May 4, 2026 • 51 mins
Born into a spotlight she never asked for, Liza Minnelli didn’t only survive her inheritance—she made it into her own art. Using BBC archive, iconic performances, and her complicated bond with her mother Judy Garland, we reveal why her vulnerability is her superpower. From Broadway to Hollywood, nepo baby discourse to Cabaret breakout, we explore her raw emotional magnetism, impossible childhood, legendary resilience, and that indefinable spark you can’t look away from.
Additional archive:
New York, New York (Original Motion Picture Score), United Artists Records, 1977
Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli, Live At The London Palladium, Capitol Records, 1965
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin from BBC Studios in Pushkin Industries. This is Big Lives.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm Kairie, and on this show we take a single
cultural icon, we break down their legacy with the help
of the BBC Archives, and today we are going to
be talking about the one and only Liza Manelli.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Okay, Okay, Yeah, I was wondering.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I'm like, I wonder if he's gonna have anything on
Liza Minelli first off, right, like do you have do
you have like an image of Liza la in your head?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I feel like the image I have of her is
just like I know that she was like this diva
back in the day, perform acta.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Okay, so probably you know one of the most iconic
sounds of Liza Manelli is.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
This come on, come through yah, massive voice, like just
like massive voice over, like the definition of like razmataze,
(01:25):
Like I'm picturing kick line.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Right, So like we're talking about like a red sequence
down right, like a race car red sequence. That there's
actually a documentary about her from twenty twenty five where
a bunch of people said, like their image of lizamon
Elli red sequence right like h And probably for a
lot of people uncharitably like lounge singer, you know, but
(01:48):
like if you know, singer, actor, Broadway legend. She won
her first Tony Award at nineteen years old. She's on
the shortlist of people who are Egot's, you know, Immy's, Grammys, Oscars,
and Tony's, though her Grammy is a non competitive Grammy.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
It was like a lifetime achievement, but still, who's that?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
And she's just released a buzzy new memoir it's called
Kids Wait Till You Hear This and inescapably.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Also, she is Judy Garland's daughter, as in.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Dorothy of Wizard of Oz, one of the great Hollywood dames, right,
you know, inescapably, this woman is the daughter of Judy Garland.
And we'll get into her a little more if you
need more context on Judy Garland. But I am judging
you if you do, I'm just gonna say, dear listeners, Like, So,
(02:44):
the point is I bring that up to say that
Liza Minelli's whole life and career is about these two facts, right, Like,
she is undeniably talented and has all of this acclaim.
She is also kind of the original NEPO baby that like,
and these things have been intentioned since she was literally
a toddler. She has always been famous. She likes to
(03:07):
quip that she says, I was born and someone took
a picture and.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Put it in the newspaper. Right, wow, that's her life.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
But the main thing to know about Liza Minelli, which
everyone agrees on, is that she has it right, like
by which I mean, like that indescribable star quality that
some people have, like you associated with mostly with performers
and politicians and preachers. I mean, do you know what
I mean by this, Like you talk about like the
(03:37):
IT factor?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I do. Yeah, literallyst quao, like the wh when you
watch somebody and you're just like, oh my gosh, that
person is. I don't know who that is, but they
are a star exactly right.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Bob Fosse is a famous choreographer who is one of
Liza Manelli's great collaborators. Their fame is closely tied, and
here's how he describes it about her.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
I get emotional when I speak about Lina, but when
she walks into a room, list to some presence about her,
and even when I've seen her and I was not
involved in the nightclub back and seem to make mistakes,
choices and material just wrong moves. It didn't make any
difference because her presence was so strong and she threw
(04:24):
herself into it and she gave so much.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
She she doesn't have to be good.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Famously a very very critical puzzon.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
You're right exactly, one of the like like well known
like bullies of the genre. You know, He's like, hey,
you know she can mess up it. You just are transfixed,
And it really is true. And I'll have to say, like,
I've never been a big fan of her music.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Some of the songs I like and I do.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I love show tunes, I love Broadway, I love the
American Songbook.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I'm just more of a Judy Garland kind of guy myself,
if a Mona still I like her mom more.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I know it's wrong, and I'm the one here going
to tell you about lives banelling, But like, as I
have been going through the archive, watching and listening, I
am transfixed by this woman. You know, you just whether
she's singing or talking or acting, but particularly when she's
on stage, you just you lock in to whatever she's doing.
(05:22):
And I'm you know, and so I'm wondering, like why,
why is what is her it factor? Like what is
that can you make that it thing tangible and I
normally associate it with a degree of swagger in confidence
when I think it factor or like.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Sex appeal, and she was sexy.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I mean, I don't want to talk about the woman's
sex appeal in past tense, you know, but like in
her youth, at her highen of repeat, she was considered sexy.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
But I don't it's not it.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's not what people were locking into, certainly not what
I'm locking into. There is something else about her that
isn't quite so clear cut.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
And that's what I'm going to try to tease out
with you in this conversation.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
Okay, let's get into it, all right, we'll get started
after the break.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Welcome back.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
It's Big Lives, and we are talking this week about
Liza Minelli. And as I've said, for better and for worse,
you cannot talk about Liza Minelli without saying, she is
the daughter of Hollywood Royalty.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
The original NEPO baby.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
As you put it, she is the original NEPO baby.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
She's born in nineteen forty six to actually two film icons.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
So oh okay, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Obviously, Judy Garland, I know, is her mother. This is
the original Dorothy probably history's most iconic childhood star, synonymous
with the old Hollywood system, kind of really helped create
the idea.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Of Hollywood as a like star vehicle.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
And her dad was equally a big deal behind the camera.
He's a guy named Vincent Manelli.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Vincent Manelli.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Okay, do you know this director?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I had never don't know who. Lli is hugely.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Influential director at early Hollywood though, Like he's kind of
credited with creating the form of movie musicals.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Okay, like what films, like.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Really important foundational films like Meet Me in Saint Louis
an American in Paris. He was a director on both
of those, Gigi and actually Meet Me in Saint Louis.
You know, Judy Garland was in That's where they met
and then they got married after that and Liza.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Wow, Okay, so literally how family was created in the
making of like the musical masterpieces of the day.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
She is the daughter of musicals.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
And he was known for sort of finding stars, which
is interesting because when Liza was a little girl, he
famously equipped that.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Her name would look great on a marquee, which is true.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Right, it looks great. It rolls up the tongue. It
is a star name.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
It is a star name, like you can see it
in lights. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So you know, so she's this child of these two
Hollywood greats and the Judy Garland of it all Right, Okay,
so we are not here to talk about Judy Garland.
Ok But you have to know a bit about Judy
Garland to understand anything about Liza's story. So as Judy
Garland grew up from being like little Dorothy on the
(08:31):
Yellow Brick Road, she rebelled intensely against the studio system
and against her place in it, and she became the
archtypical messy celebrity like okay, pills and alcohol and partying
and just generally being a disaster and importantly being totally
unashamed about it, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And we're talking in the forties and fifties, you know,
so like it was.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
It's really a spectacle to watch Judy Garland's life. And
she goes from being you know, this cute little girl
to being the brassy, ballsy iconic diva that we all
can imagine, no surprise, she becomes like a stock character
for drag queens, right, Like that's the kind of thing
we're talking for Judy Garland if somehow you don't know
(09:19):
Julie Garland. But also that's so that's Liza's childhood, right,
Like that's what she grows up amid. And so her
early life it's spent like hanging out at hotels like
most notably like at the Plaza Hotel in New York,
doing things like learning to dial room service so that
she could eat as a little girl, and like managing
(09:41):
her mom's money and all of this stuff while Julie
Garland is out, you know, being a disaster, like living.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Out a lot of reparenting happening there.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, like she's the parent, you know, and even like
managing her pills. Managing Judy Garland's pills.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
In the memoir, she says, quote, at thirteen, I was
my mother's caretaker. A nurse, doctor, pharmacologist, and psychiatrist all
rolled into one because she'd learned how to, you know,
like swap Judy's sleeping pills for aspirin instead, because like,
oh wow, doctor's right, you know what I mean, Judy
(10:19):
popped a lot of pills, and you know, the doctors
had said if Judy took more than two sleeping pills
a day, she might die, so you know, yeah, you know,
so that's what she's doing at thirteen with her mom.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
A lot is going on and absorbing.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
She's on stage, she's you know, she's behind stage, she's offset.
She's watching this woman who you know is also has
it from birth.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
That's how she grows up.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
She makes her screen debut as at three years old,
when Judy Garland carries her like in the final scene
of one of her movies in nineteen forty nine movie
called In the Good Old Summertime, Judy Garland carries Liza
Minelli out, and that's.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Her screen debut. She's three years old.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
But you know, given all of this crazy wild childhood,
you would think that she would have a lot of
very open scarring about this.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, But you will search the archive far and wide,
as we have done so in Vain before you find
tape of Liza Minelli saying anything overtly negative about Judy Garland,
which you know is notable because of course she is
constantly asked to do just that, like what about your mother?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
What about your mother?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
That's all anybody wants to talk about, right, and Liza
openly hates it.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
She openly hates being asked.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
About it, and her reaction to it, which is the
same throughout her life, is so interesting to me. Here
is an example of it. I want to show you.
This is nineteen seventy three. She's being interviewed on the
BBC program Nationwide. This interview comes right at the biggest
moment in her career, which we're going to get into
this later. It's after she's had her breakout role in
(12:06):
the film Cabaret, and now she's like a massive, massive.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Star in our own right. Again, we're gonna talk about
that in a minute.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
The important thing for now is just this exchange when
the interviewer, Bob Wellings asked her about her mother.
Speaker 7 (12:20):
Now the film Cabret in this country anyway, this established
you very much as a person in your own right
as opposed to Judy Garland's daughter. Do you think it
was important in any way?
Speaker 8 (12:34):
Yes, but see, I never mind. I'm very proud of
my mom, you know, and being people's It sounds so
ominous when somebody says people used to call you Judy Garlands,
sounds like the son of Dracula.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
What are they telling you about?
