Liza Minnelli slammed a Hollywood legend in her new, brutally honest memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!
The Oscar winner revealed that Gene Hackman, her Lucky Lady co-star, was “downright rude” and “dismissive” of her during filming. The film, directed by Stanley Donen, starred Minnelli, Hackman, and Burt Reynolds.
“I don’t like to whine, but Stanley later shared publicly that Gene was very dismissive of me during the film,” Minnelli wrote.
“It’s hard to go to work when the chemistry is absent,” Minnelli continued. “I think it’s fair to say that Gene was downright rude.”
Set in the Prohibition era, Lucky Lady chronicled a developing love triangle between the trio’s characters. The movie went millions over budget, according to the New York Times, and was mired in difficulties. The late Hackman, a two-time Academy Award winner, confessed that he had a contentious time on set. “I’m going bananas,” he allegedly said. “The work is not satisfying.”
Reynolds detailed the controversies in his 2015 memoir, But Enough about Me, writing, “Gene Hackman is a good actor. He’s tough, and Liza is so boop oopy doop, it didn’t sit well with him. Every once in a while he’d go, ‘Liza, shut the fuck up!’ We’d all have to walk off the set until he cooled off. Gene’s not a bad guy, but he allowed Liza to distract him.” He added that Hackman “wasn’t the easiest to work with,” and that his jabs toward Minnelli had her “fall apart.”
Hackman died last February, at the age of 95. The bodies of him and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 65, were found in disturbing states in their New Mexico home. An autopsy reported that their bodies were “partially mummified.”
Minnelli, 79, has shared all sorts of explosive revelations in her memoir. The legendary star revealed that she regrets her marriage to the late producer David Gest, writing, “I clearly wasn’t sober when I married this clown.” She called Gest “controlling,” admitting that, “In truth, I was his prisoner.” Her marriage to Gest, which was her fourth, ended in divorce just 16 months later. Minnelli never married again.
She also confessed to a passionate, drug-fuelled affair with Hollywood emperor Martin Scorsese. The two began their romance during the filming of the 1977 musical drama New York, New York. They were both married at the time.
“I got lost in amour fou, the French term for a passionate relationship that becomes a self-destructive obsession,” Minnelli said. “The relationship becomes a powerful, hypnotic drug in every way.” She said that Scorsese, now 83, “became a heavier and heavier user of cocaine” at the time.
Minnelli, the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, released her memoir and a new AI-powered single with the same name this month.
