29 JULY, 2003
Liza with an Ex - Now That's Entertainment . . .
By Joseph Planta
(This piece originally was published on Now That's Entertainment . . . )
VANCOUVER – Honestly, who's surprised that it didn't last? It even isn't with any glee that celebrity watchers greet the news that the entertainer Liza Minnelli and her producer-husband David Gest have split. When they met, she was an over-the-hill, overweight heifer whose career in show business had careened. In her prime, she was a hell of a performer. Truly the stage's ultimate triple-threat. She could sing, dance and act, with an Oscar, an Emmy and three Tony's to back it all up. Then Gest came along, a friend of their mutual friend Michael Jackson, and they, as their publicists had to tell us, fell in love.
Minnelli, whom like her mother Judy Garland, has been married more than a couple times, was marrying (like her mother did twice), a much younger man. But beyond that the gossip maven's and tabloids began whispering about Gest's presumed homosexuality. Come to think of it, Garland also married a poof at one point too. And of course, who can forget that Minnelli's first husband was the bisexual Peter Allen, whom Hugh Jackman will play on Broadway this fall. He was in show business, and that could be forgiven, but he just was a tad too creepy for some people's tastes. He'd don shades to act cool, but he was no Jack Nicholson. He was awkward, immature and just plain odd. So now, this past weekend, word has floated that they've separated. Sixteen months after their lavish wedding that was attended by celebrities from Elizabeth Taylor down to Michael Jackson to David Hasselhoff to Tito Jackson, their marriage is kaput. (She had converted to Catholicism, just to marry in the top Catholic cathedral in New York City.)
Their short marriage was the subject of much scrutiny. Was the young producer Gest, simply marrying Minnelli, to use her as a conduit from which he could make money for himself? Why was Minnelli in love with this character, who seemed as creepy, if only for his friendship to Michael Jackson? Why did they have to go out of their way to prove themselves as a married couple? Why the sickening and much-contrived kiss at their gooey and much-contrived wedding? Why the need to go on television to proclaim that he liked one boob better than the other? Or why the need to discuss his sexual prowess publicly? Why did they deign to let VH1 do a reality series on their life, yet have the project sacked, when it came out that he seemed a little more high maintenance than Minnelli, who throughout her nearly 60 years has never done anything remotely low-key?
Show business marriages are often subject to a whole hell of a lot of scrutiny, much more than those of lay people. But what more can be expected of an industry where those that choose to ply their trade in such a field, subject themselves to equally voracious demands for attention when it comes time to buy their records, watch their movies, or read their books. On a basic level the marriage of Liza and David had some good to come about. Minnelli, when they met, was the size two-seat sofa, and it was Gest, some will say rather brutally, who got her to lose that weight. She returned to the concert stage and released the much-ballyhooed Liza's Back CD to accompany the Broadway and London runs, which had to be preempted soon after she was put back into the drunk tank, to dry out. Minnelli, like her mother Judy Garland, has a weakness for the vices of drugs and drink.
Now that the travelling freak show of Liza and David is, for now, ended, let's take some pause and reflect on it all. What the two of them had was a cottage industry of excess and old-time show business, that both adored, yet tried to make accessible to the MTV-generation, thereby bastardising it in the process. Rather than trot out old clips of Liza hoofing it up with Sammy Davis Jr. or Frank Sinatra, Gest made her croon with Mary J. Blige and Luther Vandross. They were nothing less than a horrendous display of what was wrong with show business.
I keen for the old days of show business when it was okay for guys to run around preened nicely in starched shirts and cufflinks, just like Cary Grant. I want to harken back to those old days when it was okay to smoke on television, or where wearing black-tie on television was the norm, and gloves on ladies were permissible. I want lots of brass and that extra dose of pow in songs, that Minnelli and people like Sammy Davis Jr. gave their interpretations. As Martin Short once opined, Minnelli was always ‘turned on' giving 110%, and that was just in the opening number. Minnelli is the last of that era of entertainment, linking us back to the days of her Mum Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr., when show business was all glitz and glamour amongst the clamour, yet somehow a little more real than it is today. With David Gest alongside, she became a joke, and people tended to belittle the grand heritage of from whence she came.
Then again, if they played it low-key and honest, maybe they wouldn't have garnered such attention. Perhaps if they weren't out to prove themselves as something they weren't, maybe we'd have all left them alone. Look at Tom Hanks. There isn't anything salacious or fake about his big fat Greek life with wife Rita Wilson. They're keeping it real, Mr. and Mrs. Hanks. Too bad Liza Minnelli and David Gest could keep it straight. Now that it's over, it's clear there was nothing there to begin with and it was the dutifully paying public, though watching aghast and dismayed, who were duped. Then again, it's show business. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
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©2003 Joseph Planta.