Liza Minnelli, Broken Leg and All

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT > CURTAIN CALL

Minnelli, 65, makes her Borgata debut Saturday, March 24. She speaks to Atlantic City Weekly via a phone chat from her New York home.

By David J. Spatz

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Mar. 19, 2012

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Start spreading the news — Liza Minnelli isn’t letting a little thing like a broken leg stand in the way of her debut in Borgata’s Event Center on Saturday, March 24.

The legendary show business triple threat — singer, dancer and actress — is back on her feet after breaking her leg in three places in November.

“I wish I could say I did it dancing, but the truth is that I tripped over my dog,” Minnelli tells Atlantic City Weekly.

So the breaks were set, her leg was placed in a cast for six weeks and Minnelli has been “working on it” and feeling better.

Besides, compared to other orthopedic challenges she’s faced, a broken leg is a relatively minor set back.

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A lifetime of pounding the boards required her to have both of her hips replaced, the first in 1995 and the second five years later. Then, two years ago, she underwent surgery for a total knee replacement.

“I have so much steel in my body that when I go through one of those things at the airport, it [plays a song],” she says with a laugh during a recent chat from her home in New York.

She likes to tell people that “on the top half I’m Dorothy, and on the bottom, I’m the daughter of the Tin Man,” a reference to her famous mother Judy Garland’s iconic role in The Wizard Of Oz.

Yet in spite of those medical challenges — compounded by vocal chord surgery and a near-fatal bout of encephalitis a decade ago — Minnelli, 65, soldiers on. In fact, she said her 2010 knee replacement had a musical silver lining.

Had she not been confined to bed for several weeks after the surgery, she might not have come up with the material for Confessions, her first studio album in years.

“They told me after the surgery that I had to stay in bed like forever, and I thought I was going to go bananas,” she says. So she called her longtime pianist and friend Billy Stritch, himself a fine solo performer when he’s not working with Minnelli, and told him to come to her home with a keyboard so she could at least stave off boredom with music.

Minnelli and Stritch didn’t have a clue they were actually cooking up an album, but they began coming up with ideas for songs and arrangements.

“Finally, someone said this should be an album,” she says. “I wasn’t looking to do an album. I was just trying to find something to do while I was stuck in bed.”

Minnelli’s body of work stretches across a variety of media, and she’s scored the biggest prizes from each. She won an Academy Award for her 1972 performance in Cabaret, an Emmy Award for her special Liza with a Z, a Living Legend Grammy Award and five Tony Awards, including three for best actress in the plays Flora The Red Menace, The Rink and The Act.

It’s hard for her to single out a favorite stage show, recording or TV special, but she does have one movie that holds a special place in her heart.

If you’re thinking Cabaret, think again.

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