Joel Gray

At an amazing 66 years old Joel Gray is tiny, dapper and very relaxed but, get him onstage (currently playing Amos Hart in Chicago at The Adelphi Theatre, London), and he becomes an animated colossus. I caught up with the star that the New York Times called 'pure showbiz electricity' backstage at the Adelphi shortly before he went on for an evening performance. His first question to me was 'What is QX Magazine? Is it good?' and then asked for a copy. I'd taken the middle section out first. I wouldn't want to corrupt the corrupt MC from Cabaret on his first visit to London.
Did he realise that he had a huge gay fan base? 'Cabaret is very popular and a gay icon, as is Liza [Minnelli]. I hope I am'. Being always associated with just one, long running role would make many a soap star depressed but not Mr Grey. 'I did it for a year on Broadway [in 1966] and then I did the film for three months. Then I didn't do it again for 20 years' What he modestly neglects to mention is that that initial year gained him a Tony Award, the film got him an Oscar and the revival in 1986 earned him a Golden Globe Award.
Every production of Cabaret sees a very different interpretation of the MC and I asked Joel Grey how he had settled on his very definitive playing of the character. 'It was, as all acting is, a matter of trial and error and a lot of research. I looked at a lot of paintings of the period; listened to a lot of music of the period and ultimately I had Lotte Lenya [Frau Schreiber in the film] in the cast. She's a gay icon, too. She would say 'How do you know this?' and I don't know how I knew it. It was just one of those lucky things, the intuition went in the right direction.' The original concept for the MC was Hal Prince's [the director of the first tour] but Grey took it and made it into a symbol of both escapist entertainment and also the decay of Nazi Germany, both light and dark at the same time. When it came to making the film Bob Fosse's choreography helped highlight the MC character's interaction with his audience. Such was the search for reality in the film that each night club scene was shot in German - as well as in the final English - in front of a German audience to ensure that the right ribald reactions were captured on film.
Prior to the revival of Cabaret in 1987 Joel Grey embarked on what he called 'probably one of my most cherished memories' when he was in the New York production of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, the ground breaking drama about the author's fight to bring AIDS to the attention of both the gay community and the medical and political worlds. 'As difficult and painful as it was, you really thought you were doing something that was about something.'
Those of you that know him primarily from Cabaret will be surprised to learn that, apart from 16 films, Joel Grey has nearly 50 years of constant stage work under his belt, yet this is the first time he has graced the UK stage. 'I wanted to come over in 1966, I'd liked to have come over with Cabaret but George M came along,' which gained him a Tony Award nomination, 'so I did that for two and a half years.
Born in 1932, Joel Grey came from a theatrical family and first stepped onto a stage at the tender age of 9 playing Pud in On Borrowed Time. His father was Mickey Katz, 'A very popular Yiddish parodist, he would write parodies of the hit songs of the 50's. They were fantastic. He started out as a jazz musician, a clarinetist and then he was with a band call Spike Jones and The City Slickers [an early novelty record group very popular in the fifties on 78's]. Then he went on to doing his own songs. They were even in the charts. But I never learned to play an instrument.' But what of his mother? 'My mother secretly wanted to be an actress. I think that's how I got into acting so young.'
Last year saw Joel Grey in very illustrious company when he joined the dwindling band of Surviving Winners at the Oscars Ceremony 'All those legends. All I thought about was I wish I had my autograph book, or a bigger shirt tail.' His modesty refuses to let him admit to being something of a legend himself. 'You never see that about yourself, at least I don't' he added waspishly.
And now, finally, he has made it to London's West End (from August 17th for 3 months only) in Chicago, yet another revival but one which has somehow managed to reinvent itself and become a very 90's show. A lot of this is to do with Ann Reinking's choreography 'It's in the style of Bob Fosse [the original stage choreographer] but it's Ann Reinking's interpretation. I played in New York with Ann. She choreographed and played in it. It was remarkable.' From the night in May 1996 when the initial 4 night concert version sold out Joel Grey has been in the thick of the current revival 'Right from the inception.'
Chicago is the story of two women, Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, awaiting trial for murder. Velma stands accused of cold-bloodedly shooting her husband and sister when she catches them in bed 'doing the spreadeagle'. Roxie, however, is up for shooting one Fred Casley, a nightclub patron, in her bed! Amos is persuaded to admit to shooting him, mistaking him for a burglar, until he realises Roxie is taking him for a dope. He retracts his admission and launches into his show stopping song, Mr Cellophane.
I asked him if he ever regretted not being in the original 1977 production 'No, never. It [Amos Hart] was always played as a big, six foot tall, dumb mechanic, and I never saw myself that way.' Being a five-foot-very-little, articulate actor hasn't stopped him making the part his own in this production. 'I like the part and I love the show and I've always wanted to play in England so it's a dream come true.' That's aside from the fact that he is garnering still more awards for his mantelpiece; The Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards so far.
Chicago, on at The Adelphi Theatre since November 1997, is currently booking to January 1999 and also stars Ruthie Heshall and Nicola Hughes (taking over from Ute Lemper).

