Cabaret

This week Bob Fosse is clawing his way out of director’s jail with one of the greatest movie musicals ever made: ‘Cabaret’. Join Chris and Lizzie as they discover how instrumental Liza Minelli was in creating Sally Bowles’ iconic look, why Joel Grey cried after he saw the first cut, and which role Bob Fosse might have wanted to take for himself… We also find out why Bob Fosse probably shouldn’t attempt any more backflips, and how a sordid affair in Berlin effectively ended his relationship with Gwen Verdon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

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• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:15Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:54Chris Winterbauer?

  And action. Welcome in, piano new. Welcome to your favorite podcast, full stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone the gold standard for music. Musicals?

• 2:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Movie musicals, at least I would say.

• 2:14Chris Winterbauer?

  As always, I am one of your hosts, Chris Winterbauer, joined by Lizzie Bassett, who once again takes us into the remarkably creative and self-destructive world of Bob Fosse, and I cannot wait. Lizzie, how are you doing today? And what have you brought for all of us at home?

• 2:29Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm doing great. I have brought, I think, one of my favorite, this is honestly in my top three favorite movies of all time. I have seen this movie so many times. I saw this movie way too young to understand what was going on. And it's Cabaret. It is 1972's Cabaret, of course, directed by Bob Fosse, which we will, he's gonna Fosse it up, so just, you know, prepare yourself for that. God love him. But before we get into it, Chris, what was your experience with Cabaret prior to now? And what was it like rewatching it for the podcast?

• 3:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I had seen it when I was younger, probably also too young. As I mentioned in our All That Jazz episode, my dad is a big Bob Fosse fan.

• 3:08Lizzie Bassett?

  He loves Bob Fosse.

• 3:08Chris Winterbauer?

  He does. He was more of an All That Jazz fan. And so I was always more of an All That Jazz fan. And I think I even said in our All That Jazz episode that I felt All That Jazz was the better movie. I actually don't feel that way anymore.

• 3:20Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 3:20Chris Winterbauer?

  So I may still personally prefer All That Jazz because of how insanely autobi- I just have never seen anything quite like it in terms of its autobiographic nature. That being said, Cabaret, I think, is one of the best movies ever made.

• 3:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep.

• 3:35Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's amazing. It is, Liza Minnelli gives arguably the performance of a lifetime. I think Michael York is excellent in this movie.

• 3:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Basil Exposition, yes.

• 3:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, Basil Exposition, as we would know him later, or Logan in Logan's Run. The storytelling is subtle and beautiful, and it uses the music to jarring juxtapositional effect. The dance numbers are, of course, amazing. The cinematography is great. The editing feels extremely modern, as we discussed on something like All That Jazz. I did get a chance to watch Sweet Charity as well, which was Fosse's first movie.

• 4:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Ah, me too. We're gonna talk about it.

• 4:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Which I really liked.

• 4:15Lizzie Bassett?

  I did too.

• 4:16Chris Winterbauer?

  But this movie feels like a quantum leap forward for him directorially. I know, well, I'm sure you'll talk about what it's based on. I loved it. It's amazing. And again, yes, I don't know if it's in my top, personal top three, but I really think it's one of the best movies ever made. I think it's one of the most important movies ever made. It's beautiful and tragic and it's nuanced. I just watched DTF St. Louis on HBO Max, which also gets into-

• 4:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Is it good?

• 4:41Chris Winterbauer?

  I liked it. It's flawed, but I still really liked it and David Harbour is really magnificent. All the actors are very good. And it deals with, there's, you know, explorations of sexuality in that show that reminded me of Cabaret a little bit. Anyway, Lizzie, great choice. More people need to watch this movie. It has only 65,000 ratings on-

• 4:56Lizzie Bassett?

  What?

• 4:57Chris Winterbauer?

  IMDb, which is criminally low.

• 4:59Lizzie Bassett?

  And we know partially why that may be the case. Spoiler alert, much of IMDb's audience is men.

• 5:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I think this movie should be like played in school for everybody.

• 5:08Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 5:09Chris Winterbauer?

  So I'm sure we'll get into more as we get along. I think it's a masterpiece.

• 5:12Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. Well, Chris, I love this movie so much and saw it so young that at 12 years old, in my seventh grade drama class.

• 5:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Which song did you perform? That's the question.

• 5:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Why don't you guess? Why don't you guess which song a 12-year-old girl thought was the one that she could really connect to?

• 5:32Chris Winterbauer?

  So it's not going to be the opening?

• 5:35Lizzie Bassett?

  No, no. And I can't dance. Keep that in mind.

• 5:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Is it Mine Hair?

• 5:39Lizzie Bassett?

  No, no, I can't dance. So surely it's not Mine Hair.

• 5:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I don't know. Which one is it?

• 5:45Lizzie Bassett?

  It's maybe this time.

• 5:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, the solo act. Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah. I love that number. Carmella's favorite piece, I think, was Mine Hair.

• 5:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, it's amazing.

• 5:55Chris Winterbauer?

  The chairs and it's amazing the way they do that. My favorite, I thought Money was-

• 6:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 6:01Chris Winterbauer?

  I think Money's my favorite because I just think watching her and Joel Grey is so transcendent.

• 6:06Lizzie Bassett?

  They're incredible. They were very good friends in real life, which I think really helps their connection in the movie. But the way that he moves is unlike honestly, anything I've ever seen. He's like a doll, like a creepy perfect doll, but he's so smooth. I don't know. I think he's incredible. We're going to talk about him quite a lot over the course of this episode.

• 6:27Chris Winterbauer?

  And the way that they use him is like this almost knowing-

• 6:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, he's like a Greek chorus.

• 6:31Chris Winterbauer?

  He is a Greek chorus, or like an angel watching over, or you know, he's, it's so interesting, and he's so good.

• 6:39Lizzie Bassett?

  By the way, my drama teacher did not choose that song for me. I chose it for myself, which I think should tell you everything you need to know about 12-year-old Lizzie.

• 6:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, it does.

• 6:46Lizzie Bassett?

  But I just love this movie. I loved it when I was younger, I think because it appeared very kind of glamorous to me, and it is in some ways. And I know that that's something that in retrospect, you know, Christopher Isherwood, who we're going to talk about, who wrote the book on which it is sort of based, didn't necessarily love about the adaptations of Cabaret, particularly the movie, because the real Weimar Germany, you know, was not glamorous. It was very poor, especially by the end of the 20s and beginning of the 30s where this takes place. But I don't think I understood Sally Bowles's character in particular until, like, the older I get, the more I understand her and

• 7:24Lizzie Bassett?

  the more I feel for her. And she's, in many ways, she is a manic pixie dream girl, but she is a manic pixie dream girl who exists in real life, if that makes sense.

