Gary
Well, the biopic is going to be fun.
Or maybe not, because Liza Minnelli has not just lived one of the great showbiz lives of the last 70 years, she is such a singular presence, one who is forever teetering on the edge of caricaturing herself, that it might prove impossible to cast - unless Emma Stone fancies it.
Wisely (and the Liza that emerges from this memoir is rather more blessed with wisdom than popular imagination would credit), she has spent her long life (longer than she expected) surrounded by people whom she trusts and who trust her. Okay, there are a few exceptions, but not on this project.
Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! was written with journalists, Josh Getlin and Heidi Evans, and is based on conversations with her longtime friend and protector, Michael Feinstein. The finest tribute I can pay them, and the book stands or falls on it, is that Liza’s voice is vividly present throughout its 400+ pages (there’s enough material for at least twice that - this is a boxed set of a life). Reading the text, you can hear that unique, anxious, breathy voice, the extraordinary cadences, the laugh that continually breaks through. For a person who has been in the public eye non-stop for all 80 years and counting of her life, that anchoring is critical.
That’s eight decades marked by privilege and success, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that she has had it easy. Her early years were spent idolising two parents who did not love each other, a goldfish bowl of existence in a pressure cooker that would have sent any kid off the rails.
Judy Garland was talented and troubled (Liza insists that her own Substance Abuse Disorder was in her genes), married five times, enjoyed immense popular and critical acclaim on stage and screen - and was dead at 47. Okay, it might have been a stretch to beat Vivien Leigh to the Oscar in 1940, but not to be nominated and only get the nod for “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” is a bit much really. Seeing Dorothy again on the big screen recently and knowing the appalling treatment meted out by the studio to her and others in the film, makes for a hard watch - but what a performance!
Her father, Vincent, was a hugely successful film director for MGM, and the yang to her mother’s yin. Liza always found comfort in her father’s decency, but it was to her mercurial mother that she was drawn. From their earliest days, it was a relationship scarred and pushed by a tension born of competition and always played out in the glare of Judy’s bad decisions. Liza learned to stand (and dance) on her own two feet at a time when other teens were pinning posters of her mother on their bedroom walls.
“You need to be ready to be lucky” is one of many quotable lines in the text - and she was. Being a nepo baby can get you in the room, but it doesn’t get you the lead in a Broadway musical (John Kander and Fred Ebb’s debut, Flora The Red Menace) at 19, nor a Tony to take home. The trio were to work together many times in the future, notably on Cabaret, Liza’s irrefutable claim to immortality. She won the Academy Award for Sally of course, just 27 when she picked it up.
The booze and pills and powder are soon gripping her, but she continues to work even if producers couldn’t quite find roles that worked for her unique looks and skillset. So mostly it was the life of a showgirl, on the road, with travel, dancing and singing (though not much sleeping) and a cavalcade of showbiz greats coming into and out of her life. Amongst the many (probably) inadvertent moments of humour scattered through the account of good times and bad, is an expression of gratitude for a lift on a private plane to start another round of rehab - the benefactor, “Uncle Frank”.
If Ol’ Blue Eyes, Sammy Davis Jnr, Halston and many more were firm friends, she has harsh words for some of her mother’s husbands, her own number four, David Gest, what she saw as sabotage by Lady Gaga at the 2022 Oscars. That said, there’s much more love than hate in the life we read, more thanks than no thanks and the sense, especially in her unstinting work and bold commitment in the darkest days of the AIDS pandemic, that she did more good than harm.
Liza always knew, from barely being able to stand up to sing at her parents’ parties as her mother looked on with pride and fear of a future upstaging, that her greatest gift was the capacity and judgement to give her audience what they want. In this book’s gossipy tone, but one seldom spiced with the venom that can cheapen a narrative with score-settling, she probably gets that right.
But there’s another book to be written that properly places her within American culture, unprecedented social change and the destructive psychology of fame. That might not sell as well as this one, but her status surely demands it.
This review first appeared at https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/Book-Review-KIDS-WAIT-TILL-YOU-HEAR-THIS-MY-MEMOIR-by-Liza-Minnelli-Michael-Feinstein-Josh-Getlin-Heidi-Evans-20260505
Well, the biopic is going to be fun.
