Did Liza Minnelli deserve her Best Actress Oscar for “Cabaret”?

Yes. She was fabulous. And it was Fosse.

Yes, of course Liza deserved the Oscar for Cabaret.

Diana Ross would have placed second, but Liza still would have won.

Liza’s performance can’t be touched. No one could ever recreate that level of magic.

Plus, she had lost the year before and the Academy always rewards the unfairly overlooked. Ex. Renee Zellwegger.

Always?

Absolutely. Not only was her singing and dancing perfect but she was funny, too.

OK, sometimes.

Liza is a national treasure. The Oscar secures that distinction.

I need to rewatch this movie

I’ve never watched this film but she is magnificent in that clip. The man is a tool.

I'm sure there were voters who looked at it as giving Judy a belated one, OP, but yes, she deserved it.

I desherved my Oshcar, you schtupid piesche of schit.

[quote] The man is a tool.

R10 Which man is a tool?

Yes, she did. It is a powerhouse performance. I don't think there is any weak delivery on her part in the entire story. I wonder if she was a one take actress, or she required multiple takes to satisfy the director. I'm going to look online to see if there's any backstory to this.

[quoke] weak delivery

Sally Bowles shows her weakness in the second half of the movie. She becomes sad and pathetic.

Yes she deserved and earned it, it is one of the best performances in a movie musical period. That being said I love Cicely Tyson and would’ve given her an award just for reading her mail.

....

Her winning her Oscar. Cicely looked amazing!!!

I'm all for Lizsha but what a wonderful film The Emigrants was.

No one element can be singled out as better. Ther are no show stoppers. It's organic and seamless. I'm sure Liv feels the same and is perfectly fine for that whatsit award to go to whatsername.

At that time it must have been sensational, but in retrospect given how she has centered her career around that Fosse Sally Bowles persona, it just doesn't seem like such a breakthrough performance. Especially compared to the other nominees. And I like Liza. She should have also been nominated for Arthur, and New York, New York.

Cicely was pissed when she lost, BTW.

Joel Gray winning over Duvall, Caan and Pacino is an even bigger WTF?

I think she deserved it. Her Sally has pretty much defined her entire career and most actors would kill to have just one iconic performance like that.

I am not surprised that Liza is winning on a DL poll. But, I am shocked that Diana would be 2nd on that poll. Cicely was amazing in Sounder. It was between her and Liza. Diana never stood a chance.

I guess I would also give it to Liza. It is a more demanding roll, requiring more skill, and ability to do highs and lows. Plus, lets be honest, they were really giving it to her to make up for Judy.

Cabaret was such a massive hit.

Singing is acting OP. People can win oscars in part for the artistry of their singing on screen. Sheesh!

Then maybe you all should stop trashing JHud’s win then r24

It was one of the best Best Actress performances ever. Of course.

She was perfect. A rare performance where the actress, entertainer, frenzied party girl, dumb cluck, needy woman, controller and avid friend in Minnelli intersected with the same characteristics in her role.

"Don't come for you," OP? Why would we do for you what men who know you won't do in, on or with you?

At least she didn't blather on like that damn Loretta.

I was molested.

We know.

Didn’t Lorna Luft do Grease 2 because she thought it would make her a movie star and even hoped it would be Oscar bait?

R31 it wouldn’t surprise me…she took that movie very seriously. Problem is…no one else did. Lorna just wasn’t very good.

DIANA ROSS DESERVED it and all of you know it

R20 while Joel Gray winning over those performances was a WTF, it wasn’t shocking either. He gave a brilliant performance. I actually found him very dark and creepy yet mesmerizing in the film. He was brilliant.

He was like a human dummy doll.

They all deserved it, R33, honey.

“English author Christopher Isherwood, who created the character of Sally Bowles for a 1937 short story, enjoyed the attention the movie brought to his career, but he felt Liza Minnelli was too talented for the role. According to him, Sally Bowles was based upon Jean Ross, a 19-year-old amateur singer who lived under the delusion that she had star quality, the antithesis of "Judy Garland's daughter".“

Although gay author Christopher Isherwood was thankful for the boost in book sales due to the 1972 film, Isherwood himself was critical of the film due to its hesitant portrayal of Brian's homosexuality: "In the film of Cabaret, the male lead is called Brian Roberts. He is a bisexual Englishman; he has an affair with Sally and, later, with one of Sally's lovers, a German baron.... Brian's homosexual tendency is treated as an indecent but comic weakness to be snickered at, like bed-wetting."

