Impact (Mar 1972)

26 From the film Cabaret nelli made her entrance in a gown slashed up and down to the navel, the woman, disillusioned, groaned to her friend, “Christ! She’s beautiful!” Minnelli’s first film role was in Charlie Bubbles as Albert Finney’s secretary-cum-GirlFriday. Then she waited for The Sterile Cuckoo, when her performance as Pookie Adams won her a Best Actress nomination. Next came Otto Preminger’s Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (‘I don’t regret the experience, I just regret the way the picture turned out.”’). In her next film she’ll play Scott Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda, directed by her father, musical comedy pioneer Vincente Minnelli. (“‘Another dream comes true — I hope.’’) She only does films she wants to do, and to support that expensive habit she plays special engagements in Miami, New York, Las Vegas, Paris and occasionally other big cities, if she gets a deal she likes. One film she did want to do was Cabaret. ‘“I knew seven years ago I'd get it.” She got it. Cabaret in its original form was by Christopher Isherwood, a literate comedy-drama about pre-war Berlin and its people. Leading the pack was Sally Bowles, a desperate, immaturely madcap heroine brought to life first by Julie Harris, who repeated her success in the 1955 film version. Ten years later it became a Broadway musical with a bittersweet score and unanimous rave re views. Liza, Michael York and Joel Grey, the star of the Broadway Cabaret, spent five and a half months in Munich and West Berlin last spring shooting the picture. “Cabaret means a great deal to me. I’m just so proud to be a part of that film...” She reached for a cigarette. The smoke got in her eyes and she winced. “‘Lovely. Just like that set. Bob Fosse wanted the cabaret set to be authentic, and authentic meant smokey. So he built a completely enclosed set, four walls, no walls down for the camera to shoot from or anything phoney. We al most got acute asphyxiation every time we did a number.”’ She was anxious to work with Fosse, a veteran of MGM musicals and a brilliant dancerchoreographer and director. But she was nervous about it, too. ““T rushed to see Sweet Charity as soon as I heard that he and Shirley MacLaine were doing it as a film. But it was awful, so frustrating as a miusical — I was so disappointed. Then when we met for the first time in Germany, almost the first thing he said was that he was really keen to do Cabaret because he had really screwed up Sweet Charity. That made me feel better right away, because he knew what mistakes he’d made and he’d learned from them. “‘What he’s done with Cabaret is totally brilliant, and that’s not the usual sell-the-picture crap, either — I mean it, or I just wouldn’t mention it. I don’t know if the film will succeed or not, but ['m awfully glad I was part of it.’’ She chuckled. “Anyway, it’s probably the first R-rated musical. I don’t see how it can get a better rating than that. It gets pretty rough at times. “T had to do my own make-up for Cabaret — there wasn’t much money, so we had to do everything ourselves and it’s fantastic — my hair is like this’’ (she pulled it in a widow’s peak in front and brought side pieces into a Thirties style) ‘‘and I had to wear long false fingernails” (mainly because she bites her own) ‘‘and Fosse made us dress for every rehearsal. Nothing slapdash about it, I can tell you. We rehearsed for three or four weeks before we ever saw a camera.” They had to shoot some alternate scenes (one for the movie, one less raunchy version for projected television sales) and one of them took two days to shoot, ““because of my hands.” Liza’s hands are in a constant state of trembling, an affliction common to several artists. ““So there I am in my long stuck-on green fingernails in the woods