Liza Minnelli

Recognized for Academy Award-winning screen roles, Tony Award-winning stage turns, Emmy-winning television productions, and gold-certified albums, Liza Minnelli has nevertheless built her enduring reputation chiefly through live performances, a trajectory that stretches from her nightclub debut in 1965 onward. Her strongest achievements in motion pictures, musical theater, and broadcasting have drawn directly from and expanded upon her identity as a stage artist, while numerous releases issued under her own name consist of concert documents. She has additionally contributed to many film soundtracks and original-cast recordings. From the moment she began appearing publicly in the early 1960s, Minnelli has projected a high-energy approach that fuses technical command with genuine warmth, enabling her to rise above shifting fashions in popular music and retain her standing as a leading attraction.

The daughter of director Vincente Minnelli and performer Judy Garland, Minnelli entered show business as an infant when she appeared in the 1949 feature In the Good Old Summertime, which starred her mother and was directed by her father. Following her parents’ divorce when she was five, she divided her time between them, alternating between Hollywood, where Vincente Minnelli continued making films, and the touring life of her mother. She first joined her mother onstage at age ten and made sporadic childhood television appearances. Frequent moves prompted by Garland’s schedule meant she attended numerous schools. By her teenage years Minnelli had resolved to pursue a career in entertainment; in 1961 she successfully auditioned for New York’s High School of Performing Arts, although she departed before long. In 1962 she supplied the speaking voice of Dorothy—originally played by her mother—for the animated sequel Journey Back to Oz, which remained unreleased until 1974, at which point an album titled The Return to Oz appeared on RFO Records. Later that same year, after brief studies at the Sorbonne, she left formal schooling behind to seek acting work in New York. Her professional debut occurred at seventeen in an off-Broadway revival of the 1941 musical Best Foot Forward, which opened on April 2, 1963, completed 244 performances, and yielded a Cadence Records cast album that served as her first commercial recording.

Minnelli sang duets with her mother on two installments of The Judy Garland Show broadcast in November and December 1963; those performances later surfaced on several Garland compilations. During 1964 she gained touring experience in Carnival! and The Fantasticks, then signed with Capitol Records, which issued her debut album, Liza! Liza!, in September. The set entered the Billboard charts, yet the follow-ups It Amazes Me (March 1965) and There Is a Time (December 1966) did not. In November 1964 she shared billing with Garland at the London Palladium; the engagement was captured for the 1965 Capitol album Live at the London Palladium, which reached the Top 100.

At nineteen Minnelli received her first Broadway leading role in Flora, the Red Menace, which featured a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, opened on May 11, 1965, and closed after 87 performances. Despite the short run she became the youngest woman to receive a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. The RCA Victor cast album charted. She established a lasting partnership with Kander & Ebb, who subsequently wrote material for her on many occasions. On September 14, 1965, she made her nightclub debut at Washington’s Shoreham Hotel in an act shaped by Ebb; the engagement led to further dates in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, and additional cities on her inaugural tour. Club, theater, concert-hall, hotel, and casino appearances would remain central to her schedule for the remainder of her career, with other projects arranged around them. On November 28, 1965, she headlined the television musical The Dangerous Christmas of Red Riding Hood, which contained songs by Jule Styne and Robert Merrill; an ABC Records soundtrack appeared in January 1966.

Throughout 1966 Minnelli performed at such notable rooms as the Persian Room at New York’s Plaza Hotel and London’s Talk of the Town. On March 3, 1967, she married singer-songwriter Peter Allen; the marriage ended in divorce on July 24, 1974. She later wed producer Jack Haley, Jr. (1974–1979), stage manager Mark Gero (1979–1992), and promoter David Gest (March 16, 2002). She entered motion pictures with a supporting part in the 1968 drama Charlie Bubbles. Her first starring film role arrived with the 1969 release The Sterile Cuckoo, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. As a recording artist she had moved from Capitol to A&M Records, which issued Liza Minnelli (May 1968), Come Saturday Morning (April 1970, titled after the theme from The Sterile Cuckoo), New Feelin’ (November 1970), and Live at the Olympia in Paris (July 1972); among these only New Feelin’ charted.

Minnelli maintained a steady workload in the early 1970s, headlining her initial television special on June 29, 1970, and starring in the July release Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. Her profile rose sharply in 1972 with the February release of the film version of Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret, directed by Bob Fosse, which became a substantial commercial success. The ABC Records soundtrack went gold, and Minnelli received the Academy Award for Best Actress. She reunited with Kander, Ebb, and Fosse for the taped concert special Liza with a “Z,” broadcast September 10; the program won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety/Music Program, while the Columbia soundtrack reached the Top 20 and achieved gold status. That album inaugurated a new contract with Columbia, which she followed with the 1973 Top 40 set Liza Minnelli, the Singer.

