to herself not to get confused between her real self and "Liza with a Z", the character of showbusiness legend.

"My mother didn't always do the right thing, but she always had such love in her heart," says Minnelli. "When I married Peter Alien in 1967, my mother couldn't afford a present. I know that hurt her, but she tried to make me feel that wasn't important so long as she loved me. When I was nine, I would sit listening to her talk about her loneliness, her professional crises, her romantic rejection. I think Bing Crosby, who was a terrific friend to her, summed it up when he said: "There wasn't a thing that gal couldn't do. Except look after herself.'

"That's not me. I've always found a way to look after myself and I always will. I think I've been able to put more distance between myself and fame than she did. I actually learnt that from her, but she didn't follow her own advice. My mother would say, "That's over there, and that's what they call a legend, and that's gonna build on its own. It was invented by the public. You could go and plant corn seed in Iowa and it will keep going. So watch it, understand it, laugh at it, think about it, and lead your own life with dignity and integrity. That's your job." That's the family baggage. I picked it up and I have to carry it. But now I can do something else, use my experience to create something for the stage that will hopefully have lasting value."

That something is the autobiographical musical Minnelli has in production. The idea for it first came to her while she was lying in bed last February recovering from surgery to her throat, a procedure which removed a polyp that had caused repeated failures in her vocal cords during performances in 1996. It was just one of three operations she underwent in that year. The other two were on her back and knee, the second being the result of an unfortunate accident - she was out walking her dog when it was scared by a cab skidding and ran off, dragging her over. It could have been worse; Minnelli had a hip replacement operation in 1994, but mercifully this mishap left her fragile pelvis unscathed.

"After the throat surgery, I was lying on my back in the hospital, intravenous lines sticking out of my arms, and I thought to myself, 'I'd better think of something else to do, because things don't seem to be working out.' So I put all my concentration into just healing. I'm the healthi est person you will ever meet, I always have been. I'm just an ox, I always have been. " She suddenly realises that she's digressed. It's an experience you get used to with Liza. She is highly strung and has so many powerful memories that she can sidetrack herself in an instant. It's both endearing and annoying. "Anyways," she continues, "I thought there was a story to tell, something that had been trying to come out and make itself felt, that had survived all the pain and was just completely positive. That's how the musical will be. If I can make it happen it will be one of my proudest achievements, even though it won't be a showcase for my singing"

During our conversation Minnelli repeatedly emphasises that she is always working. She says she doesn't have time for an extensive social life outside of Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, her one-time pianist and ex-lover Billy Stritch, Marisa Berenson and a few other close friends who are also in showbiz. "I'm on the road so much, living in hotels, it's not like I have a rota of people who come round for dinner," she says. "I don't cook. Momma used to make shepherd's pie and the kitchen would look like Armageddon for a week afterwards. I don't make that mistake. Many people I like have families, but I don't intrude on them when I suddenly drop into town. I like to socialise with the people I'm on stage with, especially when it's something fresh that we've just started'

A cigarette appears from nowhere, as if by magic. It comes from one of the two assistants who chaperone her with great care. She plays up to their presence, giving a semi-serious look of near tearful neglect mixed with anger if they fail to provide her with the things she likes - tea with acacia honey, Vitamin C twice a day just before lunch and supper. The food on her plate is, as usual, untouched.

Minnelli feels 1998 is her third act, her first act having begun in Los Angeles, in a private suite at the Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Parents Judy Garland and movie producer Vincente Minnelli invited friends to visit the new baby. The first to come was Frank Sinatra - that's the kind of childhood she had. She didn't need a TV to watch her favourite stars because they were likely to be in the kitchen mixing a Martini. Her dresses were hand made by top designers and were frequently scaled-down copies of those worn by the stars of her father's films.

As a child, Minnelli faced no competition for her parents' love. There were no brothers or sisters to challenge her emotional supremacy. She remembers it as one of the few calm times in her life. "They'd put me in the middle," she says. "We'd all go to sleep. But sometimes during the night, in their sleep, momma and daddy would hold hands across my stomach or head. I didn't dare move for fear I'd get tossed out."

