aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, March 31, 2006

Liza is a hoot

Set your TiVos! A “painstakingly restored and remastered” ’Liza with a Z‘ is on Showtime tomorrow. And because they’re having a free preview weekend, all of us with cable can watch. From the NYTimes review today:

For those who never quite understood her standing in pop culture - or gay iconography - and are alarmed by her Page Six woes (and her recent, unmoored interview with Larry King on CNN), the hourlong film provides some clues. There are only a handful of female performers of her generation who have that over-the-top, knock-’em-dead stage presence, but Judy Garland’s daughter was neither as gifted a singer as Barbra Streisand nor as roguishly self-aware as Bette Midler. Ms. Minnelli’s stardom is based on a unique confluence of talent and biography, persistence and collapse. And of course, luck: she sings a medley from “Cabaret,” the musical that gave Ms. Minnelli an Oscar and her greatest and only plausible movie role as a romantic lead; every heroine she played after that was at best a watery distortion of Sally Bowles.

My nephew recently came out to me. I had earlier hints, one of them when he asked, “Who was that woman who was Liza Minnelli’s mother?”

Here’s clips from Liza’s appearance on Larry King that include her “gravelly Phyllis Diller cackle.” Better yet, this clip from Ellen where she croons, “Oh I’m so glad I’m not young any more!”