Speaker 8 (12:51):
My mother was a genius. The only thing that ever
gets me upset or annoyed or even uptied is when
I'm put in the position of defending her, because I
feel she needs no defense.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I have to say. One of the things that frustrates
me now is, you know, I feel like Velosko years
has been this discourse which is now feeling kind of
tired right about, like it's so and so on nepp baby,
it's so and sorrow never baby, and I think it's
gotten tired because the response of said never babies to
it is always so defensive in a way where you're
just like, I don't know, man, you had a childhood
(13:27):
that I cannot conceive of. And actually that's really interesting,
double down, double down, away from it. We are not
the same, and that's great for you.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
But she does this thing that it's both right, like
she owns being like, yeah, I'm the child of a genius,
you know them, because the undertoe in this is like,
weren't you traumatized? Because by this point everybody knows Judy
Garland is a mess. You know, it's a drug addict
and a mess, and like, wasn't that traumatic for you?
And she to this day insists absolutely not. And I
(14:02):
have to say, it's hard for me to believe that
she has no trauma from this crazy childhood. The closest
thing I have seen to her saying anything at all
negative about Judy Garland is in the memoir, you know,
and she writes about a moment in her childhood where
she accidentally kind of kicked her mom in the head,
you know, like as a little kid.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Not like okay, a purpose.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
You know, she's a little girl, and like she's lapping around,
she kicks Judy in the head, and Judy starts just
screaming and screaming. She just goes off, and Liza writes
that she says, quote, I learned that if Mama got angry,
she was the most terrifying person in my life. Today,
(14:48):
I have only one trigger for trauma and that's a
horror of screaming voices.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Oh man, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
But still I have to say, even here, even with that,
she's saying that, but she's not claiming to like literally
be traumatized. She almost says it as.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
A fulmus separates the two things. She's like, I have
trauma of screaming voices, not necessarily my childhood experience with
my mother was traumatic.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Exactly you know, it's just it's just a factoid about
Judy's temperament. And by the way, also I have this
totally unrelated trauma of screaming voices.
Speaker 9 (15:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
One thing I heard somebody say is you have to
remember she grew up in the Hollywood studio system. She
was right there at three years old, right, Yeah, and
they're taught, you know, like never never own a negative,
you know, like always spin it into a positive.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
And so there's a cynical take of it that that.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
That's who you know, that she just learned that skill.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
But I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
As hard as it is for me to believe that
she didn't have trauma, I hear her say stuff like that,
and this is again part of what's so compelling about her.
I am sold that she believes she didn't have trauma.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Yes, that's the thing I was gonna say, is like,
even if it's a story she's internalized about herself, she
it's not like she believes it's true. And that's a
powerful thing.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, and it's maybe part of what makes her get
up and go, you know.
Speaker 7 (16:12):
Yeh.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
But even you know in her voice.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
As she's talking, that quivering voice, the juxtaposition between.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
This woman New York.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
And like that quivering voice when she's being interviewed, you
can just hear the tenderness, you know. Yeah, So this
is the building blocks for Elizamon Ellie. She's the daughter
of Judy and Vincent, you know, growing up amid two
people really that have it right, and you.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Know, she starts her road to fame.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
So at a young age, she says that Judy took
her to a Broadway show.
Speaker 8 (16:45):
And when I was thirteen, we went to New York
and I went to a Broadway show with Mohamma and
the show is called Bye by Bertie. And I looked
up and I saw all these kids singing and dancing.
I thought that looks like fun too. Wait a minute,
that maybe that's what I want to do. And that
turned my head around and I decided I want to
be a dancer on Broadway.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
And so she gets on this journey.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
You know, she goes to the High School of Performing
Arts in New York and from the beginning, like she
is deeply, deeply committed to like, i am not going
to be Judy and Vincent's daughter. I'm gonna make it
on my own, like which is again this dance. She's
not disavowing being the child of geniuses. Yeah, but she's like,
(17:29):
I'm gonna make it on my own. She famously like
Frank Sinatra gave her five hundred bucks at some point
and she sent it back.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
She was like, I don't want your money. I don't
want help.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Sinatra giving you five hundred bucks in a way that
like Auntie gives you, sends you twenty bucks in the mail.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Here's a few dollars. I know you need it to,
you know, run down to the grocery store. You're not
making much there, and you're the High School of Performing Arts.
That's my friend Sinatra impression.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I was going to keep it. I love it.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
But she gets going.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
At nineteen years old, nineteen sixty five, she stars in
her first Broadway musical, a show called Flora the Red Menace.
I have never seen it. I had never heard of it.
I can finally say to you, I was not alive
for this moment. I'm kind of tired of sounding like
the old man in this program. Yeah, but I was
not around in nineteen sixty five, so I haven't seen
(18:23):
the show. But this is widely considered a triumph. She
won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical
in her debut at nineteen years old. At the time,
she was the youngest person ever to win that award,
you know. So she's got talent, you know, And so
that's a moment where people are starting to realize she
has talent.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
But really probably one of the most.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Iconic moments in her early life and career, it came
the year just before she won that Tony Award, And
it's like a moment where I think we can all
see that it thing, like beyond her like skills as
a singer and dancer and performance like, we can start
to see that it thing. So it's November nineteen sixty four, okay,
(19:08):
and Judy Garland is doing a big show at the
London Palladium and she asks her then eighteen year old
daughter to be a guest star on the show.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
And this is a big deal. This is a big gig, right, Like.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
The Palladium itself is an iconic theater. It's two thousand
st theater, but it's also being broadcast on British television
and everybody there they're there for Judy Garland obviously, right,
So you know, the show opens, the curtain rises, there's
a full orchestra playing on stage, and the overture is,
(19:45):
of course, Judy's signature.
Speaker 10 (19:47):
Two somewhere over a rainbow.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Somewhere over the rainbow.
Speaker 9 (20:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Like they go through the overture, Judy walks out. The
crowd goes nuts, you know, like here she is. She's
in this floral length golden brocade gown, you know, and
she Judy does Judy right. She comes in with Once
in a Lifetime, starts real soft, you know, it's in
(20:21):
her lifetime, and builds to like the big voice of
Judy Garland.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Everybody's eating it up.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And then she does a couple of numbers and then
she says, I'm gonna bring my daughter out on stage.
Speaker 9 (20:36):
And now, ladies and gentlemen, Miss Eliza Manelli.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
She makes Liza follow that she's got to follow right,
like Judy has.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
This is Judy Space, Come on, eighteen eighteen, come on
out here. Eighteen year old Liza walks out. She's in
a floor length velvet gown and the gown is like
it's even this like it's kind of dowdy to my eye,
you know, like compared to Judy, you know, like Judy's
this like, you know, golden shimmering thing, and she's got
this dowdy velvet gown on, still kind of looking like
(21:10):
she's doing Judy.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
They have a big hug, seems genuine.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Liza, a teenager, is like hello, Hi, Hi, you know,
kind of shy to the audience, and she starts singing right,
and she's bewildered at first, right, like you could tell,
you know, like this is a big deal, and she's
kind of awkward, and honestly, to me, she sounds like
she's doing.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Her best impression of Judy Garland. Listen to.
Speaker 9 (21:43):
Don't See Free and I love to wonder it's just
the Gypsy.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
And it's just like she's going on. She's there, but
she's not, you know right.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
It sounds like she's sure of herself but not sure
of herself. Makes it's such a big stage. I thought
when you said she was geest starring that she opened
for her mom or something, but just knowing that, it's like,
oh no, no, really. Her mom's like, okay, I just
killed you go and sort of just pushes her out,
and everyone knows watching to watch Judy Gone, and they
know I hit to watch her door and you're going
(22:25):
to written those people over.
Speaker 5 (22:27):
That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
That is a lot, but sir, let me tell you
this is what happens. Okay, So all of that is true.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
At first, but Liza starts built and steam right, she
starts getting comfortable on that stage. The hip starts swaying,
she starts snapping her fingers, and even by the end
of that first song.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Lisa's she's holding her own okay, and the crowd starts
eating it up.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
WHOA wow, that's incredible. So she goes giving a little
nervous or just like absolutely lifting the roof of a place.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Boom, and it just builds throughout the show right like
she's nailing it.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
The crowd's loving it.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
So she does a few numbers and then Judy comes
back and they start doing these like cute sea duets
like they do Hello Dolly, but they swap each other's
name for Dolly and nice Mama.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
Hello.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Hearing that voices side by side like that, you can
you can hear it. You can hear that. She's carving
her own path but also copying a little.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Right like it's it's happening in real time. She's trying
to be like who am I am i? Am I
just doing Judy or am I doing Liza? You know
they do that song together. You know, wherever we go,
whatever we do, we're gonna go through it again. So
it's yeah, yeah, these like lovey songs. And it starts
(24:19):
as it moves on past these duets, you hear more
and more. No, that's Lisa, And honestly, like she starts
killing it.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Like she pulls out this stool and.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
She's kind of awkward in it, but then she's like
having fun with being awkward in the stool, you know,
like she's kind of flirting with the audience, and there's
a moment where you can start to see that something
shifts between the two of them and it becomes like
an edge two exchange.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
So this is the thing because it's one thing for
your mom just to kind of put you out there.
We'll trial by by and stuff. And that's great because
everyone's sort of like, wow, so good, great, precocious. But
then it could tip the scale, like a diva can
only be so generous exces. No one wants to foreground
their replacement.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
It's certainly Judy Garland, right right, like what so it
it turns and uh, and at one point, like Judy
starts actively undermining Liza like much humans in the show.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
They're sitting next to each other doing duets.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Judy's like reaching over and grabbing Liza's mic and shoving
it up in her face, as though like to imply
you don't know how to use the mic, right, girl,
Like get it in your mouth so that you get
enough sound, right, And she looks visibly upset, you know, wow,
and she kind of after a while, she composes herself,
you know, gets back into the you know, Okay, this
is a show. We're supposed to be here as mother
(25:49):
and daughter. But it was it's bad watching it is
uncomfortable for that part because she really looks pissed. And afterward,
you know again, Liza reflects on this moment, and here listen.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Here, here's what she says.