Rather than immediately pursue further film work, Minnelli concentrated on live appearances. Her sold-out three-week engagement at Broadway’s Winter Garden in January 1974 was documented on the Columbia album Live at the Winter Garden and earned her a special Tony Award. She returned to the screen in 1975 with Lucky Lady (December) and A Matter of Time (October 1976), the latter directed by her father; neither met with strong critical or commercial response. Between those projects she substituted for an ailing Gwen Verdon in the Broadway musical Chicago for several weeks during summer 1975, and Columbia issued a single of her performance of “All That Jazz.”

In June 1977 Minnelli co-starred with Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York, a musical drama set in the 1940s and ’50s that chronicled the turbulent relationship between a band singer who becomes a Hollywood star and a jazz musician. Kander & Ebb supplied the period-flavored songs; the soundtrack reached the Top 50. Although the expensive production failed to recoup its costs, the title song later became a standard after Frank Sinatra recorded it, even as it remained closely identified with Minnelli. She next recorded the disco-oriented Tropical Nights for Columbia, then collaborated again with Scorsese on the Broadway musical The Act, which featured songs by Kander & Ebb, opened October 29, 1977, ran 233 performances, and brought her a third Tony Award; DRG Records released the cast album.

By the late 1970s Minnelli had returned primarily to concert work after her recording contract lapsed and a series of unsuccessful films had diminished her box-office prospects. These reversals did not prevent her from selling out eleven consecutive nights at Carnegie Hall in September 1979, establishing a house record. She appeared in the 1981 comedy Arthur, yet her principal focus stayed on live performance as she toured extensively through the early 1980s. She co-starred with Chita Rivera in the Kander & Ebb musical The Rink, which opened February 9, 1984, generated a Polydor cast album, and completed 204 performances. She left the production in July 1984 to address substance-abuse issues at the Betty Ford Clinic. By June 1985 she had resumed touring. On October 28, 1985, she starred in the television drama A Time to Live and received a Golden Globe Award for her performance.

Minnelli continued international concert work through the mid-1980s. Her record-breaking three-week return to Carnegie Hall in spring 1987, which initiated a national tour, was recorded for the Telarc album Liza Minnelli at Carnegie Hall, released that September; the set charted. In 1988 she appeared in Rent-a-Cop and Arthur 2: On the Rocks. She also headlined the June 7 television movie Sam Found Out: A Triple Play and filled in for an ailing Dean Martin on a September concert tour with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. that later extended to Europe and Asia and concluded with a cable broadcast. She surprised audiences by teaming with the Pet Shop Boys on a dance arrangement of Stephen Sondheim’s “Losing My Mind,” which reached the U.K. Top Ten upon its spring 1989 Epic release and entered the U.S. dance charts (as did the B-side, “Love Pains”). The collaboration previewed the full-length album Results, issued in September, which entered the U.K. Top Ten and charted in the United States. In September 1991 she appeared in the film musical Stepping Out and on the accompanying Milan Records soundtrack.

Concert performance nevertheless remained her principal outlet, and her next album, issued by Columbia in late 1992 in conjunction with a video, was Live from Radio City Music Hall. She starred in the August 14, 1994, cable film Parallel Lives. Hip-replacement surgery in December 1994 briefly paused her touring schedule; she resumed road work in March 1995. The television movie West Side Waltz aired November 23, 1995. In March 1996 Angel Records released Gently, a collection of traditional pop standards that she supported with a tour; the album charted briefly and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance. In January 1997 she substituted for Julie Andrews in the Broadway musical Victor/Victoria. Her subsequent stage show, Minnelli on Minnelli, premiered with a month-long run at New York’s Palace Theater in December 1999 and centered on songs drawn from film musicals directed by her father. An Angel recording of the production appeared in February 2000, although the national tour was curtailed in April when she contracted double pneumonia.

In October she suffered a life-threatening case of encephalitis. Throughout 2001 she recovered and underwent a second hip-replacement procedure; in spring 2002 she resumed live appearances with multiple concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall and New York’s Beacon Theater, produced and directed by her then-husband David Gest. J Records issued the album Liza’s Back, drawn from the Beacon performances, in October. A proposed VH1 reality series starring Minnelli and Gest was canceled in early 2003 amid mutual public statements, after which she launched a national tour. She and Gest filed for divorce in July. In November she began a recurring role on the television series Arrested Development that continued through 2005. In 2006 she appeared in the film The OH in Ohio and was reported to be preparing a tribute album to Kay Thompson, the nightclub singer, author of Eloise, and MGM vocal coach. Her 2008 Broadway return engagement, Liza’s at the Palace…., directed and choreographed by Ron Lewis with vocal arrangements by Kay Thompson and Billy Stritch, yielded an album the following year. Minnelli returned to the recording studio in 2010 for the album Confessions.