• 7:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Like, I know people exactly like this. And it, like, hurts me to watch them, you know, continue to make the same mistakes. And I think Liza Minnelli's performance is absolutely transcendent. I'm with you. I think the cinematography in this is incredible. You know, the way that it, it immediately places you as an audience member, with Joel Grey looking straight down the barrel of the camera, it opens and closes on a mirror, reflecting the audience back to you. But of course, you know, the first shot is this very vibrant, liberal, open scene. And then by the end, you see all of the audience peppered with the swastikas.

• 8:15Chris Winterbauer?

  The first one's black and white at first, too, which then hides the red, you know what I mean, of the, the red becomes more noticeable as a backdrop of the swastika, I feel, when they go to color at the end as well.

• 8:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. I think honestly, this might be the best movie in terms of showing the rise of the Nazis. And I was talking to a friend saying that I was covering this, and I said that, I was like, I really think it depicts the rise of fascism. Better than maybe anything else I've ever seen. And she was like, oh, I didn't even know it was about that. I thought it was about dancing.

• 8:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, that's kind of the point.

• 8:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 8:48Chris Winterbauer?

  The way that they explore that through Max's character, that

• 8:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 8:52Chris Winterbauer?

  False sense of control, you know, we can

• 8:55Lizzie Bassett?

  It's incredible.

• 8:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Use them, we can control them. Yeah, of course. It's great.

• 8:58Lizzie Bassett?

  One of my favorite, this is the last thing I'll say, but that scene in the beer hall with Tomorrow Belongs to Me is, I think, maybe one of the most powerful scenes ever put on film. And just the way that it's shot, like Bob Fosse.

• 9:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, yeah, they don't go wide on the boy singing until

• 9:13Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 9:13Chris Winterbauer?

  The very end. And then he does the Hile arm salute, you know, to cap the song. It's great.

• 9:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Bob Fosse was so specific, which is obviously like also, I think, the downfall of him because he was such a perfectionist. But in something like this, the end result is just phenomenal. And that scene in particular, like, you know, it's cutting around to all the different people in the audience and you're watching the reactions to this song. And they're so specific and different. And it's like, it's this understanding of what is happening, communicated without saying anything at all.

• 9:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, shame turns to pride.

• 9:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 9:47Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, in this moment as, yeah, this spurned country after World War One finds a corrosive new form of national pride through the burgeoning Nazi party.

• 9:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. And also one of the first depictions of an openly queer character post Hayes Code as well.

• 10:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 10:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Which we will talk about too. So, all right, we have a lot to talk about. Let's get into it. So first, the details as always, this is directed by Bob Fosse. It was released on February 13th, 1972. It is based on the stage musical Cabaret, written by Joe Masteroff, based on a play written by John Van Drutten, based on the writing of Christopher Isherwood, with a screenplay by Jay Presson Allen and someone else who we will get to, starring Liza Minnelli as Fräulein Sally Bowles, Joel Grey as the MC, Michael York as Brian Roberts, Marissa Berensen as Natalia Landauer.

• 10:36Chris Winterbauer?

  She's really good.

• 10:36Lizzie Bassett?

  She's really good. We won't get to talk about her very much, but she's wonderful.

• 10:40Chris Winterbauer?

  And she's stunning.

• 10:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, she was a model, but yes, she's great. Fritz Vepper as Fritz Vendel.

• 10:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Also very good.

• 10:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. And Helmut Greim as Maximilian von Heine, who is excellent.

• 10:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Extremely good.

• 10:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Gosh, he's charming, but he's creepy and like the way that he shows sort of disgust for the people that he's playing with. He's amazing. And the IMDb logline is, as always, "A female girly club entertainer in Weimar Republic era Berlin, romances two men while the Nazi Party rises to power around them." Girly club entertainer. I gotta rewrite that, IMDb. I'm gonna call somebody. That's not right. Our main sources for today, among many others, are Sam Wasson's biography, Bob Fosse, called Fosse, Joel Grey's Master of Ceremonies, a memoir, BBC's The Real Cabaret, which is an hour-long documentary hosted by Alan Cumming. It's on YouTube. I really recommend that you watch. It's very fun. And then Liza Minnelli's memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This.

• 11:34Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, Liza Minnelli, I-

• 11:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I love her so much.

• 11:38Chris Winterbauer?

  No, she's fantastic. She's so unusual looking. She's such a good performer. She's such a good actress. Look, Judy Garland, I think, is one of the greatest voices, singing voices, in movie history. But Liza, you know, can hold her own. She's pretty amazing.

• 11:52Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred percent. And she's an amazing actor and very funny.

• 11:56Chris Winterbauer?

  She's a great act. She's so funny. So I was gonna say, I came up-

• 11:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Arrested Development.

• 12:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Knowing her through Arrested Development, right? Which, by the way, she's hilarious-

• 12:03Lizzie Bassett?

  She's incredible.

• 12:04Chris Winterbauer?

  And her commitment to the bit is amazing.

• 12:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 12:06Chris Winterbauer?

  I encourage everyone, myself obviously included, to go back and watch early Liza Minnelli. She's amazing. She's a powerhouse.

• 12:14Lizzie Bassett?

  What's her, Lucille Two? Isn't that-

• 12:16Chris Winterbauer?

  It's Lucille Two. She always has vertigo.

• 12:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Yes. Go watch Liza Minnelli-

• 12:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, Buster. Oh, Buster.

• 12:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Watch her in Arrested Development as a follow-up to Cabaret. She's incredible.

• 12:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 12:25Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. So Cabaret, the movie, begins in 1931, so I want to take a moment to set the scene for us historically. So 1931 was an extremely economically and politically turbulent time in Berlin, and Germany at this point was still a constitutional republic, the Weimar Republic, as it became known, for the first time, really, in its history. Now, the Weimar Republic had been established after World War I, and while the 20s had brought some return of economic prosperity following the war, the 30s and the Great Depression had hit Germany really hard. And throughout the 20s and early 30s, these cabarets, or nightclubs, were an enormous part of the entertainment scene in Berlin. And there's a couple- A couple of big reasons why the cabaret is really flourished here. They were pretty LGBTQ friendly and though homosexuality was technically illegal in Germany,

• 13:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Germany was way more lax about it than other European countries. Police didn't really enforce the laws. Also censorship had gone way down after World War I. And all of this allowed these clubs to showcase a very subversive, edgy and of course entertaining form of commentary. Now, in the twenties, the Nazis were mercilessly mocked from the cabaret stages, as was their antisemitism, which I think you see in the movie. Like when they are doing the goose stepping and he's dressed as a woman and they change the hats like.