No, she didn’t.

[quote] demanding roll

Oh, DEAR.

Did it ask to be spread with only organic mayonnaise?

She was magnificent in the role. It was such an interesting time and place, we don't see that world dramatized too much.

Liza played Liza. Diana Ross deserved it but Liza with a Z was Hollywood royalty..

If Diana had won the Oscar, she’d have become even more insufferable than she is today.

Liza deserved it.

thank you Liza, R42

Just watched this on tcm the other night. Movie holds up really well and so do the performances. Liza is phenomenal. I don’t know how Grey best The Godfather boys but Liza earned that Oscar and all of the praise for her performance.

The Godfather boys canceled each other out

Yes, I think she did. Including because she really had been paying her dues working in theatre and having experience working and performing onstage with her legendary mom over the previous decade or so, and showed she had talent of her own and tried really working hard at it.

The other female contenders were all talented too, but I think they hadn't had the relatively longer period of waiting, learning and growing as a performer that Liza had exhibited to that point in American cinema. In particular there's always been this Minnelli vs. Ross Fans debate about why Diana didn't win and deserved to, rather than Liza. Sorry, I love me my Diana, but at the time she was seen as the relatively recently departed lead singer of The Supremes vocal group with a few songs to her proverbial burgeoning solo music career, not in films, up to that point. And Diana didn't "act," so much as emote instinctively and model both her voice and the period wardrobe she was allowed to consult on and have jazzed up. Not Oscar material compared with Liza as far as acting-business longevity, effort and talen at that point still, IMO.

R17. Thanks for posting. Liza deserved to win the Oscar simply on the merits of her Mein Herr performance. It's utterly flawless.

It was a tough, competitive choice with Diana Ross as Billie Holiday, who was fabulous. But Liza's star shone all the while more brilliantly. Liza was born to play Sally Bowles and win the Academy Award. Bravo!

No question about it. Its one of those movies that never lags,and its ending before you realize it because you're just that engrossed. I have to say though,I really loved her in Tell me that you love me Junie Moon. I thought she was just as fantastic in that.

Well the author of the book felt she was terrible casting.

The actress who originally played the role on broadway was much better.

R50 Authors aren't the greatest at casting. Margaret Mitchell famously said Katherine Hepburn and Groucho Marx should play Scarlett and Rhett.

Such an energetic gal...

I wish Diana had found a way fo have out of darkness released as a theatrical movie instead of a TV movie in 1994. The best actress category was so weak that year and the movie and Ross were great and it was one of the best portrayals of mental illness I’ve ever seen.

R54. Oh yes. She was amazing and the movie itself was excellent.

Cabaret is overall a much better film than Lady Sings the Blues.

Absolutely. And Diana is the last person out of the remaining 4 who deserves an Oscar overall. That is a stacked field

I don't think she won just for her singing (or just her dancing).

I was born in 1978 and I first saw Cabaret about 10 years ago, and so I think I saw it objectively without any of the cultural zeitgeist that accompanied its release. I actually went into it with some prejudices against it: I had seen commercials featuring the emcee and I always found him creepy looking, and all I had ever seen of Liza Minnelli were impersonations that make her look barshit crazy.

I LOVE the movie and I was caught off guard by the story and by Minnelli's performance. I really was blown away by her dancing and her charisma, but her magic in that role is more than that. She is ditzy, deadly serious, obviously deeply sad and somehow seems traumatized but forces hopefulness and has an exuberant devil-may-care joie de vivre. I found her unexpectedly heartbreaking and adorable.

I love classic movies. Some rarely mentioned ones like The Apartment and Wait Until Dark are surprisingly great and many famous ones—Casablanca comes to mind—don't live up to the hype for me. But Cabaret far exceeds what I ever expected from it, and I absolutely see Minnelli as a superstar in the role. I can imagine that if she had a Lady Gaga/Beyonce-type popularity in her prime that that may have set her up for being called overestimated but I really don't think it's possible to overstate how perfect she is in this role. I fell in love with her character.

I like [italic]Blues[/italic].

Diana Ross gets my vote.