Speaker 8 (26:03):
I think that mothers and daughters probably go through two
to four years and sometimes more of rivalry. I went
to it in two hours on the Palladium stage with
my mother and it was over.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Wait, so she's saying that that only happened in the
confines of this performance exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
She found a way to make it positive, right, Like
she was like, oh, you know it was just two hours.
Everybody else, this is a whole lifetime. You know.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
It wasn't like my mother bullying me on the largest
stage I'd ever been on, and like, she.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Does this again, but that's what happened. But that's what happened.
Two hours and then we're good.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
She's says this like several years later in a print
interview she gives listen to she says, quote, it was
like Mama, she always calls her Mama. It was like
Mama suddenly realized I was good, that she didn't have
to apologize for me.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
It was the strangest feeling.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
One minute I was on stage with my mother, the
next moment, I was on stage.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
With Judy Garland.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
One minute she smiled at me, and then the next
minute she was like the lioness that owned the stage
and suddenly found somebody invading her territory. So she's like
getting both in that right, Like it's like, okay, I acknowledged,
like this was crazy, but also what was really at
work was she realized she didn't have to worry about
me anymore, and that's what made her bully me.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
I mean, there have to be more outside of this performance.
But in lines of defense from what you've told me
about her childhood, and again, you never really know what
goes on in anybody's family.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
But the public picture we know is that Judy Garland
was not a typical mother in the way that we
think about mothers in like the fifties or whatever. It's well,
you know what I mean. And in that sense, it
is believable to me that where they are connecting is
in music, where that actual normal digital dynamic is playing
(28:03):
out is here, like this is where they're actually spending
quality time in this moment, and that wouldn't have happened
until Liza was kind of older. And it is believable
to me that Judy Garland pushes her out there as
a test that she's not fully convinced that she has
what it takes, and she pushes there out there like
(28:23):
you want to do what I do. Let's see it.
I'm gonna put you in this half spot. And I
do feel like there is this tradition and now you
told me about it, I'm like, right, I do know
that these singers who were brought up by famous thing
as Whitney Houston is an example of this too. Her
mother and sister. Houston introduced her in a very similar
way where it's like, you're gonna have to the first
(28:45):
person you're gonna have to outstage on this stage is me?
Is me? Now, that doesn't mean that I'm gonna like it.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Right right, right right.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
And I do think in music and in jazz particularly,
there's this real tradition of like throwing the young and
out to the walls, like Showtime outly Apollo for It
is the best example of this. And you watch somebody
basically win a crowd of the and a star is born.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
I mean, I hate to do this, but like also
getting back to the point about Liza on edge and
how is she still here?
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Whitney Houston is not right and.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Part of it is like her relationship to her family.
We know like that that kind of edge that existed
in that world is part of what she couldn't survive
in her self destruction. And Liza again, like how did
she survive it? You know she did, She has made it.
She survived that moment on stage and continues to survive
(29:45):
it today. And I have to say, like to in
line with what you're saying. Okay, so I'm pointing out
all the really kind of bullying behavior Judy Garland was
doing on that stage at the time, but also when
you watch it, it is clear that they have a
real relationship, like a real there is love on that
stage at the same time, right, Like it's That's what's
so fascinating is it goes from these moments of oh.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
My god, what's gonna happen? This is all lot to like, oh,
that is.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Really beautiful the two of them, you know, like they
really are in it together and have been in it
together since Lisa was a toddler. And one of the
things that I think is cool when you watch that concert,
as she becomes more and more herself in the singing,
you start to see the divergence in their style, right Like,
Judy is this brassy, ballsy diva who kind of bullies
(30:33):
her audience too, you know, like, yeah, she loves to
sort of heckle back to heckling. She likes to be heckled.
She likes to scold you back, shut up. I'll get
there when I get there.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Lisa kind of picks up some of that same thing
in the show, but she's totally the opposite. She's a
total flirt with the audience like she is. If Judy
is a strutting peacock, she is more sassy and winking
and open about I need you, I want your affirmation.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Judy's like love me or off. Lisa is like don't
you love me? You know?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
I need it in this moment, And I just think
there's something about like it starts in this moment on
the stage where it's like, can she stand up to
this big, big thing?
Speaker 1 (31:21):
And she wants us.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
To cheer for her in that as the underdog who
might fall apart?
Speaker 1 (31:26):
And we do, we do.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
But you know, everything about Judy Garland is big and
bold and famous, including her death. And so Judy Garland
dies of an accidental drug overdose in June of nineteen
sixty nine, and by this point, Liza's career is moving
and going. And by the way, I don't want anyone
(31:50):
to miss the June of nineteen sixty nine, Judy Garland
dies the month of the Stonewall riots, Like, wow, the
launch of the gay rights movement is like Judy Garland's
martyr moment, Like she is forever tied.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I'd never made that connection before. Wow.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, But Liza is twenty three years old.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
At the time, you know, she is of.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Course an intense grief her their parents are, you know,
Judy and Vincent. Her long sense bitterly split, and so
she has to manage Judy's death and her quite messy
affairs in order, you know, she starts her own journey
on prescription drugs.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Liza does at this time.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
We now know that she developed a real problem that
she ultimately kicks, But she developed a real problem at
this time.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
And despite all this, she's working. You know. The same
year that Judy.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Dies, Liza got a first Oscar nomination as for a
Best Actress role in a dramatic film called The Sterile Cuckoo,
and it was showing she could do more than saying.
She could also.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Act right in it.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Again, she plays this needy, kind of eccentric character that's
like I need you, I need your love.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
It shows all of this.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Emotional range and that is starting to sort of develop
as like who she is and how she can perform.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
But the big, big, big.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Big moment in her life is the movie Cabaret. So
nineteen seventy two is when this movie comes out. First off,
do you what is your relationship to the to just
Cabaret as that like the show Cabaret, which has been
made in all kinds of different forms.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Oh so I have actually never seen the show. My
awnship is with the movie and the movie version of it,
and my relationship to it is I remember watching it,
like I think, when I was in college and realizing,
oh wow, this is that musical where all of these
songs take place, and it's like one of those movies
where you see it and you're like, oh, I've seen
(33:57):
the parody of this. I'm like, this is the progenitor
of like a bunch of different things. But I didn't
even know it was the source material for and I
remember it blew my mind because it was. I mean,
it's it's such a deceptively dark movie. I know nothing
about it going in, but it's an unsettling movie. It's
literally watching it the whole experience. It's supposed to be
(34:18):
like you're you're like a frog in slowly boiling water.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
That's right. This is that.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
So Cabret is one of my favorite texts in culture,
and the movie actually isn't the original text. It starts
with a Christopher Isherwood novella called Goodbye to Berlin that
was published in nineteen thirty seven, and so you know,
it's the whole story is set in the Weimer Republic,
at the end of the Vimer Republic, as Nazis are
(34:45):
taking over.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
It's the end of the Bohemian.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Jazz age, you know, and kind of the end of
pluralism as a concept. And Cabaret, then, is a musical
theater adaptation of that story that has been done a
bunch of times. I forget how many now, the most
recent closed in twenty twenty five. And I think, as
you point out, like, what's so interesting about it is
(35:09):
people have heard the music and think of it as fun, right,
Like what good.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Is sitting alone in your room? Right? Come here the
music play.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
But it's a horrendously dark story, say, And it closes
in most productions with a bunch of queers and Jews
and sexual women dancing their way into the gas chamber,
right like that's cabaret. That's the cabaret. They're going to
his death. And so it's a story about the creep
of fascism. Obviously everybody should go look at it now
(35:43):
in this moment for some insights. But in this Eliza
is cast as Sally Bulls who is the center of
this story, right, And Sally Bulls is a teenage cabaret
singer who you know, so selling sex, selling sexy times,
who longs to.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Be famous and to be loved.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
And the character is just like an open wound of emotion,
you know, just like thrashing between pleasure and pain.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
And it's like she's just so compelling.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
And I don't think coincidental that this is who e
Liza Minelli makes her fame playing. She delivers like what
is considered one of the great performances in American film
history as Sally Bowles. They the film sweeps the Oscars.
She wins Best Actress. Bob Fosse is the director and
the choreographer, he wins Best Director. And you know, coming
(36:46):
back to the IT factor, I think like Sally Bowles
is the IT factor, right, Like this character who is
only held together, who's about to fall apart, and is
only held together by the audience's love, Like that is
what is so compelling about it.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
And I think it's interesting to listen again to.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Bob Fosse talk about both the challenging the joy of
making this film with Liza men Elliott.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
Every actor has buttons, and a good director tries to
find those buttons. Her emotional buttons are so close to
the surface that you almost have to be careful to
restrain her because she becomes very quickly emotional. So one
of the problems that I that was not a problem
really at all, because she responds like that. I mean,
(37:36):
just the slightest suggestion was to keep her from getting
too emotional. She's an emotional person. Some actors you have
to find ways of getting them excited, getting them emotional,
getting them angry, getting them tearful. But Liza is like
some sort of perfect machine that comes to you and says,
(37:58):
you know, this is the best car. If actors were cars,
she'd like to be the best. Now you have to
learn how to drive it and learn how to push
the buttons, and it will get you where you want
to go and look very nifty.
Speaker 9 (38:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
She's her emotions were so on the surface that Bob
Fosse couldn't direct her because she was too emotional.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I mean, this is Liza Minelli.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
I mean, but I mean as you point out to
hear him say that, you know, like to hear somebody
who's like, yeah, normally, I you know, he would be
proud of, like I got to beat it out of him,
you know.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
And he's like, it's just there what she's saying.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yeah, And actually the challenge is you got to restrain.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Her, you know, like you had to like dial it
in because it was so raw. And this point that
like she had studied this character for so long, like
that this character meant so much to her personally, I.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Think tells us a lot.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
I think she also sees herself as Sally Bowles, as
this just raw, open of emotion who needs love on
stage in order to not fall off that knife's edge.