• 13:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, even early on, when they kick out the young boy who's tithing effectively the Nazi youth member and it's, he's a nuisance, right?

• 13:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 13:45Chris Winterbauer?

  And then obviously the slow encroachment very drastically changes by the end of the film.

• 13:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, and it also should be noted that many, many of the performers and songwriters working at these cabarets were Jewish. And it's interesting because we watched this with David's parents who are Jewish. And his mom could not believe that Joel Gray, who of course is Jewish in real life, took the role of the MC because I think the way that it was presenting to her was that it was such sort of like a horrifically racist role. I understand why she saw that. I don't agree with it, especially learning more about the historical context. It's actually very period appropriate that he was Jewish. And I think you can read a lot of the numbers as critical of the Nazis. They work on multiple levels, which I think is something that works so well about this movie. Because you're kind of watching the audience's reaction more than anything else, right?

• 14:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Like, for example, with the If You Could See Her Through My Eyes number.

• 14:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Right, which I think if you just take it at face value, you could say like, oh, this is something grossly antisemitic. But I think what it really is, is it's a Jewish performer taking the slur and then owning it, controlling it and throwing it back at the Nazis, you know, in that scene.

• 14:49Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree, which actually, if you watch the BBC documentary, they actually talk about some songs that do something very similar. And I think that this is playing on that exactly. But it is also absolutely, you know, playing on the audience's reaction and who's gonna laugh? You know, who's gonna be horrified? Who's gonna laugh? How does the audience react?

• 15:08Chris Winterbauer?

  And there was a belief in. Nazism, they had a word for it. It was called Untermenschen. I'm reading a book on Operation Paperclip right now, and Untermenschen meant subhuman. And they actually believed that not just Jews homosexuals, so obviously the queer community, Poles, Slavs, Russians, they were all, they literally believed they were not fully human. They had literature about how they would present as human, but they weren't, I mean, it was, it was mind boggling when you go back to it.

• 15:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's far stranger and more like juvenile and weird than I think we like to think about it. Also, one little not so fun fact, but in the original Broadway production, the final line of that song where he says, you know, she wouldn't look Jewish at all. I think they wouldn't let them use that word. The producer was like, you can't do this, like it's too much. And so they replaced it with a Yiddish word, which I think is Miskait. And they were trying to kind of soften the blow a bit. So Fosse actually reinstated that originally intended lyric, which I think like, you gotta, if you're gonna do it, don't do it halfway, you know, go all the way with it.

• 16:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, especially because that scene buttresses Fritz coming clean about his Jewish identity and then having a Jewish wedding with Natalia.

• 16:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Chris Winterbauer?

  In maybe the most powerful scene, one of the most powerful scenes of the movie.

• 16:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Also, that whole plotline, which is not present in, well, we'll talk about it a little bit. That Natalia does exist in the original writing, but neither of those characters are in the play, as far as I understand. And I think that whole storyline is kind of a creation of the movie, which is sort of amazing. Also, all the best and most successful performers were heavily political, as we're discussing, and tended to be very liberal. But as Germany entered the 30s and saw the massive economic downturn, the Nazis began to get a real foothold and suddenly Berlin was not a safe space for so many of the artists who had flourished in the cabaret scene, again, many of whom were gay, Jewish, Catholic, communist.

• 16:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, Catholic too, we should mention.

• 17:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, big time. Also Romani people as well. Because the cabarets were a place where dissent was celebrated, they were heavily targeted by the Nazis, who began spying on the clubs from the audience and then systematically shutting them down. They kept a few open, but these were basically meant to function as propaganda machines. And many, many cabaret performers were sent to concentration camps and never seen again. The Nazis didn't officially take power until 1933, so as you see in the movie, Berlin was really teetering on the precipice of just disaster here. And Cabaret shows that slide into chaos, as I said, I think better than any other movie. Now, on May 10th, 1933, Nazi officials and 40,000 enthusiastic followers, students and professors, created

• 17:42Lizzie Bassett?

  a massive bonfire in Berlin's Opera Square, where they burned any literature that they deemed un-German. Chris, I think this is exactly what you're referencing. It was anything by a Jewish author, communist, even anyone particularly liberal, or just books celebrating the Weimar Republic. They burned it all. So Karl Marx, Einstein, Brecht, everybody.

• 18:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, there was this obsession with, you know, ancient Aryan roots and Teutonic lineage and-

• 18:05Lizzie Bassett?

  You guys are nerds.

• 18:08Chris Winterbauer?

  It's weird.

• 18:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Bad nerds.

• 18:10Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, with Himmler, it ties into the occult and all that. It's very odd.

• 18:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. So, among the books and documents that were being burned were the works of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, founder of the world's first gay rights organization and the Institute for Sexual Science, which had been engaging in some pretty pioneering research into sexuality. And a young British man who had actually rented living quarters attached to that institute at one point stood in the crowd, watching Hirschfeld's works burn. His name was Christopher Isherwood, and he quietly uttered one word as he watched: shame. Now, Isherwood came from a very rich, well-to-do British family. He attended Cambridge but was kicked out for writing jokes as the answers to all of his exams, and so he began writing novels. And in 1929, he went to visit his old friend, the poet H.W. Auden, who was living in Berlin. Now, Auden and Isherwood were both gay, and it was in Berlin that Isherwood really got

• 18:56Lizzie Bassett?

  to start exploring his sexuality, really casting off the constraints of hoity-toity English high society and throwing in his lot with the misfits of the German cabaret scene, including a woman named Jean Ross, a left-wing journalist who would later partner up romantically with fellow journalist Claude Cockburn. Does the name ring a bell?

• 19:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, of the-

• 19:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Olivia Wilde Cockburns?

• 19:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, it's Coburn, Lizzie.

• 19:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, by the way, though, to the folks who said, why would she change her name? It's pronounced Coburn. We illustrated that perfectly because us dumb Americans all pronounce it Cockburn. Because we're a bunch of cocks.

• 19:32Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right.

• 19:32Chris Winterbauer?

  There's your answer.

• 19:34Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. Sorry. Yes. It is the Olivia Wilde Coburn connection. I think Olivia Wilde is actually her step granddaughter, I think.

• 19:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, cool.