Or maybe not, because Liza Minnelli has not just lived one of the great showbiz lives of the last 70 years, she is such a singular presence, one who is forever teetering on the edge of caricaturing herself, that it might prove impossible to cast - unless Emma Stone fancies it.
Wisely (and the Liza that emerges from this memoir is rather more blessed with wisdom than popular imagination would credit), she has spent her long life (longer than she expected) surrounded by people whom she trusts and who trust her. Okay, there are a few exceptions, but not on this project.
Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! was written with journalists, Josh Getlin and Heidi Evans, and is based on conversations with her longtime friend and protector, Michael Feinstein. The finest tribute I can pay them, and the book stands or falls on it, is that Liza’s voice is vividly present throughout its 400+ pages (there’s enough material for at least twice that - this is a boxed set of a life). Reading the text, you can hear that unique, anxious, breathy voice, the extraordinary cadences, the laugh that continually breaks through. For a person who has been in the public eye non-stop for all 80 years and counting of her life, that anchoring is critical.
That’s eight decades marked by privilege and success, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that she has had it easy. Her early years were spent idolising two parents who did not love each other, a goldfish bowl of existence in a pressure cooker that would have sent any kid off the rails.
Judy Garland was talented and troubled (Liza insists that her own Substance Abuse Disorder was in her genes), married five times, enjoyed immense popular and critical acclaim on stage and screen - and was dead at 47. Okay, it might have been a stretch to beat Vivien Leigh to the Oscar in 1940, but not to be nominated and only get the nod for “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” is a bit much really. Seeing Dorothy again on the big screen recently and knowing the appalling treatment meted out by the studio to her and others in the film, makes for a hard watch - but what a performance!
Her father, Vincent, was a hugely successful film director for MGM, and the yang to her mother’s yin. Liza always found comfort in her father’s decency, but it was to her mercurial mother that she was drawn. From their earliest days, it was a relationship scarred and pushed by a tension born of competition and always played out in the glare of Judy’s bad decisions. Liza learned to stand (and dance) on her own two feet at a time when other teens were pinning posters of her mother on their bedroom walls.
“You need to be ready to be lucky” is one of many quotable lines in the text - and she was. Being a nepo baby can get you in the room, but it doesn’t get you the lead in a Broadway musical (John Kander and Fred Ebb’s debut, Flora The Red Menace) at 19, nor a Tony to take home. The trio were to work together many times in the future, notably on Cabaret, Liza’s irrefutable claim to immortality. She won the Academy Award for Sally of course, just 27 when she picked it up.
The booze and pills and powder are soon gripping her, but she continues to work even if producers couldn’t quite find roles that worked for her unique looks and skillset. So mostly it was the life of a showgirl, on the road, with travel, dancing and singing (though not much sleeping) and a cavalcade of showbiz greats coming into and out of her life. Amongst the many (probably) inadvertent moments of humour scattered through the account of good times and bad, is an expression of gratitude for a lift on a private plane to start another round of rehab - the benefactor, “Uncle Frank”.
If Ol’ Blue Eyes, Sammy Davis Jnr, Halston and many more were firm friends, she has harsh words for some of her mother’s husbands, her own number four, David Gest, what she saw as sabotage by Lady Gaga at the 2022 Oscars. That said, there’s much more love than hate in the life we read, more thanks than no thanks and the sense, especially in her unstinting work and bold commitment in the darkest days of the AIDS pandemic, that she did more good than harm.
Liza always knew, from barely being able to stand up to sing at her parents’ parties as her mother looked on with pride and fear of a future upstaging, that her greatest gift was the capacity and judgement to give her audience what they want. In this book’s gossipy tone, but one seldom spiced with the venom that can cheapen a narrative with score-settling, she probably gets that right.
But there’s another book to be written that properly places her within American culture, unprecedented social change and the destructive psychology of fame. That might not sell as well as this one, but her status surely demands it.
This review first appeared at https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/Book-Review-KIDS-WAIT-TILL-YOU-HEAR-THIS-MY-MEMOIR-by-Liza-Minnelli-Michael-Feinstein-Josh-Getlin-Heidi-Evans-20260505