And I think that is it. I think that is
what is the IT factor for her, and I would
annudge we have not heard enough of her talk about
this directly, but there is a bit of tape where
(39:25):
she explains what she thinks is about the IT factor,
and I'm going to play that for you after a
break Welcome Back.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
It's Big Lives.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
We are talking about e Liza Minelli and really about
her vulnerability, like her being on this knife's edge of
collapse the whole of her public life and why that's
something that gives her that IT factor. And so I
want to show you a time when she actually talks
about the IT factor. This is the year after Cabaret,
(40:00):
so nineteen seventy three. She is the big star of
Hollywood and Broadway both. At this point, you know she
swept the Oscars, She's got her youngest ever Tony Award winner,
and she does an interview for the show nationwide. We
heard a little bit of this earlier, but in this
one it's like one of my favorite parts of the
(40:21):
archive on her.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
It starts with this.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Wonderfully awkward moment that Lisa turns into gold.
Speaker 7 (40:30):
Listen to this, Alisa min Elium, I counted today at
the press reception something like sixty photographers and fifty journalists.
So you really got star treatment in London? Do you
enjoy that?
Speaker 8 (40:43):
It's Liza?
Speaker 11 (40:47):
It happens constantly.
Speaker 7 (40:50):
I was wondering, you see whether I dare ask you?
Can we sort it out once and for all? How
you like your name pronounces?
Speaker 8 (40:55):
Yeah, it's Liza, Liza with.
Speaker 7 (40:58):
The Z right Liza. Yes, there were something like sixty
photographers and fifty journalists. Hi day, and you've got star treatment.
Do you enjoy that that?
Speaker 8 (41:13):
It makes you feel like when you were little and
you pretended to be a princess. If there's something lovely
about it, there's also something temporary about it, you know.
Speaker 12 (41:25):
In other words, I know that I could whip on
the fox, whip on the eyelashes, whip over the door,
chester to do that and go home put my jeans
on again, you know, because I think that if you
get to rely on that kind of treatment, or if
you depend on it, you'll ultimately be.
Speaker 8 (41:41):
Disappointed and a bit heartsick.
Speaker 7 (41:44):
What about the pressure, I mean, one of the things
you have loss of privacy, didn't you. I mean, people
asking all sorts of personal questions. Do you just think, well,
that goes with the game.
Speaker 8 (41:53):
I think, you know, it doesn't affect me as much
as it might somebody else because I've never known privacy.
And I mean when I was born, somebody took a
picture and put it in the paper. You know, it
was one of those things. So I really don't have
any area of comparison. So it doesn't bother me that
much because I find that I do have a great
(42:16):
deal of privacy by just not pretending to be somebody else.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
So this is we're going to cure the rest of this.
But just to pause there for a minute, you know,
like that she's doing that thing again where she's not
like denying love of fame. You know, she's like, it's lovely,
it's like pretending to be a princess.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Yeah, it's sort of it's like hinting at the darkness
of the thing slightly when she's like, you know, but
it doesn't last forever, it's if everyone it fades. But
then she goes right back around to sort of being like,
but it's great.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah, And she's kind of the queen of getting the
both hand of the experience. She can be both a
nepo baby but also on her own right. She can
be like, yeah, I have these star parents and yeah,
that was weird, but also it did.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Nothing to me.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
She's just somehow managed to make me believe both all
these times that both things are true.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
That she's in danger, you know.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
As someone with all those cameras on her, but also
it feels like being a princess. You know, I should
say that Eliza with a Z thing she dines out
on that she actually had just put out a song
and hit concert film the year before, called Liza with
Z that you know, where she has this sort of
(43:40):
silly song where she performs versions of her name, and
Bob Fosse was part of that, and it's one of
the things her fans love about her, which is even
in of itself, right, like I'm so famous, but you
don't know my name.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Anyway, So later in the interview, Bob Wellings that's the
interviewer here. He asked her the question, we've been here
to discuss what is star quality? Then?
Speaker 7 (44:02):
Nice to hear you. Do you believe in it? Can
you define it? Can you tell us what you think
star quality is? Because people say you've got it presence.
Speaker 8 (44:10):
I guess there are very many people who aren't even
in show business who have star quality. You know, the
kind of person that enters the room and they're there.
There's something you know about them.
Speaker 7 (44:24):
Yes, I mean, if one must put you in a
chorus of thirty people on the stage, I think everyone's
eye would go to you as a prejudice. But that's
what it's about, I.
Speaker 8 (44:34):
Suppose, I guess.
Speaker 11 (44:36):
So, yeah, I think you're right, come to the cable, right,
And that's for me, that's for me. I need my mind.
Speaker 9 (44:50):
Sachin Chelsea.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Again, she doesn't deny it. She's like, yeah, I got
sar quality, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
I mean, you hear it and you're like, yeah, I agree,
I agree.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Like that's the voice you know I have.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
I'm not going to turn away from that one last
thing I want to play you because you know, we
got to come back. I mean, I'm sorry, e Liza.
I almost called her Lisa Ce.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Sorry Liza, did it? We do have to come back
to Judy.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
You know, there is a British TV interview that she
does in nineteen eighty nine. This is a show you're
very familiar with called The Wogan Show, and so she's
on in eighty nine. She's a bona fide star. She's
got by this point, she has you know, her Emmy,
her Oscar, her three Tony's, two Golden Globes. You know,
she's just been on tour with Frank Sinatra and Sammy
(45:41):
Davis Junior. And she's putting out an album of songs
with the Pet Shot Boys that I have to say
is horrifically bad to.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
My Oh, I think I.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Didn't know ever existed.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yeah, like I guess the pet Shop Boys did a
series of remixes of unlikely pairings albums or something, and
this is one of them. I literally couldn't listen to it.
I listened to part of it. I was just like,
this is horrible. Sorry Eliza fans. But anyway, it's a
live show. So it opens with her making a point
(46:15):
about that.
Speaker 8 (46:15):
Terry, this is nerve wracking.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
It is.
Speaker 8 (46:18):
I mean, live television is absolutely amazing to everybody gets
like this, I'm nervous to be on your show.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Anyway, I like it.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
So again, this woman who has lived her life on
stage wants me to believe she's nervous on live TV.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
But I do believe her.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
I do believe that somehow, in nineteen eighty nine, she's
still nervous.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
This person who is a seriously gifted life befure of
the well.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Anyway, Inevitably, Terry Wigan keeps bringing back her mother.
Speaker 8 (46:41):
Fortunately, you know, my mom passed away before Cabaret came out,
so even before the Sterile Cuckoo came up, So she
saw me on Broadway, but she never saw mess.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
You must you must regret that looking back.
Speaker 8 (46:56):
No, I don't. I really I think that it's all okay.
It turned out for everybody the way it should know.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Yeah, because your mom's boss, of course, it's charge again,
not really, No, no.
Speaker 8 (47:09):
I think that. Well, let's see people that have a
misconception about her whole life, let alone around. She was
a very strong, very kind of happy woman, and she
didn't like that to be part of her public persona
because she felt it was nobody's business. But she had
a huge humor about everything, and even though she died young,
she did everything she ever wanted to do in her
(47:30):
whole life. She took every moment and she ate it.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
It was just marvelous.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
If you didn't anybody was sad that she went so.
Speaker 8 (47:38):
Young with her Oh yes that well, yeah, sure, I
was sad when my father went at eighty four. I mean,
I'm just sad with anything.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
She's so good at that dance.
Speaker 3 (47:50):
Immediately. But also there is something kind of incredible about
her ability to sort of take this stuff and repackage
it in her own mind in that way and to
just sort of digest it that way that if you
take her at face value as this person who where
(48:11):
all these emotions, all of it are lying on the surface,
and like I can hear in her voice as a
pride there and also just a feeling of I am
taking that legacy and moving it forward in my own way,
and maybe she believes that of her mother because she
believes it of herself, you know what I mean. People
(48:31):
are making all these comparisons and she's not shying away
from it, and she's like, right, I am this person.
I was meant to be this person to do these things.
My mother died didn't get to see me do them.
But ultimately, like, I'm living the way that I think
she lived or would want to believe she lived.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah, unfortunately including the drug addiction. But she didn't kick it,
you know. But she kicked that, you know, And she's
been very open about that journey. And again, you know,
like a thing that should have killed her, you know,
like apparently it was bad, you know, and it should
have broke her, and it didn't, you know.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Somehow she managed to stay on that knife's edge. And
I guess I'm thinking a little.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Differently than I was at the beginning listening to you,
is that, like the irony of Isamnelli is that she
has to spend her whole life trying to figure out
why she's distinct from and how she's distinct from her mother,
answering for her mother both personally and professionally.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
But because it.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Doesn't bother her, does It doesn't actually bother her like
it is the thing that makes her compelling, you know
what I mean, Like the fact that she could never
have been Liza Minelli, even with her talent.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
With that also the complexity.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Of having been Judy Garland's daughter, and she's okay with that.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Shut out to Eliza Minelli. All right, Emanuel, you got
for me next week?
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Well? Yeah, this one, this one, I think you you'll know.
Let me just play this for you.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
When you come to the fight.
Speaker 13 (50:16):
Don't block the owls and don't block the door for
you all may go home after round four.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Wow, I know exactly who that is.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
But just for the sake of it, we're gonna play
some board.
Speaker 13 (50:30):
When you see me on my feet dancing faster and
better than I did with Ken Norton, And when you
see the punches, I'm gonna be so fast, he's gonna
think it's surrounded.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
I'm gonna leave you just with one more.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
I'm not just a boxer.
Speaker 13 (50:41):
I'm educated, even Oxford University, your biggest seat of learner
professorship in philosophy and Petray to come in to teach.
I'm not just starting a fighter.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
I can talk all.
Speaker 13 (50:50):
Week on millions of subjects, and you do not have
enough wisdom to call him me on television.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
I can't wait.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
We'll get into that next week. Big Lines is a
production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by
me Manuel Jochi and Kai Writ. Our team over at
BBC Studios includes producer Emma Reverel, archive producer Samira Chowdery.
Sound designed by Melvin Rickerby. Our executive producer is Annie Brown.
