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Liza with a Zing

Listen up, honey, if you only know Ms. Minnelli from the tabloids, then you really don't know Liza.

By SEAN DALY
Published January 9, 2006

[Times files]

Minnelli won an Academy Award for her role in 1972’s Cabaret.

	[Getty Images]
	Liza Minnelli belts out New York, New York on New Year’s Day after Michael Bloomberg took the oath of office for his second term as mayor of New York.

Liza Minnelli loves Whitesnake.

No, really: Judy Garland's diva daughter - the triple-threat showbiz legend who has won an Emmy, an Oscar and myriad Tonys - totally digs the hard, head-banging '80s band. She even has them on her iPod.

"Honey, I'm a dancer - I love rock!" says Minnelli with the verve and volume of a teenager demanding a heavy-metal encore. "I love Whitesnake! You bet!"

Talking on the phone with the one and only L-I-Z-A is like chatting with an exclamation point. She's a pip, a hoot, an honest-to-goodness name-in-lights star. She's so old-school Hollywood, it almost comes off as parody. She drops "Honey!" and "Darling!" like a lost Gabor sister, and she drops famous names (Fosse! Ebb! Halston!) like Eminem drops f-bombs.

If you think you can keep up with Minnelli's conversational cabaret, well, pound a few more espressos, old chum.

Minnelli, 59, who brings her singing-dancing-acting spectacle to Clearwater's Ruth Eckerd Hall on Thursday, is gearing up for a big 2006.

First off, she's excited about launching a world tour that's selling like gangbusters. "I'm doing everything I like!" she says about her stage show. "I've put together my own favorites and what the audience likes, and it seems to be working well." She promises a little of everything, not to mention the underrated comic skills on display in movies such as Arthur and TV shows such as Arrested Development, the Fox sitcom that introduced her offbeat antics to a new audience.

The biggest event for longtime Liza fans, however, will come on April 1, when Showtime debuts a remastered version of her 1972 TV special Liza With a "Z," an Emmy-winning bit of razzle-dazzle staged and choreographed by Bob Fosse and written by Minnelli mentor Fred Ebb. "I feel like Fred and John (Kander, Ebb's songwriting partner) invented me," she says.

Much like the woman herself, Liza With a "Z" - which is scheduled for the deluxe DVD treatment around the same time - is over the top and a great deal of fun. The show features the doe-eyed brunette in skimpy outfits designed by famed clothier Halston, most notably a red minidress that shows off a whole lotta Liza.

"We nearly didn't (broadcast) because of those outfits!" she laughs. "What happened was, there was a lady from the censors there for our dress rehearsal. And she said, "I'm sorry, but (Liza) can't wear those clothes. She's naked!' So Halston and Fred Ebb and Fosse say to her, "Come with us.' And they took this woman into a room.

"Now, I'm standing outside wondering what's going to happen," Minnelli continues. "I have nothing to wear if I can't wear that! The show is that night! The censor lady then comes out of the room and I ask her . . .

(Brief author interlude: Minnelli now drops her voice into an innocent hush and sounds exactly like her mother as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. It's both a lovely and slightly chilling moment. Now back to the story . . .)

. . ."Will I be able to wear these costumes?' And the censor lady says, "Yes.' Now wait, dig this reading! She said (Liza affects a slow, stuffy accent), "Yes . . . it's fah-shun.' Ha! Ha!"

Because Liza has a way of making you feel like old pals, I ask if she'll be wearing that little red number at her Clearwater show? Maybe give the crowd a shot of those famous gams?

"Ha! With two false hips and a wired-up knee? I don't think so!" she cackles mightily, referencing the injuries that have slowed her during the second half of her career.

Late-night comics love to tee off on Minnelli, of course. She's a showbiz kid with famous parents. A woman who partied hard with her generation in the '70s. And she's piled up numerous high-profile relationships, most of which have ended badly . . . and publicly.

Most recently, Minnelli has had to deal with the fallout from her failed marriage to fourth husband David Gest, a concert promoter who accused Minnelli of physically abusing him. Minnelli doesn't address the messier particulars, but she does say that ultimately the nasty press doesn't bother her at all.

"I think (the press) is kind of fascinated by the fact that nothing has held me down," she says, adding that people often have a hard time telling the difference between her performance personas and the real woman.

"After I did The Sterile Cuckoo (a 1969 film about an emotionally unstable woman), people walked up to me and said, "Are you all right?' And after I did Cabaret, they come up and said, "Hey, you wanna go out?' "

"I'm myself, always," she says with the casual sigh of a star who has seen it all and heard it all. "My friends know that I'm a rather intelligent, relatively happy woman. What the public thinks is fine. Whatever they want to think, that's fine."

Minnelli might be an easy target, but the truth is that there aren't many legitimate multitooled entertainers like her left in the world. Although she's hesitant to criticize, she says many of the young performers of today are missing out on the necessary showbiz schooling.

"I don't think they're training them," she says. "Every kid who wants to go on Broadway has to be able to do everything: sing, dance and act. I only learned it from that. A lot of the rock 'n' roll kids can dance and can sing; some of those videos are good. But it's still not live performance."

"To me, everything comes from acting," says Minnelli, who lists Sarah Bernhardt and Edith Piaf as the performers she would have paid good money to see. "Dancing is acting with your body. Singing is acting with your voice. And it all comes from the words that you believe in. And that's why I have so many acting pieces in my show."

"Every song, I do a character study on (the song's subject)," she says about her performing technique. "What color hair does this woman have? What are the decals on her refrigerator? Does she have children? What is the view out her window? What state does she live in? Each song is a different movie to me."

Minnelli is seeing more young people at her shows, a demographic shift she credits to her cameos on Arrested Development. "Now people come to see me 'cause I'm funny," she laughs. (Arrested Development, a cult TV hit that failed to find a mainstream audience, is winding down its final season on Fox, but Minnelli has hope. "I think it might get picked up by another network with any luck.")

Finally, as the interview is winding to a close, and because Liza and I are such good pals now, I ask her a simple question: Are you happy?

"Yes, I really am," she says. "Very happy."

It all comes back to a famous quote she uttered decades ago and is still vital to her today: "Reality is something you rise above."

"If something is not working out, you have to rise above it," she explains. "Take a good look at it, and make it work out."

- Sean Daly can be reached at sdaly@sptimes.com or 727 893-8467. His blog is at www.sptimes.com/blogs/popmusic

Liza Minnelli performs at 8 p.m. Thursday, Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater. Tickets $62-$75. (727) 791-7400 or (813) 287-8844 or (727) 898-2100. Also 8 p.m. Jan. 17-18, Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, 777 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. $65-$85. (941) 953-3368.

[Last modified January 6, 2006, 12:14:05]