Before she was ten, Minnelli had already saved her mother's life on several occasions when she'd overdosed on Benzedrine, Dexedrine, or a cocktail of both. Judy Garland took dozens of uppers and downers every day, struggling to control colitis, insomnia and her weight. The drugs caused severe mood swings and intense temper tantrums. Minnelli became adept at covering up for her mother, keeping the show on the road whatever the circumstances. She has said that the experience left her feeling "confused, traumatised and insecure". Add to that being internationally famous and it's no surprise Minnelli's behaviour can occasionally be erratic. It's tempting to believe that her talent and behaviour reflect a scaled-down version of the obsessive personality of the mother who died miserably of a drug overdose 28 years ago.

"I absolutely do not believe my problems are the result of my mother becoming addicted to painkillers;' she says. "I have been through my own pain. I've tried to find the right person who I could love forever. So far that hasn't worked. Sometimes because I ran away from their love, sometimes they did that to me. Sometimes they died before I could realise what they really meant to me. If my mother gave me weaknesses, she also gave me strength. What momma did for me was prepare a path for me to take performance a bit further. She shared her stage life with me even before I was out of diapers. She really made me feel comfortable on stage - any stage."

Those who have worked with Minnelli love her talent but have no doubt that she can be a demanding colleague. After all, she was raised to believe that the world waits for stars however long they take to get ready. The self-absorption she developed during her tumultuous childhood is always present. She seems to be constantly asking for reassurance that she is fabulous, as if attention from others is the one addiction she has never been able to shake. "I think that began with my family," says Minnelli. "With my mother I could feel warm and safe then completely alone, all in the space of a minute."

The recollection has her reaching for another cigarette. She takes a deep drag then washes it down with a drink - a soda; alcohol no longer passes her lips, she says. "It's expected of me, to be a self-indulgent wreck. It's part of the 'Of Course' syndrome." Minnelli says she has been cursed with this all her life, the belief among others that anything happening in her life is the inevitable result of her genes. "When I began acting they'd say, 'The daughter of Vincente Minnelli, in a movie? Of course.' Then I'd sing and they say, 'The daughter of Judy Garland, a singer? Of course.' Then I'd have problems with alcohol and just as you'd expect, they all say, 'Of course.' It's as if I never did anything on my own.

"It's both a help and a hindrance to be the daughter of a big star," continues Minnelli. It's good because people will always see me and hear me. But there's always a thought of measuring up. It's a funny feeling. For almost 25 years I would never sing one of her songs, but one day that struck me as ridiculous. I've added some of them to my repertoire now, neither of us needs to worry about people making comparisons."

Minnelli has no real reason to feel inadequate. She won an Oscar as an adult for her portrayal of singer Sally Bowles in Cabaret; her mother's Oscar was a special children's version invented to reward her performance in The Wizard of Oz. Liza has also won a Broadway Tony and an Emmy for her TV shows, both of which eluded the great Garland. When Cabaret was released she made the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week. In response, she reportedly said, "Where can you go from there? Only down."

"She gets her own way," says a close friend who has helped to manage her financial affairs in recent years. "I want to scream at her at least once a day, but she also has a marvellously deep well of talent. On a good day there is no one who can get near her. On a bad day she is her own neighbourhood of hell."

Sadly for Minnelli, the last two years have been exceptionally short of good days. Instead, there were the four operations with long hospital stays, cancelled performances and shows cut short because of illness. During this time she surrounded herself with people whom some of her past friends disapprove of, largely because they believe she chose them because they rarely criticise her. Minnelli remains estranged from her half-sister Lorna Luft, who recently said, "Liza surrounds herself with people who are a negative influence. I cannot be around her in those circumstances. But she's an adult, she has to make her own choices."

Concerns about her health peaked in December 1996, when there were suggestions in some newspapers that she might be fatally ill. To scotch these tabloid rumours she stood in for Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria in January last year, marking her return to Broadway after a 13-year absence. Ticket sales broke records, but Minnelli missed the last three performances and allegedly had stormy rows with co-star Tony Roberts, who was unhappy with her preparation for the role. Last November she was supposed to sing in Atlantic City, but that date was cancelled as a result of her dog's close encounter with a New York taxi.