First published in QX Magazine
© Paul Towers 17/8/1998

Joan Collins

23rd May 1998 was a very special day. Not only is it the birthday of one of my best friends but it was also the day that Joan Collins, one of the last remaining old-style movies stars, reached the ripe old age of 65. Yes, that's right, Alexis has passed the age of retirement, and she can still act most of these upstarts off a court-room floor, as Ransom House and Peter Holm have recently found to their cost.
Many will assume that our Joanie sprang fully formed from the shoulder pads of Alexis Carrington one memorable day in 1981 when she appeared in court against Blake Carrington on trial for the manslaughter of her gay son's lover - are you following this? But what you have to remember is that when she made her triumphant return to Hollywood she was already, at 48, well 'past it' and written off as just another old star suitable only for prime time cameos. But Joanie was never one to play by the rules.
On 23rd May 1933 (no matter what she or anyone else says, that IS her date of birth) Joan Henrietta Collins was born to Joe and Elsa; he was a Showbiz Agent in partnership with the legendary Lew (now Lord) Grade; she was a retired dance instructress. Looking down at his first-born Joe pronounced that 'she looks like half a pound of scrag end.' Never was a first impression so inaccurate.
Not only were Joan's parents steeped in showbiz but so, too, was her grandmother, Hettie, who taught the pre-school brat dance routines, songs, sketches and tricks on every occasion, culminating in the stage debut of Ms Joan Collins as a fairy in Why The Fairies Cried, at the age of three. The arrival of the Second World War and a sister, Jackie, did nothing to dampen the acting ambitions of Joan and at 12 she joined the theatrical school Cone-Ripman. Ms Collins got her first 'professional' engagement, playing a boy, in Ibsen's A Doll's House at the Arts Theatre in Charing Cross. In the fullness of time RADA beckoned and Joanie duly steeped herself in the student life with the likes of David McCullum, Diane Cilento and Gerald Harper, few of whom can claim the high profile staying power of Ms Collins.
A year after entering RADA Joan was offered the lead in a film version of Lady Godiva Rides Again followed swiftly by a part in The Woman's Angle , as a Greek serving wench, and in Judgement Deferred. Pretty impressive for an actress that had only done a year at RADA. Then Rank offered her a contract and a juvenile lead in I Believe In You, and Joanie, aged 18, had to give up RADA or the film. Rank and the film won out and 1952 was the start of everything. Everything included meeting her first husband, 32 year old Maxwell Reed, and, inbetween filming, notching up a prodigious number of appearances in plays around London. By 1953 she was wed to Reed, discovered that he was a self-centred bully and, after just 18 months together, left him when he tried to insist on watching her in bed with other guys. Joan never was to get good at picking husbands.
But, despite her appalling taste in husbands Joan's film career soared ever upward as Hollywood beckoned and she found herself playing a variety of 'bimbo' roles in various films whilst disporting herself around glitzy locations.

First published in QX Magazine
© Paul Towers 23/5/1998

Dorothy Squires (1915 - 1998)

