Liza Minnelli was not the greatest singer. She was not the greatest dancer. She was the greatest all-around female live performer I have ever seen. She was not even the greatest beauty, but when she connected with those eyes to wherever you were sitting—from the front row to the balcony—by the end of the third song the audience was firmly in her grasp.
Like her mother, the actress and singer Judy Garland, and her father, the film director Vincente Minnelli, Liza was an icon and an American treasure. She was on the short list of a dozen true stars, such as Rita Moreno, Audrey Hepburn, and Marvin Hamlisch, who won the “grand slam”—an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award—the four major awards in television, music, film, and theater, respectively. She brought power to everything she touched.
While I was not involved with Liza’s film, theater, or television career, I found her award acceptance speeches telling. In 1973, when she won an Oscar for Best Actress in the film Cabaret, she said making the film was “one of the happiest times” of her whole life. When she won her second Tony Award, for The Act, in 1978, she said in her famously breathless way, “The thing that I like to do most in my life is to work and to work hard and I think the thing that I like second best is when somebody said, you did a good job.”
In many ways those statements sum up the complicated quality that defines a star. They love what they do and they need the applause. They are their performance. They are their own product. The spotlight is where they shine. It’s where they are happiest, and the adulation is what they live for.
Liza never wanted to use her mother’s fame for her recognition, and she didn’t have to. Unlike her half sister, Lorna Luft, who attached herself to her mother’s music, Liza wanted to be and was a standout in her own right.
In my opinion, Lorna had a better voice than Liza, but no one had Liza’s charisma. She had that elusive “star quality” that everyone in the entertainment business looks for. It’s hard to define and even harder to create. It’s the ability to quickly pull the audience in. There’s an electrical quality to it, and I still get goose bumps when I think of some of Liza’s great nights onstage.
Garland died of an accidental overdose in 1969. A doctor warned me that when someone is born to a drug-addicted parent, they are born an addict and will struggle their entire life with those demons. Liza had drug and alcohol issues and she has been very open about her battles with addiction and her stints in rehab.
So I worked not only with Liza, but also with those closest to her. I tightened the circle around her to ensure, the best I could, that she was exposed only to positive influences. Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, one of the most successful Broadway duos in history, were among Liza’s closest confidants and producers. They, along with her personal assistant, Roni Agress, and Roni’s husband, David, who was Liza’s lighting designer, truly cared for Liza and wanted her to be well. Having put Labriola as Liza’s road manager also helped me keep an eye on things. Anyone on her team who contributed to or encouraged bad behavior was fired. While I can’t say we kept her drug and alcohol free, with the help of her friends we at least kept her drug and alcohol use to a minimum for a decade.
Addictions can also take a huge toll on finances. When Liza and I started working together, her net worth was literally zero. She was spending as much as she had in assets. I was determined to help her build up her bank account. She was frugal about all the wrong things. She wouldn’t buy a candy bar at an airport if she thought it was too expensive, but she spent lavishly on other aspects of her lifestyle, especially partying.
The South African tour was the beginning of the financial rebuilding process.
Thousands came to see Liza perform in eleven shows in Sun City, an opulent gambling resort built by Sol Kerzner (who went on to build, among other things, the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort in the Bahamas). Sun City was in Bophuthatswana, a multiracial yet economically segregated community in the northwestern region of the white-ruled Republic of South Africa. A New York Times reporter met us at the plane, but I wouldn’t let Liza be interviewed. These were the days of apartheid and I didn’t want her to become engaged in a political scandal.
Sinatra had opened the 6,000-seat Sun City “Super Bowl” a little over a year earlier. Since then, entertainers like Paul Anka, Cher, Shirley Bassey, and Olivia Newton-John had made their way there, on the assurance that they wouldn’t play to all-white audiences.
As I watched the white team leader order the black stagehands around with almost no respect or regard, I couldn’t help but think they were treated like slaves. Seeing it firsthand, I fully understood what apartheid meant. When I told Liza what I witnessed and later discussed it with Frank, it was obvious we would not return. In fact, I never took any of my clients back there.
From Sun City, and before heading back to New York, we went to the Italian Riviera. I was sitting on the balcony of my hotel room overlooking the turquoise waters of Italy’s Liguria region when I noticed the bottle of water on the side table. It was clear glass, with a photo of the Mediterranean Sea surrounded by the picturesque mountains of the region. Written across the front was “Chiarella.”
I had never before heard of water by that name, and although I don’t believe in omens, there was a part of me that took it as fate. It was an excuse to call Maria. She was no relation to the water company, but we laughed about it.
We met for lunch at one of my favorite classy restaurants in Manhattan, the Four Seasons, in the Seagram Tower on Park Avenue. Maria came sans girlfriend, and as we sat around the large square fountain surrounded by huge potted trees, I waited for her to pull out a cigarette. When she did, I lit it with a gold Dunhill lighter I had purchased for her on my way to the restaurant. “Merry Christmas a little early and no more Bics,” I said.