Didnt some dislike her portrayal because the character is supposed to not be a good singer or performer and Liza is the opposite of that?

Cicely gets my vote.

[quote] but he felt Liza Minnelli was too talented for the role.

Yes - that is tricky - she exudes star power in her performances, that goes contrary to her state (although a lot of talented people don't make it). However, are people going to want to watch a bunch of musical performances done badly. I have only seen the movie once years ago, so my memory is not clear, but remembering thinking I can see why she won an Oscar for this.

[quote]Brian's homosexual tendency is treated as an indecent but comic weakness to be snickered at, like bed-wetting

Again - its been a while since I have seen the movie and only watched it once, but for some reason I was remembering his sleeping with the other man was treated pretty matter of fact.

It is too bad Diana did not give the acting thing a little more time. I know Mahagony and especially The Wiz were flops, but it seems like less talented people than her have had more stumbles, especially after having a strong start. Although maybe she did not want it and preferred focusing on her music.

LIZA. A miracle. An ICON.

Its a good observation that Sally the character is talentless in the literature. But the writer and director made the correct choice to make Sally a great talent. The movie would have been SO GRIM if Sally was 100% deluded about her talent. Or if she was talentless AND knew it, it would be grim as well.

Cabaret bored me, the love story was uninspiring and I guess it's just not my thing, Nazi era musicals. Who knew.

Was Liza going out with Ricky Arnez, Jr? That looks like him she kissed when she won.

Oh dear.

[quote]It is too bad Diana did not give the acting thing a little more time. I know Mahagony and especially The Wiz were flops, but it seems like less talented people than her have had more stumbles, especially after having a strong start.

She's black, r62. That was also going to limit what she was offered, movie-wise.

[quote]Cabaret bored me, the love story was uninspiring and I guess it's just not my thing, Nazi era musicals. Who knew.

Well, there's a new Transformers movie coming next year. That should keep you from being bored at a movie.

Cabaret is one of those movies where every shot is purposefully framed and highly stylized but it never feels artsy or like it’s showing off.

I’m not sure enough people saw Sounder to make Tyson competitive in the race.

As a black friend of mine says about Cicely Tyson: "She was always playing a goddamn slave."

[quote]Was Liza going out with Ricky Arnez, Jr?

No. I was.

Did your black friend offer up how many non-slave roles she turned down, r71?

Nope r73

Sally Bowles stars in the first half of the movie. But she becomes irrelevant in the second half of the movie.

Liza wears the unflatteringly harsh Louise Brooks bob in the first half of the movie.

But she wears a hair style which is more flattering to her facial physiognomy in order to get our sympathy in the second half of the movie. But as I said earlier she becomes sad and pathetic and irrelevant in the second half of the movie.

[quote] how many non-slave roles she turned down

How many roles has Minnelli turned down? She got an Oscar in the 70s but she seemed like a has been I the 90s.

Well wasn't she beating up David Gest in the 90s? And hanging around with Liz and Wacko Jacko?

How much can she be expected to do?

She’s an icon who seems to have made a lot and hardly worked after.

?????, r78?

Cabaret is my all-time-favorite movie. And since I really hate musicals (BTW, I'm a lesbian), that's saying something.

It's a movie that, no matter how many times I've seen it (and I've watched it many, many times), I never get tired of it.

What does being a lesbian have to do with liking a musical?

oh lord

Has anyone seen "Travels with my Aunt", Is it worth finding on streaming?

I dearly love Maggie Smith, but I disliked the book, so I have mixed feelings about seeking it out.

It's o.k. for lesbians to hate musicals, r80. Just don't hate flannel shirts or Birkenstocks and you'll be fine. Anyway, I assume the musical numbers being set onstage makes it easier for you to accept them as they don't require suspension of belief.

I saw it when it first came out, r83 and enjoyed it but didn't love it. But you can't go wrong spending time with Maggie.

True, true R84. That's the same reason I love Torch Song Trilogy, even though it's a musical.

One of my exes, as butch as the day is long, loved musicals, however. She could sing all the lyrics to Oklahoma, South Pacific, Easter Parade, etc.

What can I say?

[quote "Travels with my Aunt". I dearly love Maggie Smith, but I disliked the book.

Graham Greene called it an "entertainment" rather than a novel. It's small one-joke movie which was intended as a vehicle for Kate Hepburn.