As a child I was brought up in the suburbs of London. For the best part of my teenage years we lived in Bexley, Kent, a mere 14 miles from the centre of the metropolis. In those days (god, I sound like my grandmother!) the village teetered on the edge of the Green Belt and just a few hundred yards away were rolling heathland, fields and very posh houses.
In one of those posh houses lived the woman know to the locals as 'The Wicked Witch of the West'. Ms Dorothy Squires, star of stage and screen. A belter of a singer in the Ethel Merman mould but not someone you wanted to live next to, nor even in the same village.
The tales of her abuse of local tradesmen was legendary; her abuse of the local constabulary regularly landed her on the wrong side of the law. Then, in the early seventies, the house burnt down and she saved only her jewels and a box of love letters from Roger Moore, her ex-husband. And there in her hands were the two things that mattered most to her in the world. Her one enduring love, Roger Moore, and her stage accoutrements.
For the next 20 years she railed against the one and wore out the other. It was only in 1997 that she and Moore were finally reconciled and it was the film star who paid all her hospital bills of late. She gave up the fight on Tuesday 14th April 1998 when cancer finally managed to sink the indomitable Dorothy Squires at the ripe old age of 83. If the gods had been kinder she would have died in her prime and been a legend. As it was she fought her way into her dotage and long outlived her reputation in most people's eyes.
On Saturday 17th March 1990 I travelled down from London to Brighton to see 'An Evening With Dorothy Squires' at The Dome. The legend I saw onstage that night lived up to the caricature portrayed by a hundred drag queens of the seventies and eighties. A tiny figure swathed in organza clutching a flower belting out old numbers that filled every corner of the theatre. Never mind that she forgot most of the words except the chorus; never mind that she swayed drunkenly about the stage and never mind that her language would have made a docker blush. Her star quality oozed across the footlights. Like Judy and Marilyn before her it was her very fallibility that endeared her to her legions of loyal fans across the years. In this, her last ever performance (although we didn't know it), she, as ever, gave her all. Well, all that there was left to give.
Dot, as she was affectionately known to her fans, was born Edna May Squires on March 25th 1915 in a caravan in a field in South Wales. And it was to South Wales that the worn out star finally returned to in 1995, wondering if she could, just one more time, rise from the ashes. But it was not to be. This time she was down, never to rise again.
Dorothy's rise to prominence began, to all intents and purposes, when she left Wales at the age of 15 for London and the fabled gold-paved streets. She trained as a nurse but always wanted to sing. Her chance came when she was spotted performing in cabaret by band leader and composer Billy Reid. Over the next 11 years Reid groomed and directed his protege to stardom on radio and records as well as in panto. However, Reid became ever more possessive and eventually Dorothy decided it was time to move on. When they divided up the spoils of their relationship (they never married. He was already wed) he got the Astoria Theatre, Llanelli and she got the house in Bexley. That year saw her at the pinnacle of her career. Much in demand on both sides of the Atlantic, she often had acts like Morecombe & Wise as her support act.
The summer of 1952 saw Dorothy throwing yet another of her fabled parties and the arrival of her future downfall. Roger Moore.
Moore, at that time still a struggling actor and part-time model (most famously for knitting patterns) was married but that didn't stop them seeing each other and, soon afterwards, moving in together. Moore's wife divorced him and he and Dorothy married in 1953 in Jersey City.
Coincidentally soon after, Roger Moore's acting career started to take off and he landed the lead in Ivanhoe (1958), a TV series on the embryonic commercial network ITV. His star was in the ascendant while Dorothy's was beginning to fade. It was at this time that they decided that having children would be a good idea. Both wanted them but, after several miscarriages, it seemed that something was wrong. Of course, it had to be a problem with Roger. At Dorothy's urging Moore went to see a specialist in America. Returning with a prescription for 'baby pills' they set to again, but to no avail. She still couldn't carry to full term.
By 1961 Dorothy's career was on the ascendant again and she re-entered the charts with her anthem, penned by her, 'Say It With Flowers'. Cresting the wave of popularity she looked down into the trough only to hear Roger Moore saying that he was leaving her for an Italian actress called Luisa. Such was Dorothy's ire that she started on what was to become a lifetime obsession with litigation. Her first foray into the legal minefield which is the British legal system was with a suit against Roger Moore for 'restitution of conjugal rights', an ancient and archaic statute which is still enshrined in the law. Surprisingly, she won and the judge ordered Moore to return to the marital bed within 28 days. He, understandably, refused. Eventually, in 1968, Dottie finally admitted that her marriage was over and petitioned for divorce on the grounds of desertion. However, a year later the News of the World (and why am I not surprised at this) published a totally ficticious 'account' of Dorothy's view of the marriage. She sued and got £16,000. With two wins to her name Squires thought she was legally invincible and spent the next two decades suing anyone and everyone. Usually unsuccessfully. Her issuing of writs finally became so prolific that the then Attorney General barred her from launching any further legal actions without express permission from the High Court.
In 1970, convinced that all and sundry had written her off, she invested the only thing she had left, her talent, in a bravado gesture. She hired the London Palladium for the night at a cost of £5,000 and was not surprised when it sold out within 4 hours. She was back on top and she went on to storm round all the other big venues of the world with sellout nights at the Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall amongst others. All may have looked bright and sparkly on the surface but, beneath the glamour and the glitz her aching heart was gnawing away as she became more and more dependant on alcohol. In 1986 she was declared bankrupt (something she refused to admit) and in 1988 she lost her last possession, her house in Bray. This was the final straw. Despite being discharged from bankruptcy in 1989 and that final concert in 1990 Dorothy Squires was a broken woman.
For the final 8 years of her life she scraped by on the charity of friends and devoted fans until she finally gave up the fight in a hospital in South Wales. The woman was a monster in real life but, somehow she never sold her fans and devotees short, so they forgave her.