According to Minnelli, her fragile constitution has nothing to do with the addictions that forced her into the Berry Ford Clinic in 1979. She says she's just been a bit unlucky with her health. "Oh honey, at this point I feel like my whole body has been broken and put back together;" she says. "Apart from that, there's no pain at all. I feel great. Ha, ha! I went into Victor/Victoria in two days. They don't tell you that in the papers. I had concert dates I had to honour, and so I kept flying back and forth between those and rehearsals. And Tony [Roberts] said I was the best person he had ever worked with on stage, yet no newspaper has ever reported that. They wanted an interesting story."

Victor/Victoria director Blake Edwards accepts that Liza gave his show her all, but he does not consider her to be an easy actress to work with. "Her mother was a very troubled soul, and I'm sure, whether genetically or just emotionally, she has inherited a part of that," says Edwards. "You can see Garland in her so much that it's scary. She's aware of it too. She's needy like a child.'

We have moved to the West Coast, where it's warmer and Minnelli can more readily fight the bouts of bronchitis that have been following her around. She is due to sing at a private event attended by Hollywood's most famous, of which she should be regarded as a crown princess, yet she is edgy before the evening itself - apparently this is now typical of her hours before a performance.

"She doesn't have the confidence she once had," says a close associate. "There have been a number of shows where it didn't quite go right. Consequently, it has become more difficult to get her on stage." And there was something else at stake in LA besides her singing reputation - Minnelli wants to get back into the movies. Her close friends say that's much more important to her than the Broadway musical she talked about so much back in New York.

It has been five years since she did a studio picture, and that was the unsuccessful film version of Bob Fosse's Stepping Out. She needs people to believe in her. Fractiously, Minnelli attempts to silence all her detractors with one grand statement: "Look, I've formed a production company, built two publishing companies, had a play written, done a deal to write a musical, a cartoon. I've got a solid deal for a film, a solid deal for a musical production on Broadway and next year [1998] I'll do 200 shows - ten of them in Britain." She pauses for effect. "Then I read that I'm a recluse! You can't do all I have on my schedule and be a mess. It doesn't work."

Three of her UK dates will be big shows at the Royal Albert Hall, on June 10-12, and I suggest that there might be a danger she has taken on too much while her health is still fragile. "I can take the workload," Minnelli insists. "I'm one of the people - I'm a worker. I have fresh, pristine vocal cords now. I'm just finding it a bit hard to learn how to steer them. It's like a brand new car. I have, like, seven new notes up top."

She demonstrates them later in a 40-room mansion tucked in a fold in the Hollywood Hills, where Whitney and Cher and Costner, not to mention three dozen other big names, have assembled to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Cabaret, with proceeds destined for an Aids charity - one of Minnelli's favourite causes.

After her 20-minute performance, Minnelli patrols the crowd. She throws her arms around everybody who comes close. She has no time for air kisses. The reception she gets seems to strip ten years from her face, and 20 from the way she moves her body. "I live to perform;' she says. "When I had my vocal cords fixed, I couldn't speak for four months after the operation and all I saw were the Warhol paintings marching out the doors. You can't just stop working, not when there are so many bills to pay, so many people to support. The audience is my family. Whatever is printed about you is unimportant. What's important is to stand out there with your legs planted apart and sing, dammit."

The energy she derives from attention is phenomenal. "I have sometimes been an emotional Chernobyl. I now think that I have that more under control. In the past Id always party until dawn after a show, now I'm just as likely to go home and read a book with my dog, Lily."

Minnelli has been through three marriages: first to Australian singer Peter Allen from 1967 to 1974 (she knew he was gay before they married); then to film-maker jack Haley Jr (the son of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, they were together from 1975 to 1978 when he divorced her because of her infidelity); and then to sculptor Mark Gero from 1979 to 1992 (he left her). She has been romantically linked with Peter Sellers, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Martin Scorsese, Ben Vereen, Desi Arnaz Jr and Bob Fosse. She is said to have frequented gay sex clubs and held court in Manhattan's infamous Seventies nightclub, Studio 54.

