Liza sparkles again in ‘Truly Terrific’ documentary
If you were alive in the 1970s, an awareness of Liza Minnelli probably feels hard-coded into your DNA. Already famous on television by the time she was a young teen as the endearingly awkward and prodigiously gifted daughter of Judy Garland, having been regularly featured on her mother’s variety series, her explosion into the rarified strata of global stardom might have felt like sheer nepotism if not for the raw magnificence of her talents.
Yes, she was uniquely “lucky” to have been the progeny of Hollywood royalty, but for a generation that had already begun to view the nostalgic memories of its parents’ youth through the filter of a more cynical worldview, that status might well have been an impediment to her success were it not for the undeniable verve and spirit of the persona that she brought with her when she performed.
Whether in films like Bob Fosse’s masterful screen adaptation of “Cabaret,” or performing live – an experience captured and immortalized in her unprecedented televised concert, “Liza With a ‘Z’” – or even in the arguably naive candor with which she conducted her private life in the public eye, there was something so infectiously real about Liza that even the most jaded of cultural pundits could not help but be on her side.
For gay men, who found in her a similar connection as they had found in her mother – an earnest, genuinely positive spirit attempting to navigate a complicated life and find a place of her own in a world that viewed such enthusiasm with skepticism and judgmental disdain – she became more than just a star.