 First published in QX Magazine
© Paul Towers 14/4/1998

Chris Quentin

Off the Street and into the Club

When Chris Quentin (Brian Tilsley) left Coronation Street in 1989 and followed his then wife, Leeza Gibbons, to America to carve out a Hollywood career many said it would end in tears. And it did. But Chris has never been one to crumble beneath adversity. True to form he returned to the UK and reinvented himself, turning his hand to 'anything which is to do with presenting, standing up with a microphone. I do my cabaret act, my DJ act and I'm also on the after dinner circuit'.
Prior to getting the part in Coronation Street Chris Quentin (born Bell) had not 'just appeared from nowhere' but had a respectable pedigree in TV and films with parts in Warship, Target, The Pink Medicine Show, The Little Big Show and a part opposite Tatum O'Neal in International Velvet.
For eleven years Brian Tilsley was the constant man in Gail's life and the bane of his mother Ivy's, until his untimely death at the hands of a yob outside a nightclub where Brian was romancing behind his wife's back. His departure from The Street is not something that Chris wants to rake over yet again as he feels that enough has been said in the last ten years to last a lifetime. 'If I'm not careful I'll spend my whole day talking about it. I've spoken about it all my life, now I don't want to speak about that. But, if it's a lovely old lady who comes and speaks to me then I'll speak to her as long as she likes. If someone is a genuine fan and I can see they are really getting off on talking about it then I don't mind at all.'
Nowadays Chris' life is so busy it's hard to see how he fits it all in. He has a full schedule of cabaret appearances, gala openings, after dinner speaking and his regular job as Promotions Manager at Stringfellows club in London. 'I don't like the title of Promotions Manager. I host Friday and Saturday nights. I look after and oversee the actual atmosphere of the club. I enjoy being in that party atmosphere. I invite pretty girls and celebrity friends into the club to create the right atmosphere. I've known Peter [Stringfellow] for about 20 years and he is an old and good friend to me. He gives me a lot of space to operate. Nobody is breathing down my neck saying you're giving away too many drinks.'
Well known in tabloid press for his wild partying days, working in Stringfellows seems to be the perfect place for Chris to end up at. 'If I wasn't working there I'd be out Friday and Saturday anyway. I'd be spending money instead of making it.' Between his stints at Stringfellows Chris has other means to earn a living. 'When I was in Coronation Street, how I made so much money was because I was forever doing live performances, personal appearances, singing with my band.' Nowadays he doesn't tour with a band but he still sings for his supper on a regular basis. 'I now work with backing tracks, it's a lot easier. I also have a comedy Rock 'N' Roll act. I used to do rock 'n' roll when I was in the Street but now I've added a lot more comedy. I get a couple of guys up dressed as Bet Lynch and Vera Duckworth. They steal the show. The audience ends up standing and clapping and singing along.'
Chris also finds the time to do panto every year. I asked him where he found the energy for it all. 'I don't sleep a lot.' I think he was only half joking. 'I eat well and train. I look after myself. I'm fitter now than I ever was. I eat cereals, salads, potatoes, fish, loads of fruit and loads of water.' Looking at him I wished that I'd made an effort when I was younger. 'It's never too late. What will take the time is getting out of the bad habits, that certain lifestyle, the way you live and eat. You can't suddenly change overnight.'
Chris Quentin, one-time hell-raiser and 'disgraced ex-Coronation Street star' has certainly come a long way in 10 years. As he said, it's not happened overnight but, at last, he seems to have found his niche in life and, at 40, is happier, and fitter, than he ever has been.
Chris Quentin can be seen on Channel 5 in Club Culture on Wednesday 15th July at 8.30pm and on Granada Plus in Coronation Street.