(51:19):
Our production coordinator is Galen Davis Connolly, Our apprentice is
Amy Woods, and our production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright.
The team over at Pushkin Industries includes executive producer Costanzo Goyardo,
producer Daphne Chen. Our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan. Our
marketing team includes Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMullen
Pushkin from BBC Studios in Pushkin Industries. This is Big Lives.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm Kairie, and on this show we take a single
cultural icon, we break down their legacy with the help
of the BBC Archives, and today we are going to
be talking about the one and only Liza Manelli.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Okay, Okay, Yeah, I was wondering.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I'm like, I wonder if he's gonna have anything on
Liza Minelli first off, right, like do you have do
you have like an image of Liza la in your head?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I feel like the image I have of her is
just like I know that she was like this diva
back in the day, perform acta.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Okay, so probably you know one of the most iconic
sounds of Liza Manelli is.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
This come on, come through yah, massive voice, like just
like massive voice over, like the definition of like razmataze,
(01:25):
Like I'm picturing kick line.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Right, So like we're talking about like a red sequence
down right, like a race car red sequence. That there's
actually a documentary about her from twenty twenty five where
a bunch of people said, like their image of lizamon
Elli red sequence right like h And probably for a
lot of people uncharitably like lounge singer, you know, but
(01:48):
like if you know, singer, actor, Broadway legend. She won
her first Tony Award at nineteen years old. She's on
the shortlist of people who are Egot's, you know, Immy's, Grammys, Oscars,
and Tony's, though her Grammy is a non competitive Grammy.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
It was like a lifetime achievement, but still, who's that?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
And she's just released a buzzy new memoir it's called
Kids Wait Till You Hear This and inescapably.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Also, she is Judy Garland's daughter, as in.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Dorothy of Wizard of Oz, one of the great Hollywood dames, right,
you know, inescapably, this woman is the daughter of Judy Garland.
And we'll get into her a little more if you
need more context on Judy Garland. But I am judging
you if you do, I'm just gonna say, dear listeners, Like, So,
(02:44):
the point is I bring that up to say that
Liza Minelli's whole life and career is about these two facts, right, Like,
she is undeniably talented and has all of this acclaim.
She is also kind of the original NEPO baby that like,
and these things have been intentioned since she was literally
a toddler. She has always been famous. She likes to
(03:07):
quip that she says, I was born and someone took
a picture and.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Put it in the newspaper. Right, wow, that's her life.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
But the main thing to know about Liza Minelli, which
everyone agrees on, is that she has it right, like
by which I mean, like that indescribable star quality that
some people have, like you associated with mostly with performers
and politicians and preachers. I mean, do you know what
I mean by this, Like you talk about like the
(03:37):
IT factor?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I do. Yeah, literallyst quao, like the wh when you
watch somebody and you're just like, oh my gosh, that
person is. I don't know who that is, but they
are a star exactly right.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Bob Fosse is a famous choreographer who is one of
Liza Manelli's great collaborators. Their fame is closely tied, and
here's how he describes it about her.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
I get emotional when I speak about Lina, but when
she walks into a room, list to some presence about her,
and even when I've seen her and I was not
involved in the nightclub back and seem to make mistakes,
choices and material just wrong moves. It didn't make any
difference because her presence was so strong and she threw
(04:24):
herself into it and she gave so much.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
She she doesn't have to be good.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Famously a very very critical puzzon.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
You're right exactly, one of the like like well known
like bullies of the genre. You know, He's like, hey,
you know she can mess up it. You just are transfixed,
And it really is true. And I'll have to say, like,
I've never been a big fan of her music.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Some of the songs I like and I do.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I love show tunes, I love Broadway, I love the
American Songbook.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I'm just more of a Judy Garland kind of guy myself,
if a Mona still I like her mom more.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I know it's wrong, and I'm the one here going
to tell you about lives banelling, But like, as I
have been going through the archive, watching and listening, I
am transfixed by this woman. You know, you just whether
she's singing or talking or acting, but particularly when she's
on stage, you just you lock in to whatever she's doing.
(05:22):
And I'm you know, and so I'm wondering, like why,
why is what is her it factor? Like what is
that can you make that it thing tangible and I
normally associate it with a degree of swagger in confidence
when I think it factor or like.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Sex appeal, and she was sexy.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I mean, I don't want to talk about the woman's
sex appeal in past tense, you know, but like in
her youth, at her highen of repeat, she was considered sexy.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
But I don't it's not it.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's not what people were locking into, certainly not what
I'm locking into. There is something else about her that
isn't quite so clear cut.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
And that's what I'm going to try to tease out
with you in this conversation.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
Okay, let's get into it, all right, we'll get started
after the break.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Welcome back.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
It's Big Lives, and we are talking this week about
Liza Minelli. And as I've said, for better and for worse,
you cannot talk about Liza Minelli without saying, she is
the daughter of Hollywood Royalty.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
The original NEPO baby.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
As you put it, she is the original NEPO baby.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
She's born in nineteen forty six to actually two film icons.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
So oh okay, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Obviously, Judy Garland, I know, is her mother. This is
the original Dorothy probably history's most iconic childhood star, synonymous
with the old Hollywood system, kind of really helped create
the idea.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Of Hollywood as a like star vehicle.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
And her dad was equally a big deal behind the camera.
He's a guy named Vincent Manelli.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Vincent Manelli.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Okay, do you know this director?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I had never don't know who. Lli is hugely.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Influential director at early Hollywood though, Like he's kind of
credited with creating the form of movie musicals.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Okay, like what films, like.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Really important foundational films like Meet Me in Saint Louis
an American in Paris. He was a director on both
of those, Gigi and actually Meet Me in Saint Louis.
You know, Judy Garland was in That's where they met
and then they got married after that and Liza.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Wow, Okay, so literally how family was created in the
making of like the musical masterpieces of the day.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
She is the daughter of musicals.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
And he was known for sort of finding stars, which
is interesting because when Liza was a little girl, he
famously equipped that.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Her name would look great on a marquee, which is true.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Right, it looks great. It rolls up the tongue. It
is a star name.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
It is a star name, like you can see it
in lights. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So you know, so she's this child of these two
Hollywood greats and the Judy Garland of it all Right, Okay,
so we are not here to talk about Judy Garland.
Ok But you have to know a bit about Judy
Garland to understand anything about Liza's story. So as Judy
Garland grew up from being like little Dorothy on the
(08:31):
Yellow Brick Road, she rebelled intensely against the studio system
and against her place in it, and she became the
archtypical messy celebrity like okay, pills and alcohol and partying
and just generally being a disaster and importantly being totally
unashamed about it, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And we're talking in the forties and fifties, you know,
so like it was.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
It's really a spectacle to watch Judy Garland's life. And
she goes from being you know, this cute little girl
to being the brassy, ballsy iconic diva that we all
can imagine, no surprise, she becomes like a stock character
for drag queens, right, Like that's the kind of thing
we're talking for Judy Garland if somehow you don't know
(09:19):
Julie Garland. But also that's so that's Liza's childhood, right,
Like that's what she grows up amid. And so her
early life it's spent like hanging out at hotels like
most notably like at the Plaza Hotel in New York,
doing things like learning to dial room service so that
she could eat as a little girl, and like managing
(09:41):
her mom's money and all of this stuff while Julie
Garland is out, you know, being a disaster, like living.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Out a lot of reparenting happening there.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, like she's the parent, you know, and even like
managing her pills. Managing Judy Garland's pills.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
In the memoir, she says, quote, at thirteen, I was
my mother's caretaker. A nurse, doctor, pharmacologist, and psychiatrist all
rolled into one because she'd learned how to, you know,
like swap Judy's sleeping pills for aspirin instead, because like,
oh wow, doctor's right, you know what I mean, Judy
(10:19):
popped a lot of pills, and you know, the doctors
had said if Judy took more than two sleeping pills
a day, she might die, so you know, yeah, you know,
so that's what she's doing at thirteen with her mom.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
A lot is going on and absorbing.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
She's on stage, she's you know, she's behind stage, she's offset.
She's watching this woman who you know is also has
it from birth.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
That's how she grows up.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
She makes her screen debut as at three years old,
when Judy Garland carries her like in the final scene
of one of her movies in nineteen forty nine movie
called In the Good Old Summertime, Judy Garland carries Liza
Minelli out, and that's.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Her screen debut. She's three years old.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
But you know, given all of this crazy wild childhood,
you would think that she would have a lot of
very open scarring about this.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, But you will search the archive far and wide,
as we have done so in Vain before you find
tape of Liza Minelli saying anything overtly negative about Judy Garland,
which you know is notable because of course she is
constantly asked to do just that, like what about your mother?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
What about your mother?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
That's all anybody wants to talk about, right, and Liza
openly hates it.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
She openly hates being asked.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
About it, and her reaction to it, which is the
same throughout her life, is so interesting to me. Here
is an example of it. I want to show you.
This is nineteen seventy three. She's being interviewed on the
BBC program Nationwide. This interview comes right at the biggest
moment in her career, which we're going to get into
this later. It's after she's had her breakout role in
(12:06):
the film Cabaret, and now she's like a massive, massive.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Star in our own right. Again, we're gonna talk about
that in a minute.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
The important thing for now is just this exchange when
the interviewer, Bob Wellings asked her about her mother.
Speaker 7 (12:20):
Now the film Cabret in this country anyway, this established
you very much as a person in your own right
as opposed to Judy Garland's daughter. Do you think it
was important in any way?
Speaker 8 (12:34):
Yes, but see, I never mind. I'm very proud of
my mom, you know, and being people's It sounds so
ominous when somebody says people used to call you Judy Garlands,
sounds like the son of Dracula.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
What are they telling you about?
