Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story — how an icon is created
Liza's back on the big screen! 

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome -Photos courtesy of Atlas Media
18 JAN 2025 -

While we all wait with bated breath for her pending tell-all memoir, director Bruce David Klein gifts us with Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story. While the documentary is packed with breathtaking clips of Liza performing, it is also filled with never before seen footage culled from 25 hours that were shot during her European tour in the '70s. The clips are raw, intimate and show a Liza far from the diva party girl we associate with that time. An extraordinary segment shows her onstage, singing in that powerful way only Liza could, and then follows her offstage as she wipes off the sweat, drapes the towel over her head, and transforms into a fragile little girl riddled with insecurity. The crowd won't let up, and she craves the validation and adulation, so she transforms again and strides onstage for a knockout encore. Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story is happy to present the performances in all their glory, but it also attempts to find that person hiding with a towel over their head.

Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story begins with Liza performing with her mother, Judy Garland, at the London Palladium. The love, and the professional jealousy, is already in evidence. From there the film follows a loosely chronological format with the accent on the people who Liza regarded as her mentors. Liza herself sits for an interview and we meet her as she instructs the crew on where to place the lights, before cracking up, with that distinctive wholehearted bray of a laugh, at a ribald joke from a gay crew member. It is a little shocking to see her older and frail but, as when I saw her in 2007 doing a casino tour, her sense of humour, her vulnerability were intact. And as onstage that night, she rallies to sing, the notes coloured with age but achieving moments of magic. We see clips of press sessions from the '70s where she was brutally cross-examined and borderline abused. By the time this crew sits with her, she is a pro at deflecting and laughing at herself and her legacy. One clip with Geraldo Rivera haunts, as she, after all the clips where she practically begged to not be asked about her mother, wistfully and tearfully states that she wants nothing more than a family.

Despite three miscarriages and four marriages, Liza did create a chosen family of her own. Many relationships are chronicled—Desi Arnaz Jr, Peter Sellers, Martin Scorsese—and more hinted at. Liza was a serial monogamist and insists there was always love. There were "lots of unique relationships that didn't last very long. It's like a concert, you do a song, throw everything into it and then move on to the next song." Ben Vereen is interviewed and the clip of the two of them horsing around are charming and romantic enough to reduce him, and us, to tears. But the film focusses on the mentors. Liza tells us that she was always "good at picking the right people to be around. I had a good eye. I still do." The first, when her mother died, was Kay Thompson, the author of Eloise which is rumoured to be based on Liza, who emphasized the importance of her circle of friends by telling Liza, "Don't waste time on people who annoy you. It's like an emery board going over your skin." She also taught Liza a lot about stagecraft and performance, and is credited with being a major influence on Liza extricating herself from her mother's shadow.

The other mentors are familiar but fascinating to revisit: Charles Aznavour, Bob Fosse, Fred Ebb and Halston, the later of whom taught her why sequins are practical. All were instrumental, in different ways, in crafting the powerhouse that Liza Minnelli became. Klein does a thorough and clever job of proving his thesis, expertly mixing together archival footage, the new footage, and newspaper and magazine clippings to create a portrait of an artist being born. And interviews. Being a documentary, there are the obligatory talking heads. Some are used to illustrate points—Darren Criss (?), an assortment of experts in theatre and psychology, George Hamilton—but the ones who crop up the most are close friends, with Michael Feinstein (who is also heavily involved in the forthcoming memoir) leading the charge. Joel Grey and Chita Rivera mostly stick to professional courtesies but manage to be illuminating. Mia Farrow, who has been a friend from childhood, offers up a hilarious and scathing assessment of David Gest that alone is worth the price of admission. Of course the subject herself can't quite be trusted—she says, with a straight face, either naively or with Oscar-worthy acting, that no-one did drugs at Studio 54—and all the talking heads also offer insight but from their particular point of view.

At almost two hours, that feel way too short, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story doesn't manage to chisel to the heart of just who is the real Liza. Close friends Arlene and Allan Lazare paint a rosy picture of Liza's inclusion in their family. Feinstein, seated behind a piano, provides the most detailed analysis, presumably because they have been collaborators for 40 years and he is privy to the contents of the forthcoming book. Perhaps the most heartbreaking, and accurate, anecdote is when Liza goes to party and doesn't have a good time. She bemoans that "They wanted her." We'll never know how much of Liza is reality and what is a carefully manufactured product. But should we? Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story gets close and feels very revealing, especially when she begins singing to Feinstein at the finale and Klein cuts to the same song performed decades earlier. But Liza has gifted us with so much of her talent onstage—despite being at one point the only bankable female movie star aside from Babs, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story skims over and mostly ignores most of her film work, this is about the electricity she generates live and in life—does she really owe us access to her soul? Seeing the clips of how vicious the paparazzi, the news, and the critics have been to Liza, one tends to think not. But we're still grateful and hungry for the masterful attempt that Klein has made.