First published in Thud
© Paul Towers 9/1997

Ken Kerchaval

If you are hooked up to Cable or Satellite TV then from 15th June, on UK Gold, you can indulge yourself in a fest of the full 356 episodes of Dallas. So settle back with a chilled glass of Sue Ellen Vodka and revel in the seemingly endless story of oil, power, money and shoulder pads; guess again at the bedroom permutations of JR, Sue Ellen, Bobby, Pammie and Cliff Barnes; hiss and boo at The Poison Dwarf, Lucy; long to slap the ineffectual and wimpy Gary round the head; and bake scones to the authentic Miss Ellie recipe.
Who'd have thought that a five-part mini-series originally aired in 1978 would not only run for 13 years, spawn 3 films - the 'Early Years' and two 'Reunions' - but would grip the world to such an extent that when JR was shot it attracted 24 million UK viewers and even made the 'News At Ten'. All this from a series that Variety magazine embarrassingly described at the time as 'a limited series with a limited future'.
Dallas is the everyday story of country folk in oil-rich Texas, the Ewings. Jock Ewing heads the family that owns one of the richest oil empires in Texas. They have autonomy in the business world but are the most disfunctional family since the Munsters. Jock conducts business in the 'old, honest and true' traditions of his forefathers but this is at odds with the ideals of eldest son JR who wants to get what he wants at any cost. The cost is most dearly paid by his long suffering dipsomaniac wife, Sue Ellen. Second son, Bobby, is straight out of the Jock mould and plays by the book. He's married to Pammie (Victoria Principal pre-Dana snip), daughter of Jock's arch rival, Digger Barnes, also father of Cliff. Are you following this?
While JR, Jock and Bobby outwardly played happy families they were tearing each other's throats out behind closed doors. No-one was more happy about this than Cliff Barnes, attorney turned oilman when his father got ill. It was Cliff's role in life to needle the Ewings and try and expose their treachery - he was also Sue Ellen's long-time lover. I caught up with Ken Kercheval on his way to a TV appearance and asked him whether he realised that Dallas had a huge gay following, 'No, I didn't know that. That's the first time I've heard that.'
Sitting in limousine being shuttled across London Ken looks no different from his days on Southfork. Relaxed and dapper he looks well and carries no sign of the early career struggles when he was selling encyclopedias and working as a sewer-line dynamiter to subsidise his acting career. Remarkably he is 67 and taller and sleeker than he appears on screen, Ken looks younger than the Cliff Barnes we all know and love for his downtrodden-ness. Success obviously agrees with Ken Kercheval; asked why he thought the show had such appeal he replied 'It's all that fornicating and drinking. Real southern Baptist behaviour.'
When the original 13 year series ended two TV Movies were produced. Cliff Barnes was in the first but not the second. Some sources suggested that Ken was fuming over his exclusion. 'I was annoyed because in the paper the other day someone had quoted me as saying that I was miffed because I wasn't in it [the second TV Movie] and that was absolutely not true. I was surprised that I wasn't in it. Initially I think my feelings were hurt a little bit. But I just wasn't in it. I watched it and the storyline was about the three brothers so it didn't really involve Cliff. So, it's no big deal and I certainly wasn't angry or miffed about it. It's the powers-that-be that say how scripts go. I don't write the scripts. I don't have control over that and they felt that they wanted to do a story about the brothers and that's fine. Our lives go on.'
With the news that a third TV Movie is on the cards I asked him how he wanted to return to Dallas. 'In the second Reunion Show Cliff got out of the oil business, he was through with the oil business and he was going off to be with Afton and his new-found daughter and star a new life over. He was tired of the oil business and one thing and another. Do you know what it requires for Cliff to come back? It just requires JR saying "Guess who's back in town?". It's that simple. They don't have to go dig me up or anything. Or thaw me out from suspended animation in outer space or even finding me in a shower alive, with anybody.'
The conversation turned to the seriousness (or otherwise) of the series, 'You know, someone mentioned to me, there is this disease Neuro Fibron Atosis (NFA) which is hereditary within the Barnes family. It's not a very well known disease and it is one of the good things that happened in the show because so many people that were involved with NFA wrote in being so grateful that we had brought that to the attention of the public. So there was a question that Cliff had been sleeping with Sue Ellen and then all of a sudden she gets pregnant and it turns out to be JR's baby. The storyline went that he just popped her one night and Cliff had been popping her all the time. The baby turned out to be his. I didn't think that was right. I always thought that the baby should have been mine, that they got back together [JR & Sue Ellen] and I got to go to Southfork every weekend to pick up our son. Which would have really fried JR's brains.'
