#Liza minelli song movie
#Liza minelli song series

She also tried recording contemporary pop/rock but failed to interpret songs from her generation convincingly. As a young singer in the 1960s and 1970s, she recorded a number of albums devoted to pop standards, given her legacy and lineage.

#Liza minelli song series

Though Minnelli was a seasoned recording artist by 1977, releasing a series of studio LPs, soundtracks, and live albums, she never scored a chart hit, even if she earned gold records for the soundtracks to Cabaret and her TV special, Liza with a “Z”.

#Liza minelli song movie

So even if Scorsese failed to bring the movie musical back to the 1970s, the soundtrack showed off Minnelli at her best, further evidence that she was an anachronism trapped in a culture that didn’t know what to do with a talent like hers. But instead of introducing the movie musical to the New Hollywood, it exposed the yawning chasm that existed between the Golden Age of Hollywood and New Hollywood. It’s why her collaboration with Martin Scorsese in 1977’s New York, New York should have been a slam dunk.

Instead of finding a space for herself in the 1970s, Minnelli was an echo of her famous parents. Her father Vincente Minnelli and mother Judy Garland were two of the most important figures of the classic Hollywood musical. So much of Liza Minnelli’s persona as a performer is tied to the Golden Age of Hollywood because of her starry lineage. Though Minnelli was part of the New Hollywood, she couldn’t maintain the kind of career her colleagues like Faye Dunaway, Barbra Streisand, or Jane Fonda were able to due to her immovable link to the past. As a genre, the movie musical was going through monumental changes in the 1960s and 1970s, essentially facing extinction in the face of the gritty environs of New Hollywood, which sought to move away from the idealized, manicured worlds of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Based on the memoirs of Christopher Isherwood, the dark tale was the perfect vehicle for Minnelli, who was able to display her singing, acting, and dancing talents. Though her movie stardom was brief, it peaked quite spectacularly with her Oscar-winning turn in Bob Fosse’s 1972 musical Cabaret. Her particular talents were never captured adequately by film or vinyl, and it’s no surprise that Broadway was the most hospitable to her gifts. The classic triple-threat showgirl, she would have thrived as a contract player with MGM in the 1940s. When looking at Liza Minnelli‘s career, it’s clear that she was born in the wrong generation.