Speaker 8 (12:51):
My mother was a genius. The only thing that ever
gets me upset or annoyed or even uptied is when
I'm put in the position of defending her, because I
feel she needs no defense.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I have to say. One of the things that frustrates
me now is, you know, I feel like Velosko years
has been this discourse which is now feeling kind of
tired right about, like it's so and so on nepp baby,
it's so and sorrow never baby, and I think it's
gotten tired because the response of said never babies to
it is always so defensive in a way where you're
just like, I don't know, man, you had a childhood
(13:27):
that I cannot conceive of. And actually that's really interesting,
double down, double down, away from it. We are not
the same, and that's great for you.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
But she does this thing that it's both right, like
she owns being like, yeah, I'm the child of a genius,
you know them, because the undertoe in this is like,
weren't you traumatized? Because by this point everybody knows Judy
Garland is a mess. You know, it's a drug addict
and a mess, and like, wasn't that traumatic for you?
And she to this day insists absolutely not. And I
(14:02):
have to say, it's hard for me to believe that
she has no trauma from this crazy childhood. The closest
thing I have seen to her saying anything at all
negative about Judy Garland is in the memoir, you know,
and she writes about a moment in her childhood where
she accidentally kind of kicked her mom in the head,
you know, like as a little kid.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Not like okay, a purpose.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
You know, she's a little girl, and like she's lapping around,
she kicks Judy in the head, and Judy starts just
screaming and screaming. She just goes off, and Liza writes
that she says, quote, I learned that if Mama got angry,
she was the most terrifying person in my life. Today,
(14:48):
I have only one trigger for trauma and that's a
horror of screaming voices.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Oh man, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
But still I have to say, even here, even with that,
she's saying that, but she's not claiming to like literally
be traumatized. She almost says it as.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
A fulmus separates the two things. She's like, I have
trauma of screaming voices, not necessarily my childhood experience with
my mother was traumatic.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Exactly you know, it's just it's just a factoid about
Judy's temperament. And by the way, also I have this
totally unrelated trauma of screaming voices.
Speaker 9 (15:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
One thing I heard somebody say is you have to
remember she grew up in the Hollywood studio system. She
was right there at three years old, right, Yeah, and
they're taught, you know, like never never own a negative,
you know, like always spin it into a positive.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
And so there's a cynical take of it that that.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
That's who you know, that she just learned that skill.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
But I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
As hard as it is for me to believe that
she didn't have trauma, I hear her say stuff like that,
and this is again part of what's so compelling about her.
I am sold that she believes she didn't have trauma.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Yes, that's the thing I was gonna say, is like,
even if it's a story she's internalized about herself, she
it's not like she believes it's true. And that's a
powerful thing.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, and it's maybe part of what makes her get
up and go, you know.
Speaker 7 (16:12):
Yeh.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
But even you know in her voice.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
As she's talking, that quivering voice, the juxtaposition between.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
This woman New York.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
And like that quivering voice when she's being interviewed, you
can just hear the tenderness, you know. Yeah, So this
is the building blocks for Elizamon Ellie. She's the daughter
of Judy and Vincent, you know, growing up amid two
people really that have it right, and you.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Know, she starts her road to fame.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
So at a young age, she says that Judy took
her to a Broadway show.
Speaker 8 (16:45):
And when I was thirteen, we went to New York
and I went to a Broadway show with Mohamma and
the show is called Bye by Bertie. And I looked
up and I saw all these kids singing and dancing.
I thought that looks like fun too. Wait a minute,
that maybe that's what I want to do. And that
turned my head around and I decided I want to
be a dancer on Broadway.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
And so she gets on this journey.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
You know, she goes to the High School of Performing
Arts in New York and from the beginning, like she
is deeply, deeply committed to like, i am not going
to be Judy and Vincent's daughter. I'm gonna make it
on my own, like which is again this dance. She's
not disavowing being the child of geniuses. Yeah, but she's like,
(17:29):
I'm gonna make it on my own. She famously like
Frank Sinatra gave her five hundred bucks at some point
and she sent it back.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
She was like, I don't want your money. I don't
want help.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Sinatra giving you five hundred bucks in a way that
like Auntie gives you, sends you twenty bucks in the mail.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Here's a few dollars. I know you need it to,
you know, run down to the grocery store. You're not
making much there, and you're the High School of Performing Arts.
That's my friend Sinatra impression.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I was going to keep it. I love it.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
But she gets going.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
At nineteen years old, nineteen sixty five, she stars in
her first Broadway musical, a show called Flora the Red Menace.
I have never seen it. I had never heard of it.
I can finally say to you, I was not alive
for this moment. I'm kind of tired of sounding like
the old man in this program. Yeah, but I was
not around in nineteen sixty five, so I haven't seen
(18:23):
the show. But this is widely considered a triumph. She
won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical
in her debut at nineteen years old. At the time,
she was the youngest person ever to win that award,
you know. So she's got talent, you know, And so
that's a moment where people are starting to realize she
has talent.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
But really probably one of the most.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Iconic moments in her early life and career, it came
the year just before she won that Tony Award, And
it's like a moment where I think we can all
see that it thing, like beyond her like skills as
a singer and dancer and performance like, we can start
to see that it thing. So it's November nineteen sixty four, okay,
(19:08):
and Judy Garland is doing a big show at the
London Palladium and she asks her then eighteen year old
daughter to be a guest star on the show.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
And this is a big deal. This is a big gig, right, Like.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
The Palladium itself is an iconic theater. It's two thousand
st theater, but it's also being broadcast on British television
and everybody there they're there for Judy Garland obviously, right,
So you know, the show opens, the curtain rises, there's
a full orchestra playing on stage, and the overture is,
(19:45):
of course, Judy's signature.
Speaker 10 (19:47):
Two somewhere over a rainbow.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Somewhere over the rainbow.
Speaker 9 (20:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Like they go through the overture, Judy walks out. The
crowd goes nuts, you know, like here she is. She's
in this floral length golden brocade gown, you know, and
she Judy does Judy right. She comes in with Once
in a Lifetime, starts real soft, you know, it's in
(20:21):
her lifetime, and builds to like the big voice of
Judy Garland.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Everybody's eating it up.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And then she does a couple of numbers and then
she says, I'm gonna bring my daughter out on stage.
Speaker 9 (20:36):
And now, ladies and gentlemen, Miss Eliza Manelli.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
She makes Liza follow that she's got to follow right,
like Judy has.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
This is Judy Space, Come on, eighteen eighteen, come on
out here. Eighteen year old Liza walks out. She's in
a floor length velvet gown and the gown is like
it's even this like it's kind of dowdy to my eye,
you know, like compared to Judy, you know, like Judy's
this like, you know, golden shimmering thing, and she's got
this dowdy velvet gown on, still kind of looking like
(21:10):
she's doing Judy.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
They have a big hug, seems genuine.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Liza, a teenager, is like hello, Hi, Hi, you know,
kind of shy to the audience, and she starts singing right,
and she's bewildered at first, right, like you could tell,
you know, like this is a big deal, and she's
kind of awkward, and honestly, to me, she sounds like
she's doing.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Her best impression of Judy Garland. Listen to.
Speaker 9 (21:43):
Don't See Free and I love to wonder it's just
the Gypsy.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
And it's just like she's going on. She's there, but
she's not, you know right.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
It sounds like she's sure of herself but not sure
of herself. Makes it's such a big stage. I thought
when you said she was geest starring that she opened
for her mom or something, but just knowing that, it's like,
oh no, no, really. Her mom's like, okay, I just
killed you go and sort of just pushes her out,
and everyone knows watching to watch Judy Gone, and they
know I hit to watch her door and you're going
(22:25):
to written those people over.
Speaker 5 (22:27):
That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
That is a lot, but sir, let me tell you
this is what happens. Okay, So all of that is true.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
At first, but Liza starts built and steam right, she
starts getting comfortable on that stage. The hip starts swaying,
she starts snapping her fingers, and even by the end
of that first song.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Lisa's she's holding her own okay, and the crowd starts
eating it up.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
WHOA wow, that's incredible. So she goes giving a little
nervous or just like absolutely lifting the roof of a place.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Boom, and it just builds throughout the show right like
she's nailing it.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
The crowd's loving it.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
So she does a few numbers and then Judy comes
back and they start doing these like cute sea duets
like they do Hello Dolly, but they swap each other's
name for Dolly and nice Mama.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
Hello.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Hearing that voices side by side like that, you can
you can hear it. You can hear that. She's carving
her own path but also copying a little.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Right like it's it's happening in real time. She's trying
to be like who am I am i? Am I
just doing Judy or am I doing Liza? You know
they do that song together. You know, wherever we go,
whatever we do, we're gonna go through it again. So
it's yeah, yeah, these like lovey songs. And it starts
(24:19):
as it moves on past these duets, you hear more
and more. No, that's Lisa, And honestly, like she starts
killing it.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Like she pulls out this stool and.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
She's kind of awkward in it, but then she's like
having fun with being awkward in the stool, you know,
like she's kind of flirting with the audience, and there's
a moment where you can start to see that something
shifts between the two of them and it becomes like
an edge two exchange.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
So this is the thing because it's one thing for
your mom just to kind of put you out there.
We'll trial by by and stuff. And that's great because
everyone's sort of like, wow, so good, great, precocious. But
then it could tip the scale, like a diva can
only be so generous exces. No one wants to foreground
their replacement.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
It's certainly Judy Garland, right right, like what so it
it turns and uh, and at one point, like Judy
starts actively undermining Liza like much humans in the show.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
They're sitting next to each other doing duets.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Judy's like reaching over and grabbing Liza's mic and shoving
it up in her face, as though like to imply
you don't know how to use the mic, right, girl,
Like get it in your mouth so that you get
enough sound, right, And she looks visibly upset, you know, wow,
and she kind of after a while, she composes herself,
you know, gets back into the you know, Okay, this
is a show. We're supposed to be here as mother
(25:49):
and daughter. But it was it's bad watching it is
uncomfortable for that part because she really looks pissed. And afterward,
you know again, Liza reflects on this moment, and here listen.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Here, here's what she says.
Speaker 8 (26:03):
I think that mothers and daughters probably go through two
to four years and sometimes more of rivalry. I went
to it in two hours on the Palladium stage with
my mother and it was over.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Wait, so she's saying that that only happened in the
confines of this performance exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
She found a way to make it positive, right, Like
she was like, oh, you know it was just two hours.