I'd heard that Ken originally wanted the part of cowboy Ray Krebbs. Would he have made a good wrangler? 'No, that wasn't the part I originally got called to rad for. I always got called in to read for doctors and lawyers. I said to my Agent, dammit, I'm a country boy from Indiana and I always get to play the white collar guys, I wanna play a cowboy. So I went over and read for Cliff and then they said thank you very much, in an exclusive kinda way,and I said excuse me I was told I could read for Ray Krebbs. So they kinda looked at each other and said well, OK, turn to page 40. They were kinda placating me. I read the pants off that scene. I mean, I really gave it the real cowboy thing. I hadn't been a cowboy since I was six years old. I left feeling pretty confident and then I got a call a couple of days later and my agent says OK you've got the part. I said great. But they want you to play the lawyer. I said, well, OK. I had to pay the rent. As it turned out I'm really glad that they'd had a better insight into casting than I did. I enjoyed playing Cliff a lot.
What about Ken Kerchavel, Director? After all, Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy directed episodes of Dallas. 'Yes, I directed the next from last episode. I had been offered the opportunity many years before but I didn't take advantage of it. So, the year before we quit I directed one. The bottom line is that I am not a director, I'm an actor, but I thought what other opportunity am I going to have to direct a prime time show? Nobody's going to knock on my door to do that so I might as well do it for the experience. So I did it. I enjoyed it. But I have to say that Patrick [Duffy] and Larry [Hagman] are very good directors. They have a keen eye, they're head and shoulders above my ability to direct. As a matter of fact Larry, after the show was over, he used to go down and direct some of 'In The Heat Of The Night' and he called me up and I went down and did one for him.
Just because Dallas is, in effect, no longer in production doesn't mean Ken is idle. 'I have a format for a series now, which is in the works. I don't know if I want to be involved in it [acting]. I would really like to go back and do more stage work. I worked in Canada last year for two and a half months on stage and I would really like to do more. I was in New York a couple of months ago talking to Hal Prince about taking over the role of Captain Andy in Showboat. I've worked with Hal before in Fiddler on the Roof and Cabaret on Broadway. I got a note from him that the next time the role is available we'll have you for it. I'd love to do it.
In the early years, before success in Dallas stabilised his life, Ken had an acknowledged alcohol problem. Does it still shadow his life? 'No. Absolutely not. Alcohol has no part in my life. It is a very selfish disease. It is just hiding from your problems. It crosses all barriers, whether you are a plumber or lawyer, rich or poor makes no difference. If you want it you will find a way to get it.'
Dallas returned to our screens on June 15th at 11am and 2pm every weekday on UK Gold.

First published in Thud
© Paul Towers 9/1997

Liza Minelli

Yes, the entertainer's entertainer is back, and not a day too soon. It has been 6 long years since Ms Liza Minnelli has graced these shores in performance mode. It is high time that all those showbiz wannabes grasping at the edge of the stage were shown what a good old-fashioned get-up-on-a-stage-and-knock-'em-dead performer can do. And Liza with a Z sure knows how to knock 'em dead, even better than her mother could.

Somewhere over the rainbow
At 7:58 on the morning of 12th March 1946 Liza Minnelli was born, by carefully planned cesarean section to Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, a big star and a big director. MGM had another twinkle in the firmament of stars that they boasted were more numerous than the heavens themselves. And one of the first of those stars to visit the new star was Frank Sinatra. It was a promising start. But all was not well in the Land of Oz and, while the adult Minnellis struggled to make their marriage work, baby Liza was stuck in the middle. Unusually, Judy and Vincente competed with each other by seeing who could spoil the new arrival the most. Father Minnelli was the most doting of parents and revelled in spending time with his beloved daughter, playing with her, reading to her, spoiling her rotten. Judy, on the other hand, had a very hard time of it trying desperately not to repeat her mother's mistakes. Being a super mega star, always being the centre of everyone's attention, it was very difficult for Judy to suddenly become second-fiddled by an adorable baby. But try her damndest she did. Judy's mother had metamorphosised from mother to manager the minute Judy showed talent. Judy was determined not to do that with Liza.