• 19:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Now, Gene Ross was eventually later, much later, revealed to be the inspiration for Fräulein Sally Bowles. She was not super thrilled by this because it really kind of reduced her talent and cultural impact. And also, Isherwood exposed an abortion that he had helped her cover for. And then the procedure almost killed her. So not the kind of thing you really want someone else to memorialize or make public for your very uptight family. But anyway, Isherwood was having a grand old time. However, he pretty quickly realized that Germany was slip slide in its way into total disaster. And in 1932, he began dating a young German man named Heinz Niedermeyer. And the two fled Germany in 1933. Now, his lover was denied entry to England.

• 20:23Lizzie Bassett?

  So the pair bounced around Europe until Niedermeyer was sadly captured by the Gestapo in 1937. I do want to note, Isherwood was obviously explicitly anti-Nazi. He was very pro-gay rights. He is an important and wonderful writer. However, he was at least somewhat anti-Semitic himself. It's something that often gets downplayed about him, but it's definitely present in his journals, which I believe are actually at the Huntington Library, Chris. And even to a certain extent in Goodbye to Berlin, which maybe just goes to show how prevalent antisemitism was at the time, even outside of Germany.

• 20:56Chris Winterbauer?

  I think that's important context. You know, Erin Tracy in the podcast on Roald Dahl did, I think, a very good job. He brought on a guest who made the point that, you know, Dahl's antisemitism, as kind of grotesque as it was, was really like a baseline thinking for a lot of people, you know, in the United Kingdom at the time.

• 21:15Lizzie Bassett?

  I think I have a harder time with it. Well, maybe not a harder time with it. I have more difficulty understanding it with Isherwood because he was in Berlin as the Nazis were taking power. But it is an interesting window.

• 21:25Chris Winterbauer?

  The original conspiracy theory.

• 21:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. And it's a good window, I think, into why it was so easy for the Nazis to use it to gain a foothold.

• 21:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 21:37Chris Winterbauer?

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• 22:21Chris Winterbauer?

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• 22:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Today's episode is sponsored by Mars. You might not realize it, but Mars is behind so many of your favorite Halloween treats. And I'm not just talking about your candy bowl. Yes, Mars makes iconic candies like M&M's, Snickers, Starburst, my personal favorite, and Skittles. But they also have salty snacks, easy-to-make meal options, and even treats for your pets. There's something for everyone to enjoy this spooky season. David and I are too old to trick or treat, so we've been getting creative with our Halloween movie night spreads for our friends. I put together a char bootery board with some classic sweets like Rice Krispie treats and peanut butter M&M's. And because I'm a salty girl, I added some Pringles and my all-time favorite snack, Cheez-It crackers. Scary delicious. For Halloween night, I'm making a spooky seven-layer dip using Ben's Original Ready Rice because there is nothing that my kid loves more than a rice and bean dip. And don't think I forgot about our dog, Q. Mars knows he needs a celebration too,

• 23:27Lizzie Bassett?

  so I put together a special Halloween treat jar packed with Greenie's Original Pumpkin Spice Dental Chews and Pedigree Tasty Biscuits. He's agreed to share with the neighbors because he's a very good boy. Find Mars products in a retailer near you or on Instagram at MarsGlobal, M-A-R-S-G-L-O-B-A-L, where you can shop everyday favorites and limited-time Halloween offerings.

• 23:47Lizzie Bassett?

  We recently moved into a new house and realized that our bedding desperately needed a refresh. So I took my own advice. And before spending all our money on a luxury bedding brand, I went to Quince. And let me tell you, we now have the crispest, coolest, most beautiful, organic percale sheets and duvet covers that we've ever had. I've bought quite a bit of bedding from Quince, and it's all super high quality and has lasted for years without paying the brand markup. Now, obviously, you shouldn't stop at bedding. You should also refresh your closet with elevated everyday essentials that you will wear over and over again. Think cozy Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at 50 bucks, cashmere scarves, responsibly sourced down jackets, and 14 karat gold jewelry. I genuinely love Quince, and I shop here for everything. I walked out the door the other day and realized

• 24:29Lizzie Bassett?

  every single thing I was wearing was Quince, down to my socks. Did I mention their socks are great, too? Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was what went wrong. It's the best way to support the show.

• 24:55Speaker 02

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• 25:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, Isherwood would eventually head to America, first New York City, and then settling in Los Angeles, where he remained and became a screenwriter, and also continued writing novels, including A Single Man, which would later become Tom Ford's debut film.

• 25:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I really liked that movie.

• 25:43Lizzie Bassett?

  I did, too.

• 25:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 25:44Lizzie Bassett?

  In 1939, he published a novella called Goodbye to Berlin, which was a series of interconnected stories spanning about 1930 to 1933, aka his time in Berlin. And of course, the most famous character featured in the novel was- Sally Bowles, as well as Natalia Landauer and a rich playboy named Clive, who I think is eventually what they then pull as the inspiration for Maximilian von Heine in the movie. And in 1950, Isherwood's buddy, Doty Smith, who wrote 101 Dalmatians, challenged another friend, John Van Drutin, to write a play based on Goodbye to Berlin. Van Drutin did it and called it I Am a Camera, which is a reference to the opening lines of Goodbye to Berlin, which are, "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." Which I think they also captured really well in the Michael York

• 26:28Lizzie Bassett?

  character in this movie as well. The play opened in 1951 starring Julie Harris as Sally Bowles. She won a Tony for this. In 1955, it was adapted into a film of the same name, also starring Julie Harris. Now, probably goes without saying, but neither this play nor the film made any mention of Isherwood's character being gay, although neither does Goodbye to Berlin, and pretty much erased any of the queer context that does exist in the novel. In the early 60s, Broadway super producer Hal Prince, who we discussed back in our Cats episode, acquired the rights to both I Am a Camera and Goodbye to Berlin with the intention of turning it into a musical. And Prince did this because he saw a really ominous parallel between the rise of Nazism and the fury over the civil rights movement and rampant racism brewing at that point in America. Now, he had already produced The Pajama Game and

• 27:13Lizzie Bassett?

  West Side Story, so he definitely knew what he was doing. But this was a risky venture. As Vulture pointed out, this was the era of Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly. And Hal Prince is like, "I want to turn Goodbye to Berlin into an allegory for American racism."

• 27:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. I know Rodgers and Hammerstein did some more interesting stuff than maybe we credit them for, but yeah, it's, it's

• 27:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Very different.

• 27:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's very different, tonally.

• 27:34Lizzie Bassett?

  And I think it's, you know, it's a distinction between the plays that were being produced in the late 50s and the musicals. The musicals were very bright, happy, you know, like Sound of Music is a great example of, of what was coming out. There were plays like, you know, Waiting for Godot, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, these things that were starting to deal with darker material, but musicals had not made that tonal shift yet at all.