Everybody else, this is a whole lifetime. You know.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
It wasn't like my mother bullying me on the largest
stage I'd ever been on, and like, she.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Does this again, but that's what happened. But that's what happened.
Two hours and then we're good.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
She's says this like several years later in a print
interview she gives listen to she says, quote, it was
like Mama, she always calls her Mama. It was like
Mama suddenly realized I was good, that she didn't have
to apologize for me.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
It was the strangest feeling.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
One minute I was on stage with my mother, the
next moment, I was on stage.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
With Judy Garland.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
One minute she smiled at me, and then the next
minute she was like the lioness that owned the stage
and suddenly found somebody invading her territory. So she's like
getting both in that right, Like it's like, okay, I acknowledged,
like this was crazy, but also what was really at
work was she realized she didn't have to worry about
me anymore, and that's what made her bully me.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
I mean, there have to be more outside of this performance.
But in lines of defense from what you've told me
about her childhood, and again, you never really know what
goes on in anybody's family.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
But the public picture we know is that Judy Garland
was not a typical mother in the way that we
think about mothers in like the fifties or whatever. It's well,
you know what I mean. And in that sense, it
is believable to me that where they are connecting is
in music, where that actual normal digital dynamic is playing
(28:03):
out is here, like this is where they're actually spending
quality time in this moment, and that wouldn't have happened
until Liza was kind of older. And it is believable
to me that Judy Garland pushes her out there as
a test that she's not fully convinced that she has
what it takes, and she pushes there out there like
(28:23):
you want to do what I do. Let's see it.
I'm gonna put you in this half spot. And I
do feel like there is this tradition and now you
told me about it, I'm like, right, I do know
that these singers who were brought up by famous thing
as Whitney Houston is an example of this too. Her
mother and sister. Houston introduced her in a very similar
way where it's like, you're gonna have to the first
(28:45):
person you're gonna have to outstage on this stage is me?
Is me? Now, that doesn't mean that I'm gonna like it.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Right right, right right.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
And I do think in music and in jazz particularly,
there's this real tradition of like throwing the young and
out to the walls, like Showtime outly Apollo for It
is the best example of this. And you watch somebody
basically win a crowd of the and a star is born.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
I mean, I hate to do this, but like also
getting back to the point about Liza on edge and
how is she still here?
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Whitney Houston is not right and.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Part of it is like her relationship to her family.
We know like that that kind of edge that existed
in that world is part of what she couldn't survive
in her self destruction. And Liza again, like how did
she survive it? You know she did, She has made it.
She survived that moment on stage and continues to survive
(29:45):
it today. And I have to say, like to in
line with what you're saying. Okay, so I'm pointing out
all the really kind of bullying behavior Judy Garland was
doing on that stage at the time, but also when
you watch it, it is clear that they have a
real relationship, like a real there is love on that
stage at the same time, right, Like it's That's what's
so fascinating is it goes from these moments of oh.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
My god, what's gonna happen? This is all lot to like, oh,
that is.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Really beautiful the two of them, you know, like they
really are in it together and have been in it
together since Lisa was a toddler. And one of the
things that I think is cool when you watch that concert,
as she becomes more and more herself in the singing,
you start to see the divergence in their style, right Like,
Judy is this brassy, ballsy diva who kind of bullies
(30:33):
her audience too, you know, like, yeah, she loves to
sort of heckle back to heckling. She likes to be heckled.
She likes to scold you back, shut up. I'll get
there when I get there.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Lisa kind of picks up some of that same thing
in the show, but she's totally the opposite. She's a
total flirt with the audience like she is. If Judy
is a strutting peacock, she is more sassy and winking
and open about I need you, I want your affirmation.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Judy's like love me or off. Lisa is like don't
you love me? You know?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
I need it in this moment, And I just think
there's something about like it starts in this moment on
the stage where it's like, can she stand up to
this big, big thing?
Speaker 1 (31:21):
And she wants us.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
To cheer for her in that as the underdog who
might fall apart?
Speaker 1 (31:26):
And we do, we do.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
But you know, everything about Judy Garland is big and
bold and famous, including her death. And so Judy Garland
dies of an accidental drug overdose in June of nineteen
sixty nine, and by this point, Liza's career is moving
and going. And by the way, I don't want anyone
(31:50):
to miss the June of nineteen sixty nine, Judy Garland
dies the month of the Stonewall riots, Like, wow, the
launch of the gay rights movement is like Judy Garland's
martyr moment, Like she is forever tied.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I'd never made that connection before. Wow.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, But Liza is twenty three years old.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
At the time, you know, she is of.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Course an intense grief her their parents are, you know,
Judy and Vincent. Her long sense bitterly split, and so
she has to manage Judy's death and her quite messy
affairs in order, you know, she starts her own journey
on prescription drugs.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Liza does at this time.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
We now know that she developed a real problem that
she ultimately kicks, But she developed a real problem at
this time.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
And despite all this, she's working. You know. The same
year that Judy.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Dies, Liza got a first Oscar nomination as for a
Best Actress role in a dramatic film called The Sterile Cuckoo,
and it was showing she could do more than saying.
She could also.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Act right in it.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Again, she plays this needy, kind of eccentric character that's
like I need you, I need your love.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
It shows all of this.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Emotional range and that is starting to sort of develop
as like who she is and how she can perform.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
But the big, big, big.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Big moment in her life is the movie Cabaret. So
nineteen seventy two is when this movie comes out. First off,
do you what is your relationship to the to just
Cabaret as that like the show Cabaret, which has been
made in all kinds of different forms.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Oh so I have actually never seen the show. My
awnship is with the movie and the movie version of it,
and my relationship to it is I remember watching it,
like I think, when I was in college and realizing,
oh wow, this is that musical where all of these
songs take place, and it's like one of those movies
where you see it and you're like, oh, I've seen
(33:57):
the parody of this. I'm like, this is the progenitor
of like a bunch of different things. But I didn't
even know it was the source material for and I
remember it blew my mind because it was. I mean,
it's it's such a deceptively dark movie. I know nothing
about it going in, but it's an unsettling movie. It's
literally watching it the whole experience. It's supposed to be
(34:18):
like you're you're like a frog in slowly boiling water.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
That's right. This is that.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
So Cabret is one of my favorite texts in culture,
and the movie actually isn't the original text. It starts
with a Christopher Isherwood novella called Goodbye to Berlin that
was published in nineteen thirty seven, and so you know,
it's the whole story is set in the Weimer Republic,
at the end of the Vimer Republic, as Nazis are
(34:45):
taking over.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
It's the end of the Bohemian.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Jazz age, you know, and kind of the end of
pluralism as a concept. And Cabaret, then, is a musical
theater adaptation of that story that has been done a
bunch of times. I forget how many now, the most
recent closed in twenty twenty five. And I think, as
you point out, like, what's so interesting about it is
(35:09):
people have heard the music and think of it as fun, right,
Like what good.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Is sitting alone in your room? Right? Come here the
music play.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
But it's a horrendously dark story, say, And it closes
in most productions with a bunch of queers and Jews
and sexual women dancing their way into the gas chamber,
right like that's cabaret. That's the cabaret. They're going to
his death. And so it's a story about the creep
of fascism. Obviously everybody should go look at it now
(35:43):
in this moment for some insights. But in this Eliza
is cast as Sally Bulls who is the center of
this story, right, And Sally Bulls is a teenage cabaret
singer who you know, so selling sex, selling sexy times,
who longs to.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Be famous and to be loved.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
And the character is just like an open wound of emotion,
you know, just like thrashing between pleasure and pain.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
And it's like she's just so compelling.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
And I don't think coincidental that this is who e
Liza Minelli makes her fame playing. She delivers like what
is considered one of the great performances in American film
history as Sally Bowles. They the film sweeps the Oscars.
She wins Best Actress. Bob Fosse is the director and
the choreographer, he wins Best Director. And you know, coming
(36:46):
back to the IT factor, I think like Sally Bowles
is the IT factor, right, Like this character who is
only held together, who's about to fall apart, and is
only held together by the audience's love, Like that is
what is so compelling about it.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
And I think it's interesting to listen again to.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Bob Fosse talk about both the challenging the joy of
making this film with Liza men Elliott.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
Every actor has buttons, and a good director tries to
find those buttons. Her emotional buttons are so close to
the surface that you almost have to be careful to
restrain her because she becomes very quickly emotional. So one
of the problems that I that was not a problem
really at all, because she responds like that. I mean,
(37:36):
just the slightest suggestion was to keep her from getting
too emotional. She's an emotional person. Some actors you have
to find ways of getting them excited, getting them emotional,
getting them angry, getting them tearful. But Liza is like
some sort of perfect machine that comes to you and says,
(37:58):
you know, this is the best car. If actors were cars,
she'd like to be the best. Now you have to
learn how to drive it and learn how to push
the buttons, and it will get you where you want
to go and look very nifty.
Speaker 9 (38:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
She's her emotions were so on the surface that Bob
Fosse couldn't direct her because she was too emotional.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I mean, this is Liza Minelli.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
I mean, but I mean as you point out to
hear him say that, you know, like to hear somebody
who's like, yeah, normally, I you know, he would be
proud of, like I got to beat it out of him,
you know.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
And he's like, it's just there what she's saying.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yeah, And actually the challenge is you got to restrain.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Her, you know, like you had to like dial it
in because it was so raw. And this point that
like she had studied this character for so long, like
that this character meant so much to her personally, I.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Think tells us a lot.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
I think she also sees herself as Sally Bowles, as
this just raw, open of emotion who needs love on
stage in order to not fall off that knife's edge.