When little bluebirds fly
From the age of 2 Liza began to be aware that all was not as it should be in her family. Judy was getting depressed, suicidal, drunk while Vincente was stoical. Then the day came that Judy was admitted to a Sanatorium for the first of many 'treatments' to dry her out, wean her off drugs. Little Liza was there, visiting in the hospital, seeing the pain and anguish.
This trauma was, however, greatly relieved by her father taking her to work with him. Imagine, the whole of MGM was her playground. Although never pushed into showbiz it was inevitable that constant exposure to studios and film-making from an early age would seep into her very blood. At 5 years old she demanded of her father that one day he would direct her. 23 years later it really happened in A Matter of Time, the only film they worked on together (apart from a minor carry-on appearance in The Pirate as a babe-in-arms).

Birds fly over the rainbow, why then oh why can't I?
In December 1950 Judy and Vincente finally decided to call it a day and announced their separation prior to divorce. Liza, who was still less than 5 years old, was forced to become her mother's older sister, housekeeper, friend, social worker and divorce counsellor. Her mother was not the type of woman who could cope with life alone so it didn't take long for Liza to acquire a new 'daddy' in the shape of the highly undesirable Sidney Luft. It was due to the efforts of Sid Luft that Judy and Liza ended up in London doing a four week stint. This was to be the beginning of a lifelong love affair with British audiences that has been handed down from mother to daughter. It was also in London that Liza finally earned her wings and realised that she was as talented, if not more so, than her mother.
After spending her teenage years learning her craft in regional theatre, summer stock and drama groups, little Liza was about to knock the world's socks off. Judy Garland, a mere five years for this world, had sort of come to terms with the fact that her daughter was someone to be proud of. Perhaps she finally realised she had the means to pay back Liza for all the years of tempestuous living. Or perhaps it was just that Judy didn't want to do it alone. Whatever the motivation the end result was that mother and daughter finally shared the same stage at The London Palladium on 8th November 1964 and the eternal mother-daughter power struggle that happens in every family was played out before the world. And Liza won, hands down!
Another defining moment happened on that winter evening in London. Liza met her first husband, Peter Allen (born Peter Woolnough in Australia).
Judy Garland had first met Peter when he was one half of the Allen Brothers working the hotel circuit in the Hong Kong Hilton. Ever the fag hag, she immediately liked Peter and even took over managing the duo. She booked them into venue in the UK to coincide with her concerts and then, in true mother style, started matchmaking Liza and Peter. It worked, and on 3rd March 1967 they were married. However, before that Liza fought her way into the show Flora, The Red Menace. The show is now (and was then) largely forgotten but it did get Liza the first of an impressive collection of awards. This time a Tony, her first. Even more important, to Liza at least, was that it brought her into contact for the first time with John Kander and Fred Ebb. It also put Liza in a very strong position to campaign for her dream part, that of Sally Bowles in Cabaret.
Fred Ebb has, over the years, been the sole driving force behind Liza Minnelli's stage persona. He has written songs for her, advised her on staging, been her friend, mentor and collaborator. Liza has said 'I think I am just a figment of Fred Ebb's imagination'. Under his guidance Liza quickly became her own person and not just Judy Garland's daughter.
In between cabaret tours Liza somehow found time to make her screen debut in a lead role. Charlie Bubbles was not a success and swiftly disappeared into the ether. But it left behind it some good reviews of Liza's performance.
By 1968 Judy's behaviour, brought on by chemical abuse, was becoming more and more bizarre and she took to abandoning or ejecting Lorna and Joey, her children by Sid Luft. To avoid their being abandoned newly weds Liza and Peter took the 15 and 12 year olds in to live with them.
1969 was a very good and a very bad year. It was very good because Liza got an Oscar nomination for The Sterile Cuckoo and it was very bad because, as all queens know, that was the year that Judy died and the light went out in the Emerald City forever.
In March 1970 Peter and Liza separated, Peter followed his heart and, on the way to a very successful cabaret career, returned to his gay ways. Liza, on the other hand, had inherited her mother's ex-lover, Kay Thompson, as her closest friend and constant companion, and embarked on a succession of high profile, and often ill-fated, love affairs. By the end of the year Liza was delighted to be told that the part of Sally Bowles in cabaret was hers at the age of just 25. In July 1974 Peter and Liza finally got divorced and in September Liza married Jack Haley Jnr, the son of Dorothy's Tin Man.
In July 1975, with a couple of less than successful films under her belt, Liza was asked to step in at the last moment to replace a sick Gwen Verdon in the part of Roxie Hart in the opening run of Chicago. The five weeks of her run sold out in less than 12 hours. Once finished she then embarked on her long awaited film with her father, A Matter of Time, a resounding flop when it opened in October 1976. By this time Liza and Jack's marriage was showing signs of wear and, in the two years of pre-production for New York, New York, Liza is said to have found comfort with director Martin Scorsese, amongst others.
Despite a very successful career as a cabaret/concert artist, Liza was desperate for another film success like Cabaret. But she wasn't about to sit around waiting for it to land in her lap. There were plenty of other projects to occupy her energy filled days with. With New York, New York in the can Liza was free to pursue other things until she was required for promoting the film. Kander and Ebb, hoping to recreate the success of Cabaret, had been hired to rehash a musical originally called In Person, based on the true story of one Michelle Craig, a well known and respected singer. Retitling it Shine It On and finally The Act, the show was dogged with problems. Kander and Ebb insisted that Liza was the perfect actress for the lead; Liza insisted that Martin Scorsese, her current lover, was the perfect director; Liza also insisted that the costume designer, Theadora Van Runkle, be replaced by her old friend Halston. He redesigned all her costumes at a cost of $100,000, which Liza paid for herself! In the tryouts the production was panned. Scorsese was replaced - he was after all a film director, not a stage director, let alone a musical stage director - and musical legend Gower Champion was brought in to sort out the mess. He pared back the storyline and made it into more of a Liza Minnelli concert than a stage musical. It worked a treat and the show was a resounding success in New York and she won a Tony for it.
By 1978 Jack and Liza's marriage was on the skids. Another year; another divorce and another husband on the horizon. Mark Gero started off as a stagehand on The Act, progressed to being her concert tour stage manager/lover and finally, in December 1979, her husband (No. 3). Still in the euphoria of yet another honeymoon Liza embarked on another stinker of a film, Arthur, with Dudley Moore and Sit John Gielgud. Coincidentally her ex-husband (No.1), Peter Allen, wrote the theme song of the film, Arthur's Theme.
For the next 4 years she criss crossed the globe doing concerts before returning to The States in 1983 to start rehearsals for yet another Kander and Ebb smash, The Rink. But all was not well with Ms Minnelli. Rapidly staring middle age in the face she became more and more obsessed with not ending up like her mother. Under enormous emotional strain she became hypochondriacal and finally checked into the Betty Ford Clinic with her sister Lorna Luft to try and sort out her chemical dependency and alcohol abuse. It also gave her a chance to finally confront her feelings over her mother's death. For many years since she has followed a cycle of clean-up, live straight, slip back, check in, clean up. And then her beloved father died.
After another messy funeral when the various children were at odds as to how it should be conducted, Liza once again threw herself into her work with a gruelling concert tour with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jnr. In 1988 she teamed up with Dudley Moore again to film Arthur II. On the face of it a bad move but, surprisingly, the film was better received than Arthur.
In 1990 Halston, Liza's long-time (platonic) companion died of AIDS; 7 weeks later Sammy Davis Jnr, long time friend and co-performer, died of cancer. That year also saw the death of Liza's marriage to Mark. In 1992 Liza's first husband, Peter Allen, also died of AIDS. Thus began Liza's seemingly interminable round of AIDS Benefits culminating, for many, when she appeared at the Freddy Mercury Memorial Benefit alongside our very own Princess Tinymeat.
However, the worst blow came in 1994 when she was admitted to hospital for hip replacement. But, after a successful operation she was back in in 1997 to have the other one done and, just like the Queen Mum, is happily skipping around like a colt again. Perhaps she will not have the energy to take on another stage role again, or perhaps she will. But her concert-giving career is far from over. As long as she can stand she can sing.
Liza Minnelli will be in concert at Manchester NYNEX on 5th June; Birmingham NEC on 7th June and at The Royal Albert Hall on 10-12 June. Don't even bother phoning the RAH, it sold out ages ago; but there are still a very few tickets left for Birmingham and Manchester. Catch it if you can. I'm going to Birmingham.