• 27:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 27:57Lizzie Bassett?

  So Prince hired playwright Joe Masteroff and songwriting duo John Cander and Fred Ebb to write the musical. And Cander and Ebb were quite new on the scene at this point. Their previous work Flora the Red Menace had gone under after two months, though it did win its star, Liza Minnelli, a Tony Award for her Broadway debut. She was 19, by the way.

• 28:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 28:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Oh, and by the way, if anybody doesn't know, Candor and Ev will go on to write Chicago and many more. They're wonderful. According to Candor, on the first day of rehearsals, Prince marched in and plastered a picture from Life magazine of a black couple walking into a housing development while white residents openly laughed at them and said, "That's what our show is about." Prince was also quite responsible for the character of the MC. He said, quote, "I had hung out in a club called Maxims in the basement of a bombed-out church, and there was a little MC with lipstick and eyeshadow and false eyelashes, and he'd tell terrible tacky jokes, and there were three very chunky girls in butterfly costumes dancing around him, and one drunk at the bar and one asleep at the table, and me in uniform just thinking I'd been reborn and gone to heaven." I love that.

• 29:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know why, like, the MC, I feel like when they created the ladybug character in A Bug's Life, they like partially based the design on Joel Grey's MC. I don't know. That's just my thought.

• 29:10Lizzie Bassett?

  That's so funny. I love it. Initially, Prince was worried because he had two totally different shows. He had a musical comedy, basically, with all of the MC's numbers, and then a pretty grim political drama. And this led to the initial separation of really containing the MC to the Kit Kat Club. Not as separate as what you see in the movie, which we will get to, because songs were performed both in the Kit Kat Club and then, of course, outside the club when the characters would burst into song. Now Candor and Ev were writing Sally Bowles' songs with one person in mind. Any guesses, Chris? They just worked with her.

• 29:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, Liza Minnelli?

• 29:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Liza Minnelli, that's right.

• 29:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, okay, yeah.

• 29:49Lizzie Bassett?

  According to Liza herself, the title song was, quote, "originally written for me because I was supposed to do the play." And then they decided to make the boy American and the girl English. She auditioned 14 times, but Hal Prince and apparently Christopher Isherwood agreed that she was not right for one big reason. Any guess why?

• 30:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know. My guess was, like, she's kind of unusual-looking. And then, like, that was just my guess, was it was something maybe about appearance.

• 30:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Not at all.

• 30:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, great. I'm glad.

• 30:15Lizzie Bassett?

  She's too good at singing.

• 30:17Chris Winterbauer?

  That well.

• 30:18Lizzie Bassett?

  It makes sense.

• 30:19Chris Winterbauer?

  That's interesting. It's kind of fair.

• 30:20Lizzie Bassett?

  It is fair. When you think about who these characters were and the world that they were in, and Isher was, you know, point about the fact that this was not a very glamorous, luxurious.

• 30:30Chris Winterbauer?

  She's supposed to actually not be a star. The fact that she says that she could be a movie star is supposed to be patently absurd.

• 30:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 30:36Chris Winterbauer?

  But of course, Liza Minnelli is like so magnetic.

• 30:38Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 30:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow, she could make it.

• 30:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, which I like in the movie version.

• 30:41Chris Winterbauer?

  I do too.

• 30:42Lizzie Bassett?

  But that was not the original intention. Minnelli was also well on her way to becoming a star in her own right. According to her memoir, "Kids, wait till you hear this." She said, "I lost out because there was so much happening in my career at the time, and the production company felt no one would associate Sally with me at all." Now, in case anyone doesn't know, Liza Minnelli is the daughter of director Vincent Minnelli and, of course, Judy Garland. Liza and Judy had a very close but complicated relationship. She did remain close to her father as well, but it should be noted that it's basically confirmed Minnelli was a closeted gay man. Gonna be a lot of closeted gay men over the course of this episode. Liza grew up very much in the public eye, and in the 60s, she'd started joining her mother onstage for musical numbers in the Judy Garland Show.

• 31:23Lizzie Bassett?

  And in 1965, as we said, she made her Broadway debut at 19, with Judy Garland in attendance in the audience. And Garland turned to costume designer Donald Brooks and said, "Can you believe that's Liza up there? We did that. You got her up there looking the way she does, and I got her up there because I'm her mother and conceivably her inspiration. The heck with her motivation." In case you can't tell, Judy loved her daughter, but it also seems that she was, at times, in competition with her as well.

• 31:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, Minnelli cared for her mother during her struggles with addiction and eventual health decline. And according to Liza's memoir, quote, "At 13, I was my mother's caretaker. A nurse, doctor, pharmacologist, and psychiatrist rolled into one. It was a crazy balancing act. I'd give Mama drugs every day so she could function. Then I'd watch to make sure she was okay. I lost count of the times I called doctors to say she'd run out of pills." And Liza was only 23 years old when Judy died at 47 in 1969. Of her mother's death, Minnelli said, quote, "Elevator men were falling around me weeping. I was the only one standing up, and I got so mad at everybody. I remember yelling at someone, 'You- cried for her when she sang "Over the Rainbow and the Man That Got Away." Now at last, she's at peace. Smile, for God's sake.

• 32:33Lizzie Bassett?

  So with Liza's star steadily on the rise and her voice being, as you pointed out, what it is, Hal Prince instead went with British actress Jill Hayworth for Sally Bowles, who had no prior musical experience. And the show was originally called Welcome to Berlin, but they couldn't sell any tickets because Berlin and Germany were still too politically charged at that point.

• 32:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 32:52Lizzie Bassett?

  So that's when the title Cabaret came in.

• 32:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Welcome to East Berlin.

• 32:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Right, right.

• 32:56Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a title of the Cold War. It's divided.

• 32:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm-hmm. The original run of Cabaret was from 1966 to 1969, and it did gangbusters. It won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Composer for Candor, Lyrics for EB, Best Direction by Hal Prince, and Best Supporting Actor for who, Chris?

• 33:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Joel Grey.

• 33:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Joel Grey, that's right.

• 33:17Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. Yes, he was part of the original production.

• 33:18Lizzie Bassett?

  He's the only part of the original production to enter the film, which we will discuss.

• 33:22Chris Winterbauer?

  And also, the song that you mentioned earlier on, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me", that was written for the, that was in the musical, right?

• 33:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Correct, yeah.

• 33:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Originally, yeah. And I just want to mention, like, again, the music is so good.

• 33:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. There's not one bad song in this.