And I think that is it. I think that is
what is the IT factor for her, and I would
annudge we have not heard enough of her talk about
this directly, but there is a bit of tape where
(39:25):
she explains what she thinks is about the IT factor,
and I'm going to play that for you after a
break Welcome Back.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
It's Big Lives.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
We are talking about e Liza Minelli and really about
her vulnerability, like her being on this knife's edge of
collapse the whole of her public life and why that's
something that gives her that IT factor. And so I
want to show you a time when she actually talks
about the IT factor. This is the year after Cabaret,
(40:00):
so nineteen seventy three. She is the big star of
Hollywood and Broadway both. At this point, you know she
swept the Oscars, She's got her youngest ever Tony Award winner,
and she does an interview for the show nationwide. We
heard a little bit of this earlier, but in this
one it's like one of my favorite parts of the
(40:21):
archive on her.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
It starts with this.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Wonderfully awkward moment that Lisa turns into gold.
Speaker 7 (40:30):
Listen to this, Alisa min Elium, I counted today at
the press reception something like sixty photographers and fifty journalists.
So you really got star treatment in London? Do you
enjoy that?
Speaker 8 (40:43):
It's Liza?
Speaker 11 (40:47):
It happens constantly.
Speaker 7 (40:50):
I was wondering, you see whether I dare ask you?
Can we sort it out once and for all? How
you like your name pronounces?
Speaker 8 (40:55):
Yeah, it's Liza, Liza with.
Speaker 7 (40:58):
The Z right Liza. Yes, there were something like sixty
photographers and fifty journalists. Hi day, and you've got star treatment.
Do you enjoy that that?
Speaker 8 (41:13):
It makes you feel like when you were little and
you pretended to be a princess. If there's something lovely
about it, there's also something temporary about it, you know.
Speaker 12 (41:25):
In other words, I know that I could whip on
the fox, whip on the eyelashes, whip over the door,
chester to do that and go home put my jeans
on again, you know, because I think that if you
get to rely on that kind of treatment, or if
you depend on it, you'll ultimately be.
Speaker 8 (41:41):
Disappointed and a bit heartsick.
Speaker 7 (41:44):
What about the pressure, I mean, one of the things
you have loss of privacy, didn't you. I mean, people
asking all sorts of personal questions. Do you just think, well,
that goes with the game.
Speaker 8 (41:53):
I think, you know, it doesn't affect me as much
as it might somebody else because I've never known privacy.
And I mean when I was born, somebody took a
picture and put it in the paper. You know, it
was one of those things. So I really don't have
any area of comparison. So it doesn't bother me that
much because I find that I do have a great
(42:16):
deal of privacy by just not pretending to be somebody else.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
So this is we're going to cure the rest of this.
But just to pause there for a minute, you know,
like that she's doing that thing again where she's not
like denying love of fame. You know, she's like, it's lovely,
it's like pretending to be a princess.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Yeah, it's sort of it's like hinting at the darkness
of the thing slightly when she's like, you know, but
it doesn't last forever, it's if everyone it fades. But
then she goes right back around to sort of being like,
but it's great.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah, And she's kind of the queen of getting the
both hand of the experience. She can be both a
nepo baby but also on her own right. She can
be like, yeah, I have these star parents and yeah,
that was weird, but also it did.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Nothing to me.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
She's just somehow managed to make me believe both all
these times that both things are true.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
That she's in danger, you know.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
As someone with all those cameras on her, but also
it feels like being a princess. You know, I should
say that Eliza with a Z thing she dines out
on that she actually had just put out a song
and hit concert film the year before, called Liza with
Z that you know, where she has this sort of
(43:40):
silly song where she performs versions of her name, and
Bob Fosse was part of that, and it's one of
the things her fans love about her, which is even
in of itself, right, like I'm so famous, but you
don't know my name.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Anyway, So later in the interview, Bob Wellings that's the
interviewer here. He asked her the question, we've been here
to discuss what is star quality? Then?
Speaker 7 (44:02):
Nice to hear you. Do you believe in it? Can
you define it? Can you tell us what you think
star quality is? Because people say you've got it presence.
Speaker 8 (44:10):
I guess there are very many people who aren't even
in show business who have star quality. You know, the
kind of person that enters the room and they're there.
There's something you know about them.
Speaker 7 (44:24):
Yes, I mean, if one must put you in a
chorus of thirty people on the stage, I think everyone's
eye would go to you as a prejudice. But that's
what it's about, I.
Speaker 8 (44:34):
Suppose, I guess.
Speaker 11 (44:36):
So, yeah, I think you're right, come to the cable, right,
And that's for me, that's for me. I need my mind.
Speaker 9 (44:50):
Sachin Chelsea.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Again, she doesn't deny it. She's like, yeah, I got
sar quality, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
I mean, you hear it and you're like, yeah, I agree,
I agree.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Like that's the voice you know I have.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
I'm not going to turn away from that one last
thing I want to play you because you know, we
got to come back. I mean, I'm sorry, e Liza.
I almost called her Lisa Ce.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Sorry Liza, did it? We do have to come back
to Judy.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
You know, there is a British TV interview that she
does in nineteen eighty nine. This is a show you're
very familiar with called The Wogan Show, and so she's
on in eighty nine. She's a bona fide star. She's
got by this point, she has you know, her Emmy,
her Oscar, her three Tony's, two Golden Globes. You know,
she's just been on tour with Frank Sinatra and Sammy
(45:41):
Davis Junior. And she's putting out an album of songs
with the Pet Shot Boys that I have to say
is horrifically bad to.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
My Oh, I think I.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Didn't know ever existed.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yeah, like I guess the pet Shop Boys did a
series of remixes of unlikely pairings albums or something, and
this is one of them. I literally couldn't listen to it.
I listened to part of it. I was just like,
this is horrible. Sorry Eliza fans. But anyway, it's a
live show. So it opens with her making a point
(46:15):
about that.
Speaker 8 (46:15):
Terry, this is nerve wracking.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
It is.
Speaker 8 (46:18):
I mean, live television is absolutely amazing to everybody gets
like this, I'm nervous to be on your show.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Anyway, I like it.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
So again, this woman who has lived her life on
stage wants me to believe she's nervous on live TV.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
But I do believe her.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
I do believe that somehow, in nineteen eighty nine, she's
still nervous.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
This person who is a seriously gifted life befure of
the well.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Anyway, Inevitably, Terry Wigan keeps bringing back her mother.
Speaker 8 (46:41):
Fortunately, you know, my mom passed away before Cabaret came out,
so even before the Sterile Cuckoo came up, So she
saw me on Broadway, but she never saw mess.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
You must you must regret that looking back.
Speaker 8 (46:56):
No, I don't. I really I think that it's all okay.
It turned out for everybody the way it should know.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Yeah, because your mom's boss, of course, it's charge again,
not really, No, no.
Speaker 8 (47:09):
I think that. Well, let's see people that have a
misconception about her whole life, let alone around. She was
a very strong, very kind of happy woman, and she
didn't like that to be part of her public persona
because she felt it was nobody's business. But she had
a huge humor about everything, and even though she died young,
she did everything she ever wanted to do in her
(47:30):
whole life. She took every moment and she ate it.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
It was just marvelous.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
If you didn't anybody was sad that she went so.
Speaker 8 (47:38):
Young with her Oh yes that well, yeah, sure, I
was sad when my father went at eighty four. I mean,
I'm just sad with anything.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
She's so good at that dance.
Speaker 3 (47:50):
Immediately. But also there is something kind of incredible about
her ability to sort of take this stuff and repackage
it in her own mind in that way and to
just sort of digest it that way that if you
take her at face value as this person who where
(48:11):
all these emotions, all of it are lying on the surface,
and like I can hear in her voice as a
pride there and also just a feeling of I am
taking that legacy and moving it forward in my own way,
and maybe she believes that of her mother because she
believes it of herself, you know what I mean. People
(48:31):
are making all these comparisons and she's not shying away
from it, and she's like, right, I am this person.
I was meant to be this person to do these things.
My mother died didn't get to see me do them.
But ultimately, like, I'm living the way that I think
she lived or would want to believe she lived.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah, unfortunately including the drug addiction. But she didn't kick it,
you know. But she kicked that, you know, And she's
been very open about that journey. And again, you know,
like a thing that should have killed her, you know,
like apparently it was bad, you know, and it should
have broke her, and it didn't, you know.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Somehow she managed to stay on that knife's edge. And
I guess I'm thinking a little.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Differently than I was at the beginning listening to you,
is that, like the irony of Isamnelli is that she
has to spend her whole life trying to figure out
why she's distinct from and how she's distinct from her mother,
answering for her mother both personally and professionally.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
But because it.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Doesn't bother her, does It doesn't actually bother her like
it is the thing that makes her compelling, you know
what I mean, Like the fact that she could never
have been Liza Minelli, even with her talent.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
With that also the complexity.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Of having been Judy Garland's daughter, and she's okay with that.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Shut out to Eliza Minelli. All right, Emanuel, you got
for me next week?
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Well? Yeah, this one, this one, I think you you'll know.
Let me just play this for you.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
When you come to the fight.
Speaker 13 (50:16):
Don't block the owls and don't block the door for
you all may go home after round four.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Wow, I know exactly who that is.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
But just for the sake of it, we're gonna play
some board.
Speaker 13 (50:30):
When you see me on my feet dancing faster and
better than I did with Ken Norton, And when you
see the punches, I'm gonna be so fast, he's gonna
think it's surrounded.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
I'm gonna leave you just with one more.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
I'm not just a boxer.
Speaker 13 (50:41):
I'm educated, even Oxford University, your biggest seat of learner
professorship in philosophy and Petray to come in to teach.
I'm not just starting a fighter.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
I can talk all.
Speaker 13 (50:50):
Week on millions of subjects, and you do not have
enough wisdom to call him me on television.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
I can't wait.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
We'll get into that next week. Big Lines is a
production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by
me Manuel Jochi and Kai Writ. Our team over at
BBC Studios includes producer Emma Reverel, archive producer Samira Chowdery.
Sound designed by Melvin Rickerby. Our executive producer is Annie Brown.
(51:19):
Our production coordinator is Galen Davis Connolly, Our apprentice is
Amy Woods, and our production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright.
The team over at Pushkin Industries includes executive producer Costanzo Goyardo,
producer Daphne Chen. Our legal advisor is Jake Flanagan. Our
marketing team includes Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMullen
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