First published in Thud
© Paul Towers 9/1997

Robert Llewellyn

The first thing you notice when meeting Robert Llewellyn, star of Red Dwarf, is that he is rather good looking and doesn't speak with an American accent. 'I can put it on. I've spent rather a lot of time over there, which is how we ended up doing it [as Kryton in Red Dwarf]. It was one I could sustain without having to think about it. It was meant to be friendly mid-western, mid-atlantic.'
So, I wondered, how did a successful actor in a long running sci-fi series get to write an off-the-wall reworking of the Pygmalion story? 'It's my first published novel; it's my fifth published book. All the others were non-fiction. It's what I have been trying to do for as long as I care to remember. I think I had my first novel rejected when I was 19 or 20. I've been trying to do it for that long. It was always what I wanted to do; it's really been a combination of life taking over and other jobs taking over. So I'm very grateful now; it's easier if you're over 40, you have a lot more people and things, places to call on. If you get stuck up a blind alley you go I know, I'll make him like so-and-so I met in 1972. You've got a lot more history of your own to call on, which I do. I ruthlessly call on mine. Even if you don't do it consciously, and I do it consciously. When members of my family read my stuff they go But that's your cousin so-and-so, and it genuinely hasn't occurred to me. It was just something that came out. Where it came out from was something that happened to me when I was 8 that I'd forgotten about.'
Although the beginning of The Man On Platform Five (out now from Hodder & Stoughton price £14.99) is very Pygmalion, Robert is at pains to point out that that is where the similarity ends. 'The premise, the beginning, is exactly Pygmalion. It's two people having a wager on whether they can change a third into the sort of person that they want. Except it's two women and they're trying to change a man. The story doesn't follow Pygmalion at all, it's a totally different story. But the original idea is exactly that, I'm not trying to hide that. He's a guy who works in a supermarket. He's got a low-rent job, he's not that fashionable and he's not particularly interesting. He lives with his Mum, he's not married , he's 31 and he's on the Internet a lot. He has all the cliches of a nerdy guy but, as they get to know him they get to realise that there's more to him than meets the eye. It's a romantic comedy.'
Having come from a relatively privileged background only to 'drop out' to live the hippy lifestyle in the 70's, Robert is, perhaps, ideally suited to chronicling the life of an outsider who gets 'inside'. 'Not particularly, but my sister told me that it was a self portrait, that that is what I am like now, which I find a bit depressing. So, in a sense, I relate to him [Ian, the hero of The Man On Platform Five] because [as a child] I didn't do anything normal. I wish I had. I'm trying to do normal things now. He doesn't quite fit into the fashionable world. He works in a supermarket and is very into bulk retailing. He's not really an outsider.' If that is the case then what, I wanted to know, did Robert do in terms of research for the character? 'I spent a lot of time in supermarkets talking to people who work there, trolling up and down the aisles.'
Having portrayed Kryton in Red Dwarf for ten years (series eight is halfway through filming and will hit our screens in the New Year) Llewellyn is, some would say, ideally placed to observe anorak culture at its finest. 'Lots of people put down Red Dwarf fans by saying Don't you get tired of seeing all those anoraks.? Well, I don't, cos I don't see any anoraks. There are definitely Red Dwarf fans who fit the bill. There are some very weird ones, but they are a tiny minority. The vast majority that we meet at conventions are just obsessively keen on the show. You wouldn't be able to pick them out on an identity parade as being nerdy sci-fi fans. They look just like you or anybody. I have to admit, though, that I have been to a Dwarf/Trek convention in America and some of the Trekkies are pretty much on the edge of what we would classify as normal.'
During the 80's Robert was doing a lot of writing, plays, sketches and even a sitcom for Channel 4. 'Nobody remembers that, thank god. It was called The Corner House. It wasn't very funny. Very much sit and very little com. I was also writing a sketches for a theatre group called The Joeys which toured all over the country. That's where my writing really took off. I was writing comedy sketches, monologues and songs which were, 2 days later, on stage in front of 500 people. If they didn't laugh I realised very quickly. It was a great training ground. I have a stack of scripts from that period 10 feet high.' It was at the same time that his breakthrough play, Mamo, Robot Born Of Woman, was conceived. 'Some hippy friends of mine from Amsterdam moved to Los Angeles to do special effects on Robo Cop. I went to LA in 1987 and stayed with them. They took me to the premiere of Robo Cop and it just made me scream with laughter. I then had this idea for a robot that wasn't designed for killing but to be rather nice. A PC, New Man before there was such a term. But the more he observed male behaviour the more of an idiot he became. The actor I'd written the part for couldn't do it and I had to; Paul Jackson, producer at the time of Red Dwarf, saw the play and me, so it was a real fluke I came to be in Red Dwarf. I sort of fell in through the back door and I wasn't even pushing. The first series I ever did, which was series three, ended with a huge party in Manchester with all the people who'd ever been in it. Everyone was really pleased with three series. I was pleased that I'd got into the show on the tail end of it. No-one realised it would keep going.'
Of course, being in a long running series has it's draw backs but being the body inside the rubber mask of Kryton has its own, special problems. 'It's not as bad as it was. It's the time spent in the makeup room was really debilitating. By the time you got on set you were tired and you'd had enough. It was five hours the first series, three hours in the second and now it's about an hour. During production it does isolate you from the rest of the world, wearing that thing. It is very peculiar to stand near someone wearing a square rubber head that looks like a half chewed rubber tip pencil. Some people can't handle it, they walk past you and pretend you're not there. I imagine it's what being facially disfigured is like. Some people are nice and talk to you and some just turn away.' And there are other, more unexpected, side effects when the mask is removed. 'The glue that they use to attach it to my face is so strong that they have to use a special oil to remove it and that degrades the rubber. The mask only lasts a day. It's destroyed every time. When the director shouts Clear I can't tell you how quickly the back gets ripped off. It does get horribly hot under there and it does mess up your thermostat. I feel incredibly hot for a few weeks after, even if it's cold I can walk outside in a T-shirt.'
The Man On Platform Five is the story of two half-sisters, Gresham and Eupheme, who have bickered with each other throughout their life and, stuck in Milton Keynes on a train, relieve the boredom by betting each other that they can take Ian Ringfold, archetypal sad trainspotter and anorak clad mummy's boy, and turn him into a sophisticated man about town welcomed into the beds of the rich and famous. The journey upwards reveals rather more in the trainspotter than either ladies could have guessed and the comic and incisive narrative of Robert Llewellyn keeps the reader gripped in laughter from page one.

First published in Thud
© Paul Towers 9/1997