One of her husbands was gay, one of her boyfriends (Peter Sellers) was mad, her mother
Six-year-old Liza Minnelli was ecstatic on the day that her mother, Judy Garland, brought home the family’s new addition from the hospital. She had been practising with her dolls for her role as big sister in the days before Judy came back with a golden-curled, beaming baby girl. After the turbulent years leading up to her parents’ divorce the year before, it seemed that her mercurial mother was finally happy.
Within days Judy would be found by one of their staff in a pool of her own blood, having slit her own throat.
Liza Minelli with mother Judy Garland in 1947
This was Liza’s first experience of her mother’s many suicide attempts. It wouldn’t be the last.
Minnelli was born to Hollywood royalty. Judy Garland was one of the greatest stars of her age, whose fans remain fanatic 50 years after her untimely death.
For her daughter, a showbusiness career was inevitable, and now, at 80, Liza’s stardom rivals that of her mother. She is a singer, dancer, actor and one of the few recipients of an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony), receiving the Oscar for her iconic role as Sally Bowles in Bob Fosse’s 1972 film Cabaret. More recently she has added the comic-genius feather to her cap after appearing in the US cult sitcom Arrested Development, all while juggling a highly successful touring career.
Her entire life has been led in the blinding glare of the spotlight, and this truly terrific, camp-tastic, tragic memoir is a star-studded treasure trove of fascinating stories from an unbelievable life.
Since the age of 13 Judy Garland had been pumped full of uppers and downers by studio executives determined that she keep up with the punishing schedule they enforced on her, leading to a lifelong addiction to pills. By the time Liza was 13, she was her mother’s caretaker: ‘a nurse, doctor, pharmacologist, and psychiatrist rolled into one’. Whenever Judy’s prescriptions ran out, Liza would call the doctor, begging, ‘Please fill my mother’s prescription. She needs the pills so she can get through…Please help me!’.
Judy could also explode into rage at the littlest thing. When she didn’t have any cause to explode, she would turn to Liza and blame her for everything that had gone wrong in her life.
Family business: mother and daughter singing together on the Judy Garland show
Yet, despite this traumatic upbringing, Liza’s memoir showcases the limitless wellsprings of love and forgiveness on which she was able to constantly rely when growing up. She batted away each missile life threw at her (and there were plenty more to come) with a smile and quick-witted joke.
But even Liza had her limits. By the time she was 16 she had reached hers and jetted off to New York to make her name as a performer.
Roles quickly followed, and certainly she was suckled on the nepo-teat, which nourished her career, as she gladly admits. But while you can shoot nepotism allegations at her all you like, there is no doubt that she was a singular talent. In fact, in an age where we see celebrities’ children endlessly trying to prove that their chances were no different to anyone else’s, Liza is refreshingly honest about how marvellous a thing it is to have all these doors flung open for you.
She astounded audiences on Broadway, in concerts and television specials and was beginning to dance right out of her mother’s shadow.
Liza and Peter Sellers
During this time, Liza met singer Peter Allen and quickly settled down, looking for the reassurance of a relationship that differed from the insecurity of her childhood. They married when she was just 21 and their smooth sailing toward marital bliss was diverted by only one pesky detail. Allen’s penchant for men.
Poor Liza came home early from a day out shopping and there was Allen in their bed with another man.
Not long after this, the mother she loved, cared for, and still felt responsible for, would be found dead of a barbiturate overdose. Grieving her mother and her marriage at such a young age was all too much for her to bear and she sought refuge in the one thing she should have avoided like the plague – pills, alcohol and eventually cocaine. Addiction ruled her life for more than 40 years.
Never doing things by halves is a blessing and a curse. A wonderful quality when it comes to being a performer, but when it comes to drugs and certain love affairs, a dash of prudence might have been a marvellous thing.
One such drug-induced love affair was with Peter Sellers. When they met backstage after one of Liza’s London shows in 1972, they fell madly (and I mean madly) in love. Comedy was how she dealt with hardship and here was the funniest guy she’d ever met!
They cracked each other up and before long had moved in together in his London flat. The problem with Peter Allen was he was gay, the problem with Peter Sellers was he was bona fide insane.
Iconic role as Sally Bowles in Cabaret
Once, after a fight Peter stormed out of the house to see his friend Joan Collins in Highgate (a very Jewish area of London) and stepped out of the car in full Nazi regalia. He started walking around the streets of Highgate shouting ‘Sieg Heil’ for all to hear.
Waking up and smelling the ‘schizophrenia’, Liza bolted back to New York.
By now she was partying most nights of the week at Studio 54, all the while performing countless shows. Along the way she’d pick up three more husbands and would embark on countless affairs, including one coke-fuelled fiasco with Martin Scorsese.
Her fourth husband, David Gest, was a ‘wheeler-dealer promoter who wore more makeup’ than she did. They met through their mutual friend Michael Jackson and he insisted he was enormously rich as the result of his shared business ventures with the King of Pop.
Every aspect of their marriage was a nuclear disaster. He tried and partially succeeded in conning her out of millions, insisted on a $3.2 million wedding, and when they finally divorced, tried to sell her Warhols behind her back.
When her beloved friend Michael Fierstein called her in 2016 to say that David had died, the first thing she said was ‘Ding dong, the witch is dead.’ Judy would have been proud.
While she may be done with marriage, Liza doesn’t consider herself out of the dating game and has a list to tick off. ‘Ideally, I’d like to date an older elegant man who speaks beautifully and is filthy rich. Then I’d like to date a forty-year-old guy who is passionate about something. I don’t care what. Then I’d like to date an eighteen-year-old who I see twice a week and whose name I don’t know.’
Knock her, thrash her, pick her up and bounce her, Liza will prevail. Miss Minnelli is finally living in the peace she’s fought for her whole life.
Eleven years sober and living in a wonderful apartment near Sunset Boulevard, it seems Liza’s 80s will be her best decade yet.
The only bump in the road of her otherwise sensational seventies, was an incident of ageism at the 2022 Oscars perpetrated by none other than singer and actress Lady Gaga.
Kids, Wait Till you Hear This is available now from the Mail Bookshop
The stage was set for Liza to present the best picture award alongside the Poker Face singer, as a celebration of 50 years since Cabaret was released. She had agreed to sit in a directors chair because of her back pain, but at the last minute was told by producers that she had to use a wheelchair. Shockingly, Liza writes ‘Lady Gaga— insisted she would not go on stage with me unless I was in a wheelchair. Then, incredibly, she asked if I wouldn’t be better off going home. “Why?” was my incredulous answer. At one point, she quizzed me, to see if my memory was intact. “What’s the name of your film we’re celebrating this year?”‘
Liza was appalled but eventually agreed to their terms, if only to get the ordeal over and done with. Uncharacteristically nervous, Liza stumbled over a few words only for Gaga to swoop in and ‘play the kindhearted hero for all the world to see. “I got you,” she said, holding my hand and leaning down over me.’
When back in her dressing room Liza was visited by Gaga who seemed to make some sort of spluttering attempt at an apology. The ever cool Liza looked her dead in the eye and after Gaga finished simply said ‘I’m a big fan.’
Humiliated on stage, she sets the record straight in this memoir. Not once has she ever tried to get pity from an audience, and she sure as hell isn’t going to start now.
When her mother first saw her on Broadway in 1963, she said to her daughter, ‘Liza, you’re gonna be bigger than me. Just don’t let them kill you.’ She didn’t and this memoir is a truly inspiring story of a wonderful woman who survived against all odds.