Wild affairs, Oscars humiliation and passing out drunk on a New York footpath… Liza Minnelli has revealed all in a jaw-dropping new memoir. The Cabaret star once vowed she’d never write an autobiography, telling a close friend, “You can tell everything after I’m dead!”
But following what she feels was sabotage at the 2022 Oscars, the showbiz legend, who turned 80 on March 12, has decided there’s no time like the present – and extracts from her startlingly frank memoir Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! is already causing ripples around the globe.
She had “goosebumps” when she was invited to co-present the Best Picture award. But it soon turned into a nightmare as minutes before going on stage, she says, she was suddenly treated like an invalid, with organisers insisting she must use a wheelchair.
Lady Gaga, she says, then “quizzed me” to see if her memory was intact, “like I was an idiot”.
Setting the record straight
Liza was so thrown, she stumbled over a few words during the ceremony and “Gaga didn’t miss a beat. ‘I got you,’ she said, holding my hand and leaning down over me. That night and in the days that followed, she was widely praised for this seemingly gentle gesture that was at my expense.”
After spending her life watching people twist the history of her famous parents – Judy Garland and director Vincent Minnelli – Liza knew she had to tell her story in her own words.
“I’m sure there are plenty of people out there eager to cash in on the life of Liza Minnelli, just like they did with Mama and Papa. Sadly, my parents never got the chance to set the record straight for themselves. But now I do.”
Her complicated love life
In the book, officially released on March 10, the entertainer delves into her much-publicised relationship history, including how she discovered her first husband, Australian singer Peter Allen, was gay.
“I knew I had met the love of my life. We married in 1967. I asked myself, ‘What could go wrong?’ One afternoon, returning early from an indulgent shopping spree, I walked into our apartment and found Peter having passionate sex. With a man. In our bed! “As the other gentleman quickly dressed and disappeared, I felt fragile and afraid. Peter walked up and held me tightly. We both began crying. He told me for the first time, ‘Liza, I love you more than anyone in the world… and I’m gay.’”
The pair remained married for seven more years and, during that time, Liza had a string of affairs. In the early ’70s, she was still legally married to Peter, but now engaged to Desi Arnaz Jr – the son of Lucille Ball – when she began a tumultuous liaison with comic legend Peter Sellers.
A scandalous love triangle
When news of their affair hit the tabloids, they declared their intention to marry.
Liza says, “If this is confusing to you, how the hell do you think I felt? I was married to a gay man at the same time I was engaged to two other men!”
Their tryst only lasted five weeks as she describes, he “would scold me, taunt me, bully me in the voices of different characters”.
The biggest regret
However, the Oscar winner reserves her greatest criticism for her late fourth husband David Gest.
“Gest was a fast-talking, wheeler-dealer promoter who wore more make-up than I did,” she recalls.
“Boy, did he have a line: ‘Liza, you deserve to be the biggest star in the world. And that’s what we’re going to do.’ What kind of fool was I?”
A painful wake-up call
They wed in 2002 in a lavish $5 million ceremony. Soon after, she realised “his ‘till death do us part vow was a cold business deal”, and he set about plundering her valuable memorabilia and bank accounts.
She filed for divorce in 2003 and as she reflects on the relationship, she acknowledges that, like her mother, her battle with drug and alcohol addiction played a part in her poor judgement. A few months after their separation, she had a scary wake-up call when she passed out drunk in the middle of the street in New York.
“I lay on the ground for God knows how long,” she recalls.
“And the more horrific thing is that hundreds of people stepped over or around my body. “I’ve had difficult, embarrassing, crazy moments in my life, but nothing like this. After my team finally found me, I took a long, hard look at myself in the mirror and was more ashamed than I’d ever been in my life.”
She is now proudly 11 years sober, and though her years of pushing her body to the limit for her art and substance abuse have taken their toll, she says, “I’ve got a lot of living left to do.”