• 33:36Chris Winterbauer?

  No, there's not. And like you mentioned, that song, it evolves from, you know, a somewhat stirring national anthem to a chilling expression of nationalist fascist sentiment in, you know, two and a half minutes.

• 33:50Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 33:50Chris Winterbauer?

  It's an amazing piece of mu- this, the music is so good in the show. I just wanted to point it out.

• 33:55Lizzie Bassett?

  It's incredible. And that song is one of my favorites in the entire piece. And it's so good that I, for a long time, I thought that it must have been an existing German song because it sounds so right.

• 34:05Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought that too. I looked it up afterwards and I was stunned to find that it's not. And I'm also glad that wasn't the one you performed for your class.

• 34:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, at least I got that right.

• 34:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Can you imagine?

• 34:20Chris Winterbauer?

  I can. It would have been very funny.

• 34:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, Cabaret is sort of always building on iterations of itself. So while later productions, stage productions either hint at or do explore Cliff Robertson, which is the Brian Roberts character in the movie, they explore his bisexuality. The original stage production did not at all.

• 34:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 34:39Lizzie Bassett?

  So in 1968, The New York Times announced that Cinerama had purchased the film rights to Cabaret. However, they withdrew that deal later that year and in swooped ABC Pictures financing, Allied Artists distributing and producer Cy Fuer. Now Fuer had become basically a household name, thanks to hitting it big with his business partner, Ernest Martin, on Broadway with shows like Guys and Dolls. But the two had a reputation for being pains in the ass. Theater director George Kaufman described them as Hitler rolled into two.

• 35:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Jesus.

• 35:09Lizzie Bassett?

  The way people threw around Hitler within like 15 years of Hitler is alarming.

• 35:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 35:16Lizzie Bassett?

  But Cabaret marked Cy's first solo venture into film production. Now, while everything seemed to be going swimmingly for the rest of the Cabaret team, 1969 was not a great year for Bob Fosse. If you need more in-depth background on the legendary choreographer, please go back and listen to our episode on All That Jazz, which is, of course, his semi-autobiographical film, features our lovely guest, Demi Adjeuwibe. But if you don't know who Bob Fosse was, he started off as an actor and dancer, but swiftly transitioned into an all-star choreographer with his very own signature style. Chris, how would you describe it?

• 35:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Shoulder roll, jazz hands, heavy, like, I don't know. I mean, it's just extremely...

• 35:54Lizzie Bassett?

  It's very isolated. It's very like body parts in isolation.

• 35:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's almost like a precursor to pop and lock in a way.

• 36:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally, yes.

• 36:01Chris Winterbauer?

  He's amazing. He's kind of the, if Busby Berkeley was the first big choreographer-turned-director in Hollywood, I feel like Bob Fosse was the next, you know?

• 36:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, 100%.

• 36:13Chris Winterbauer?

  The biggest choreographer in 30 years.

• 36:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Choreographed The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He also did start directing Broadway shows to great acclaim, and he had directed the Broadway production of Sweet Charity, but 1969 marked his feature film debut with the film version of Sweet Charity. Charity. Now, Chris, you and I both watched this.

• 36:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I'd never seen it before.

• 36:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I hadn't either. It's, it's really uneven, but it has its moments.

• 36:38Chris Winterbauer?

  It has some really high moments and Shirley MacLaine's really good, I think, in the lead.

• 36:43Lizzie Bassett?

  You know, she does not work for me in this. She feels like a Sally Bowles prototype.

• 36:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, no, I think the way the character's written, I completely agree. I think she does a good job with it, but I think the character feels.

• 36:53Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't think it's her fault at all.

• 36:54Chris Winterbauer?

  That's my point. I don't think they land the depth that they need with the character. She feels so flighty, so manic pixie, as you mentioned. It feels feather light in a way that Cabaret does not.

• 37:04Lizzie Bassett?

  But you see a lot of the seedlings of Cabaret in this, especially with the shots. You know, there's that number, If You Could See Me Now, and she's shot from behind with the light streaming up. It's very maybe this time.

• 37:17Chris Winterbauer?

  She works the girly show. You know, it's the same sort of vibe. It's just in New York City. It's a much lighter approach to the material.

• 37:24Lizzie Bassett?

  The dance numbers are bonkers and I would say you don't need to watch the whole thing to get a sense of it. But if you would like to get a sense of what the scale that he was trying to achieve with this movie, go search the rich man's frug on YouTube and watch that number. It is nuts.

• 37:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 37:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Costumes by Edith Head are wonderful. It feels like an Austin Powers number, to be honest.

• 37:45Chris Winterbauer?

  It does.

• 37:48Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what it feels like. Yes.

• 37:50Lizzie Bassett?

  By the way, did you know a lot of Beyonce's choreography pulls from Bob Fosse? And the Get Me Bodied video is specifically that number from Sweet Charity.

• 37:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, interesting.

• 37:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Single Ladies, of course, as well.

• 38:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I didn't know that. I was thinking of Single Ladies when you mentioned it a little bit.

• 38:03Lizzie Bassett?

  It definitely does. That one does as too. Now, we may cover that film at some point because it was a disaster.

• 38:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Lizzie Bassett?

  It bombed both critically and commercially. It had a $20 million budget and an $8 million box office. Which is pretty bad.

• 38:18Chris Winterbauer?

  It's very long, too. It's almost three hours.

• 38:20Lizzie Bassett?

  It's really long. And Bob Fosse took the failure personally. He felt it was completely his fault. So he set out to find a project that would really recover his image ASAP. But unfortunately, he did not have an agent because in 1962, his old agency had dropped all of its clients when it bought Universal Pictures. Antitrust laws said you need to pick a lane, basically. And so this was MCA and they dropped the agency side and Bob and all of their clients along with it. Now, he didn't sign with another agent because he was like, I'm Bob Fosse. At this point, I don't need an agent. I have my reputation. But now his directorial debut was a bona fide flopper and he was really regretting that decision. So he could reach out to some of his Broadway pals, of which Cy Fuhr was one. But what he wanted to do

• 39:02Lizzie Bassett?

  was direct another movie. So in April of 1969, a week after Sweet Charity released and bombed, he signed with CMA. And he lay low for a while, working on a few screenplays, until his agent connected him with a playwright named Steve Tessick. And the two shopped around a film called The Eagle of Nap Town. Unsurprisingly, with that title, it did not get picked up. Except it would later become Breaking Away. Well, fun fact.

• 39:25Chris Winterbauer?

  I love Breaking Away.

• 39:27Lizzie Bassett?