Minnelli has no children, despite wanting them. Lily, her pet's name, is the name she would have given a daughter. She has had three miscarriages, just one of the reasons she would say that her life has been defined by love and loss, beginning with her mother's tragic death, then her father's death from cancer and her first husband's death from Aids.

"As children, my sister and I would take my mother's sleeping pills [capsules] and refill them with sugar," she says. "I wasn't prepared for her death. It's tough losing people. It smacks you on the side of the head when you least expect it to. I made sure I was there when my father was dying. I told him how much I loved him, said goodbye - that's closure. You need that, I never really had that with momma; she was in London, I was in New York. It hurts. It all goes back to those issues we have as kids, when we're scared of being abandoned. I had tremendously interesting childhood years, they just had nothing to do with being a child."

And what about the child she never had, despite several painful efforts. "I don't know," says Minnelli. - "It's a sadness for me. One of my life's true regrets. I think it would have given me a centre of gravity that could have helped me at certain times. But it's not a panacea for anything, and now I have to accept that it just wasn't to be.'

Minnelli has admitted that she is constitutionally incapable of being alone, that she still chases after love, sometimes in the wrong places. She seems to like younger men; in recent years she's been linked romantically to Billy Stritch, her 25 year-old piano player, and King Lewis, the 26-year-old doorman at her New York apartment building. She admits to the first, strongly denies the second, but she's far from ready to give up romantic pursuits.

Later, when we meet again in New York, love and relationships are very much in Minnelli's thoughts. "I've always been married, or going with someone," she tells me. "I've always felt like I didn't exist unless I was defined through a man's eyes. It's called co-dependency. I was in love when I was four - I was the most romantic child. It came from watching all my father's films. It was all in my head.

"Living as a legend, as the daughter of legends, is confusing," she says. "It's not something you can control. You have to accept that others will make up who you are. I do miss people; Bob [Fosse] and Halston were my greatest friends. I have the most passionate heart. It needs to attach to something else. I don't feel entirely fulfilled unless Im in love, but I think I'm wiser now. Love needs to be tempered by good sense or it quickly becomes obsessive."

The clothing designer Halston has a reasonable claim to be the most important man in Minnelli's life after her father. He moulded her image from the days of Cabaret onwards. He also kindled Minnelli's taste for decadence; she was like the Madonna of her generation and Halston was her Versace.

Minnelli has been reminded of all this recently. A New York nightclub has just been renovated to resemble the Kit Kat of Cabaret in time for a theatrical revival. The nightclub Studio 54, where Halston and Liza spent many nights popping pills and watching sex acts, is the subject of a movie which opens later this year. It's as if the most successful and destructive period of Minnelli's life has suddenly come back to haunt her, for it was this time that saw her winning an Oscar and admitted to a drug rehabilitation clinic all in the space of five years.

"I had a problem and I decided it had to be dealt with," she says, referring to her 1979 admission to the Berry Ford. "I first took Valium. the day my mother died and it all began there. It was a way of coping. I remember the low times, I cried a lot and told friends I didn't want to end up like momma. In a sense, when I went to Betty Ford it was the inevitable result of the pressures combined with drug use. I have to be witty, I have to be glamorous, I have to be bubbly. Sometimes I feel like I've been trying to be all these things for others for too many years.

"Addictions run in families," she adds. "It's been proven. Anybody who comes from an alcoholic family should congratulate themselves every day. I'm doing fine, thank you. Today I'm happy. I'm in New York with a cup of coffee - that's happiness. I like to celebrate each day with friends, have a good meal, hear some good music. People say, 'Oh Liza Minnelli, she's been done.' I haven't been done. My dad always used to say to me, 'You haven't begun to scratch the surface.' I agree with him - I haven't begun to scratch the surface.'

Looking back over our meetings, I can see that Minnelli was still struggling to get back to her best form. The look of anxiety before her LA appearance, the fragile excess of energy once she'd performed, the difficulty she had walking out of a restaurant in Manhattan as winter winds buffeted the door. It may be time for her to conserve energy, to perform less, to give her throat a rest. She wants to direct, and that would certainly remove the pressure to be on stage. It's something she's thought about for more than a decade. "I don't know why I'm so scared of stepping into my father's shoes," she says. "I certainly wasn't as nervous about stepping into my mother's."

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