Few people have lived a life quite as kaleidoscopic as Liza May Minnelli’s. In her 80 years, the showbiz icon has been married four times, achieved EGOT status, and cheated death. Now, in her new memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This, she’s recounting all of the ups and downs—and they are plentiful—in her own words.
A nepo long before the term was coined, Liza’s parents were movie star Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli. Born in 1946, she was swiftly brought into the public eye—in fact, as Minnelli tells it in the book, Garland awoke one night while heavily pregnant having divined her daughter’s name. “Liza Minnelli will be her name! It will look terrific on a movie marquee!” Her parents had already decided Liza’s destiny: she would be a star.
On her 80th birthday, we take a closer look at some of Minnelli’s best anecdotes from her memoir.
She was Princess Diana’s confidante
Minnelli and the Princess of Wales crossed paths at many events and concerts in London, but somehow “always found a way to steal time alone.” Their friendship was one they both valued deeply—having bonded over being members of very public families—and they “fiercely guarded each other’s privacy.” Princess Di confided in Minnelli about her marriage woes and nicknamed her “feisty lady.”
“What I remember most is the face of a friend listening to me so carefully,” Minnelli writes in the book. “I have no proof of this, but I deeply believe that if Princess Diana were living, her sons would not be facing their current challenges. They were the most important people in her life, and she was clearly the most important person to them.”
Her relationship with Martin Scorsese was chaotic, to say the least
Minnelli first met Scorsese when she worked on his 1977 musical New York, New York; she played the singer Francine Evans opposite Robert De Niro’s failing saxophonist, Jimmy Doyle. Though shooting the film was taxing, Minnelli and Scorsese ended up in a “passionate romance.” She was married at the time—to her mother’s The Wizard of Oz co-star Jack Haley Jr.—but couldn’t resist the filmmaker’s authoritative allure. Scorsese was also married at the time, to Julia Cameron.
“Truth be told, our love affair had more layers than a lasagne. We were both Italian. Passionate. Intense,” she writes. “He was a diabolically handsome man who shared my love for film. I was a director’s daughter who respected Marty’s role and authority.” The affair turned out to be more than both parties bargained for. Minnelli likens it to a runaway train—one memorable anecdote involves Scorsese screaming at both Minnelli and Haley after the director learned his lover was also cheating on him, with dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov.
She reveals her dating manifesto
She may be a four-time divorcée, but Minnelli still believes in love. She’s had flings, affairs, two fiancés and a husband at the same time, a different husband and two lovers at the same time… and that was just the ’70s. Now? “Ideally, I’d like to date an older elegant man who dresses beautifully and is filthy rich. Then I’d like to date a 40-year-old guy who is passionate about something… Then I’d like to date an 18-year-old, who I see twice a week and whose name I don’t know.”
What really happened inside Studio 54?
Minnelli implies there were two Studio 54s: the club we have heard about and the club that she knew. It was the beating heart of Manhattan, where anyone—from Michael Jackson to Elizabeth Taylor to Leonard Bernstein to Jackie O.—could let loose on the dance floor. But there was a dark underbelly. Minnelli was already in the grip of a nasty substance abuse problem in the club’s heyday and carousing at Studio 54 helped her to stay in denial. “Why worry about my ‘modest’ use of pills and alcohol when I was partying on a dance floor with people who were doing the same thing?” she writes.
She helped Michael Jackson develop the moonwalk
Whilst performing in Brazil, Minnelli watched some dancers doing an “exaggerated slide” that she shared with the King of Pop. He “loved it,” she writes. Exchanging dance moves was a regular activity for the longtime friends—Jackson had taught Minnelli what would become her signature shuffle in performances.
Her final marriage was repeating her mother’s mistakes
“I clearly wasn’t sober when I married this clown,” Minnelli writes of her ill-fated marriage to the late music and TV producer David Gest. Their union—which officially lasted 16 months, but was over much sooner than that—was so cursed that she has branded herself “the biggest fool who ever lived” for entertaining it. She alleges a whole lot of nastiness—including verbal and physical abuse and financial manipulation. Per Liza, he (deep breath) wore more make-up than she did and would steal her false eyelashes; called paparazzi to tell them where they’d be dining; used Minnelli’s AmEx to pay for their extravagant $3.2 million wedding; returned many of their wedding gifts (and Minnelli’s birthday presents) and pocketed the cash; stole the bowler hat she wore in Cabaret; and hired someone to spy on Minnelli when she met up with her friends. When he died in 2016, Minnelli borrowed a line from her mother’s most famous film and proclaimed: “Ding dong, the witch is dead!”