I love Maggie Smith too but she was obliged to wear heavy make-up and "mug" her way through it pretending to be ancient. The man playing her nephew is rather ugly so it really doesn't make an entertaining movie at all.

I thought Cicely Tyson deserved the Oscar more. She should have won for the that one scene alone in "Sounder" where she and her children are reunited with the husband/father, who has come back after being in prison. Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli had the showier roles, but Tyson out acted both of them.

I love Liza in "Cabaret," but the award should have gone to Cicely Tyson that year. That was a remarkable performance.

I never miss a Liv Ullmann emigration saga!

Like Diana, Liza waited three years after Cabaret to do a follow up, and like Diana it was in a movie that was maligned by critics. She followed that up with what should have been a surefire collaboration (Vincent Minnelli and Ingrid Bergman), but A Matter of Time was so bad it was never released on video and has hardly even been shown on TV. New York, New York is a fascinating trainwreck that people either love or loathe.

She rebounded with Arthur but couldn't seem to find another good role to capitalize on afterwards.

Arthur was a supporting role.

Liza is a STAR!

She's like Hugh Jackman in that they're both singers who can't get satisfactory movie role to display their talents.

Maggie Smith was sublime in Travels. Had she not won for Jean Brodie, she would have been a stronger contender.

Liv Ullman wrote in her book about attending the oscars that year, and one of the acting nominees having to be escorted out of the auditorium after the show was over because she was so devastated that she lost. But she never named names.

Since Smith was in Europe that night, if it was an actress nominee it was either Diana or Cicely. Or she could have been talking about supporting, which in that case could have been Shelley Winters, Susan Tyrell or Jeannie Berlin. Since Shelley had two, I highly doubt it was her, and she was apparently screaming at Robert Duvall backstage anyway over something.

Not so lucky...

R93, MISS Ross is never "disdraught"! If she's upset, she makes other people disdraught!

If you like Vincente Minnelli in drag I guess Liza is your thing. He never did anything for me

She had an unusual face.

What is written in the book doesn't always mean it is right for the film. Sally Bowles wasn't talented in the book, but the movie works because Liza is extremely talented. Just like in the novel Gone With The Wind, Scarlett is described as not beautiful, but one of the reasons the film was such a success was because Vivian Leigh was extremely beautiful.

There are things that work in novels that just doesn't work in film.

When it comes to Cicely Tyson, she was not as some above mentioned "always playing a slave." The family in Sounder, for instance, were poor sharecroppers but they weren't slaves. In her famous TV role of Miss Jane Pittman, the character starts as a slave but for most of the film she isn't. The only other two projects I can think of where she played a slave was A Woman Called Moses, where she played one of the greatest American heroes Harriet Tubman, who freed herself and went on to free many more. She didn't even play a slave in Roots.

[quote]Scarlett is described as not beautiful

But men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were!

R84 = has a sick obsession

I'm halfway through Isherwood's diaries from the 60s and have lost interest. He was most often disappointed, dismissive, hungover or otherwise in a sour disposition. He was also quite racist. His sole version of Cabaret would have been downright dreary.

[quote]What does being a lesbian have to do with liking a musical?

And once again, the film "Cabaret" isn't a musical. It's a movie with music. The stage show which it's based is. In the original stage show all the characters sing, and for the movie Fosse cut all those songs and only Sally and the Emcee sing and on stage only entertaining the audience. If anyone films the original show it will be a completely different movie.

No one considers"Lady Sings The Blues:" a musical, and it was the same year. Only Diana Ross sings and only onstage, same with "Coal Miner's Daughter"., and "Walk The Line" and over and over. So why should "Cabaret " be called one?

[quote] He was most often disappointed, dismissive, hungover or otherwise

Isherwood was just a hack journalist. Three quarters of his stuff is just reporting on other people and their lives.

His only original "novels' are messy and tedious. 'A Single Man' succeeds because it's so very, very short.

It's a musical, r102.

R102 Because it is an adaptation of a stage musical it is a musical regardless of how it was filmed, unless they had removed all the songs. Though, I would have preferred if they had kept it more like the stage show.

Liza deserved more that Oscar more than any other actor, evah!

It wouldn't have been the same movie, r105.

Wonder how much these rags went for...