  I do, too.

• 39:28Chris Winterbauer?

  That's a great movie.

• 39:29Lizzie Bassett?

  It is a great movie. All to say, when Hal Prince called up Fosse to get dinner, Bob was desperate. And Prince told Fosse he was busy rehearsing for the new Sondheim musical company, so he wasn't going to be able to direct the feature film version of Cabaret. At which point Bob Fosse's ears perked up. So he started pestering his Broadway pal, Cy, calling him incessantly until he agreed to meet with him for lunch. While Cy had lunch, Bob had cigarettes. And finally, Fuhr said, look, I have to at least offer the movie to Billy Wilder and Gene Kelly first. It would be weird if I didn't. Just let me rattle through all the usual suspects and then I'll tell the studio I've tried everyone and it has to be Fosse. And he did pretty much exactly what he promised. And then after some initial cold feet from the studio, thanks to Sweet Charity, they said,

• 40:11Lizzie Bassett?

  fine. And they let Fosse have it. He would get $125,000 to direct, $50,000 to choreograph, and because they wanted him to want to keep it under budget, 7.5% of the profits. And that budget was $3 million.

• 40:27Chris Winterbauer?

  No way.

• 40:27Lizzie Bassett?

  It does go over, but it doesn't go that much over.

• 40:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. I mean, it's very economical with its use of location, actually, now that I'm thinking about it, because you've got Natalias, you've got the shared apartment.

• 40:37Lizzie Bassett?

  The boarding house, yeah.

• 40:38Chris Winterbauer?

  The boarding house where they're living, some exteriors, and then the cabaret. And that's pretty much the whole movie.

• 40:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Pretty minimal exteriors.

• 40:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. Just a couple of street shots, you know. What I was going to ask really quickly, Lizzie, was Gene Kelly? To be the MC?

• 40:51Lizzie Bassett?

  No, to direct.

• 40:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, Gene Kelly to direct. So Billy Wilder to direct or Gene Kelly to direct? Okay, interesting. Because I was thinking Gene Kelly actually would have been interesting as the MC. He would have been in his like, late 50s at the time?

• 41:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he would have been older. I mean, he directed Singing in the Rain, so I mean...

• 41:09Chris Winterbauer?

  No, of course. He said, "Look, he's an amazing director. He's an amazing dancer." Yeah, would have been interesting. I do think Fosse, though, Fosse is a more modern than Kelly.

• 41:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Fosse makes the most sense out of all of them.

• 41:19Chris Winterbauer?

  I will say, go watch Singing in the Rain again. Oh my-

• 41:21Lizzie Bassett?

  It's amazing.

• 41:22Chris Winterbauer?

  God.

• 41:22Lizzie Bassett?

  It's amazing. We'll cover it at some point.

• 41:24Chris Winterbauer?

  If I could move like that-

• 41:25Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 41:25Chris Winterbauer?

  I'd kill all of them.

• 41:28Lizzie Bassett?

  So, it had taken a pretty long time to lock down a director by the time they got Bob Fosse, which means a whole lot of pre-production work on Cabaret had already happened. Screenwriter Jay Presson Allen, who was known for Marnie, Hitchcock's film, she did some other work for Hitchcock as well, and also the prime of Miss Gene Brody, which I love. If you've never seen it, you should watch-

• 41:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Never seen it?

• 41:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, it's great. The movie with Maggie Smith. She wrote both the play and the movie. She was already hard at work on the script, and she said, "I think one of the reasons that Hitch was fond of me and filmed a lot of the stuff I wrote," meaning Hitchcock, "was that I am frequently almost crippled by making everything rational. There always has to be a reason for everything," and he loved that. But while Allen had a great working relationship with Hitchcock, the same could not be said for Fosse. She said, quote, "I didn't find him the happiest collaborator I ever had."

• 42:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie, I do want to say, it's actually Hitchco, uh, as we've learned recently.

• 42:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, pick a lane. If it's Hitchcock, it's Cockburn.

• 42:22Chris Winterbauer?

  There we go.

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• 43:36Lizzie Bassett?

  One of the most major changes from stage to screen in Cabaret, though, came from Cy Führer. Do you know what it is, Chris? I kind of mentioned it earlier.

• 43:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Not allowing them to break into song outside of the cabaret.

• 43:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 43:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Which is brilliant.

• 43:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. He wanted the musical numbers to take place exclusively inside the Kit Kat Club, so it felt more realistic.

• 43:55Chris Winterbauer?

  It's perfect.

• 43:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Fossey was 100% on board because he was very much trying to edge away from musicals like Sweet Charity. And I think into straight dramas, which of course he would do later.

• 44:05Chris Winterbauer?

  He does what Eisenstein had done with montage early, which is show you one image, show you another image, and then your brain creates the third image or the composite, right? You can do 2 plus 2 equals 4. And that's what the musical numbers do in this movie. They're not story exposition, they're emotional exposition.

• 44:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Ooh, that's a good way of saying it.

• 44:22Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's so good.

• 44:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, it wasn't just the screenplay that was underway. Casting had also been in full swing before Fossey was ever attached. So even though Liza Minnelli had lost the stage role of Sally Bowles, she'd actually started performing the title song, Cabaret, and another Candor and Ebbs song, Maybe This Time, in her nightclub act all over the world. She later on was just like, listen, I knew I was going to play it at some point. I just didn't know when. And I think she kind of thought like, fine, I'll do it when it becomes a movie. And sure enough, when it was announced that Führer was producing the film, Minnelli was in Paris with her show. She heard he was in town. So she swiftly arranged a meeting, showed up in full 1930s period appropriate costume and said, "Come see my show." He did. And there she was singing Cabaret and he hired her immediately. She said, quote, "Mercifully, they told me that Sally would be a completely different

• 45:08Lizzie Bassett?

  character this time around. She was now a powerhouse singer in a low rent club desperate to achieve stardom. She didn't want to be a great artist. She just wanted fame and the shiny objects that come with it. That would be her deepest need and her undoing." Now, she was also very personally connected to the love triangle storyline in the script, especially since the film was leaning into this element, as we've said, more than any previous adaptation had. She said, quote, "I had been deeply affected by my marriage to a person who loved men and women. It was a potent mixture of love, pain, and confusion. Nothing to hide or be embarrassed by. A learning experience and wake up call about the modern world." I believe she's talking about her first husband, Peter Allen, here, who actually, that's who the boy from Oz would later be written about. And he was gay. He came out as gay later. She has a very funny quote. I don't know exactly what it is, but she

• 45:53Lizzie Bassett?

  basically said, "I'll never arrive without calling first."

