Liza Minnelli has a wonderful conversation with Coco Peru and raises $45,000 for LA Gay & Lesbian Center

It’s not for anybody that I would pay $75 to see and have a back row seat.

But Liza Minnelli having a relaxed chat with Coco Peru with long clips from The Judy Garland Show, The Sterile Cuckoo, Liza With a Z, Cabaret, Arthur and more, that’s pretty priceless.

And I had one of the cheap seats! Others were $250 and $500 for people who wanted to sit closer up and attend a VIP party with Liza and Coco which I watched through a window, tear streaming down my cheek.

Ha!

It was a fabulous evening and raised $45,000 for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. The sellout crowd included Lily Tomlin, JoAnne Worley, and Sally Kellerman, among others.

I can tell you this: Liza was in fine form. My photos are crap because I was so far back but trust me, she looked amazing and she was very relaxed, very charming, very reflective and very humble.

It was like watching two old pals have a gab about life and career and what made it all the better is that Liza and Coco (aka Clinton Leupp) really are close friends. Coco shared the weekend she spent with Liza in Atlantic City and flying back with her in a helicopter to New York City.

Some choice bits from the conversation:

Liza still isn’t laughing at the drag queen joke made at her expense by host Ellen DeGeneres: ‘To tell you the truth I was surprised and then a little hurt. We were there to celebrate mama.’

Liza was in the audience with sister Lorna Luft and brother Joey Luft to take a bow before the start of a tribute to The Wizard of Oz which starred their mother Judy Garland.

During her opening monologue, Ellen pointed Liza out in the audience and said it was ‘one of the most amazing Liza Minnelli impersonators I’ve ever seen in my life. Good job, sir!’

Coco said the joke ‘really bothered me. You were there to celebrate your mom and it really landed flat.’

But Liza now says: ‘I thought, “Well, life goes on and that’s it.”‘

As for her own Oscar win for 1972’s Cabaret, Liza said such accolades were not on her mind while making the classic musical directed by Bob Fosse.

‘I didn’t even think about it,’ she said. ‘I was always loving the project and doing the work.’

But on the night of the Academy Awards in 1973, she thought Diana Ross was going to win for Lady Sings the Blues.

‘It was a wonderful time for Diana Ross,’ Liza remembered. ‘She presented (an award) and then went and changed her clothes and I thought, “That’s it.”‘

Liza also talked about the night she picked up her friend Rock Hudson to go to a dinner for Elizabeth Taylor and being shocked by his gaunt appearance.

She and the rest of the world were unaware that the handsome leading man was dying of complications from AIDS.

‘He looked dreadful,’ she said. ‘He was very thin and he physically looked awful. I took him down to the party and Elizabeth said: “What happened to Rock?”‘

It was a month later that Taylor called her determined to do something.

‘She was so mad,’ Liza remembered. ‘She was really furious. She would not put up with any crap. It was so great.’

Peru’s sold out conversation with Minnelli took place at the LA Gay & Lesbian Center’s Renberg Theatre and raised $45,000 for the center.

Miss Taylor, of course, would then go on to spend the rest of her life raising millions for AIDS research, treatment and care.

Liza recalled her Hollywood childhood with Garland as her mother and Oscar winning director Vincente Minnelli as her father. Lana Turner lived next door in Beverly Hills, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall two doors over and Art Linkletter across the street.

And yet it all seemed so normal for the kids on the street.

‘All out parents did the same thing – they got up and went to work. It wasn’t fancy – yet.”

She didn’t think about a showbiz career for herself until she was 13 and saw Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway.

From then on, ‘I wanted to be on Broadway and in the theater.’

She recalled auditioning for her Tony Award winning role in Flora the Red Menace and producer George Abbott saying she was all wrong for the part and someone else was cast. But the part became open again, Abbott agreed to let her be cast and after her first rehearsal admitted to Liza that he had been wrong.

He was as wrong as could be and four Tonys, an Oscar, multiple Emmys and a Grammy Legends award later, Liza is still dazzling us with her talent and her charm.

Thank you Liza and Coco for a wonderful evening.