• 45:58Chris Winterbauer?

  That's good.

• 45:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Poor Liza.

• 46:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Which I do love that scene when she does the equivalent of put the song on her phone when she brings the record player, the phonograph into the room. Does my body drive you wild with desire? It's one of my favorite lines.

• 46:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Divine decadence.

• 46:13Chris Winterbauer?

  She says she loves divine. Everything's divine.

• 46:15Lizzie Bassett?

  It's just divine. Michael York was best known for his Shakespeare work at this point in Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet. He played Tybalt in that. So he was a bit of a no brainer for this, though, considering the producers were literally looking for a Michael York type. There he was. And his friends and colleagues seemed pretty shocked that he would take the role, given he is, as we've said, playing an openly queer man, to which he said, quote, "All these people were saying I was so brave and that I was taking a terrible risk by playing the role, but I never thought that at all. My job is to represent humanity and being gay is a big part of humanity." And according to Isherwood himself, Michael York was probably the most like him out of all of the adaptations. Marisa Berenson, as we said, cast as Natalia Landauer, she

• 46:57Lizzie Bassett?

  was an American Vogue model, born to a Bostonian diplomat. And according to a 1975 Time Magazine article, quote, "The French fashion magazine Elle once called Marisa the most beautiful girl in the world. That is not precisely accurate. Both the mouth and nose are a trifle too large, but it conveys the right idea." Wish I said, "Fuck you, Time Magazine."

• 47:16Chris Winterbauer?

  And damning with faint praise there.

• 47:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, what the hell?

• 47:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Her eyes are amazing.

• 47:20Lizzie Bassett?

  She's so gorgeous.

• 47:21Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought she's very funny. She does a great job playing the straight person to Minnelli's absurd, catty behavior in the, the English-only scene, which is really charming.

• 47:33Lizzie Bassett?

  One of my favorite moments in the entire movie is when Natalia says, "I'm not eating between meals." And Sally Gold says, "Well, I am."

• 47:39Chris Winterbauer?

  I am.

• 47:40Lizzie Bassett?

  And he passes her the bread and just throws it on her. It's amazing.

• 47:44Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a great scene.

• 47:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, the movie's very funny, which I don't think I appreciated when I was younger.

• 47:48Chris Winterbauer?

  It's got a very sophisticated, dry wit to it.

• 47:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Now, both Fritz Vepper, who plays Fritz in the film, and Helmut Greim, who plays Maximilian von Heine, were German TV and theater actors who were relatively well-known in their country prior to cabaret. And as we discussed, I think they are both so, so good in this movie. And of course, we have to talk about the only member of the original Broadway production to make it into the film, the emcee himself, Joel Gray. So Gray was born into entertainment. His father was Mickey Katz, who was a musician and comedian who had made it big on the Borscht Belt, which we discussed in Dirty Dancing, with his Jewish comedy review. As Gray wrote in his memoir, his father was, quote, "inserting Jews into pop culture so that we belonged too." Gray made his theater debut in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, at age nine, in a production

• 48:33Lizzie Bassett?

  of On Borrowed Time. And from there on out, he dreamed of a life onstage. And he was kind of like an overnight sensation because he was so good. But it wasn't traditional theater that actually brought him initial success. It was nightclubs. Some TV work followed, but he really struggled to break out on Broadway because casting directors thought of him as a nightclub guy.

• 48:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Wasn't Fossey also kind of came up through nightclubs originally as well? I thought, isn't that where he was sexually abused as well?

• 48:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, by the older woman. Yeah, that's right.

• 49:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:01Lizzie Bassett?

  However, he finally made it by replacing some original actors in Broadway runs and tours. And of this time, Gray said, "For the first time since On Borrowed Time, I was being taken seriously as an actor. I should have been happy, but I was far from it." He was struggling deeply in his marriage and had a mental breakdown while on tour. Now, Gray would later come out as gay in 2015, but he said that his family and close friends had known for years. Obviously, his wife knew eventually and their marriage ended. He auditioned for Rolf in Sound of Music and didn't get it and was considered giving up altogether when Hal Prince asked him to play the emcee on Broadway. His daughter, six-year-old Jennifer Grey, would accompany him to the theater, watching from the wings and even getting made up as one of the Kit Kat girls in the club.

• 49:41Lizzie Bassett?

  And a lot of the emcee's look comes directly from Joel. He said that it mirrored how his mother had dressed him as a child with the slicked back hair and the little bow tie.

• 49:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, you know, you mentioned the way he moves. He also, he's been made up to look like a classic marionette doll in a lot of ways as well.

• 49:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly. He also used a lot of his wife's makeup for the look. He wrote that he had found inspiration for the character in an unusual place, a nightclub in St. Louis when he was on tour. He said, quote, "As I sat watching the comedian in the loud, smoky room, the spotlight illuminating his aging face, I was stunned. His broad delivery employed every virulent stereotype, take-my-wife jokes, fat jokes, crude sex jokes, but not Jewish jokes, since the obviously Irish comic was playing to a mostly Jewish crowd." And then he says something that I'm not going to say here about the way that this man impersonated gay people because he uses an F word. "But it wasn't his crassness that offended me most, it was his effectiveness. He would do and did do anything for a laugh, battering the audience into loving him.

• 50:37Lizzie Bassett?

  I couldn't believe that someone so willing to pander, someone who stooped to the lowest levels of entertainment, offering the most base and hackneyed material in exchange for the audience's affection, was actually getting it. They were in his thrall screaming with laughter."

• 50:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you know, there is that element, Lizzie, with the cabaret that Fosse and Joel Grey obviously do such an amazing job with, which is that it feels like it is both a safe haven and a celebration of the fluidity, let's say, of the human condition. But also it exposes the basis desires, you know, by way of the mud wrestling, for example.

• 51:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Which is something he and Liza Minnelli saw for real in Berlin, by the way.

• 51:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, so it's so interesting how that cuts both ways, you know, in this movie. It makes it complicated in a great way.

• 51:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, I think that the emcee character is tough to wrestle with because you can't look away from him. He's disgusting, but he's also so charming and weird. It's amazing.

• 51:29Chris Winterbauer?

  He knows, what I feel is like he knows you.

• 51:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 51:31Chris Winterbauer?

  And what made me so emotional this movie is it actually feels like he knows that you're going to kill him. And yet he's still going to perform for you until that happens. Like, that's how I was reading it, as the Nazis are slowly infiltrating this place. And he's never going to leave and he's just going to keep going, even though he knows what's coming.

• 51:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Interesting.

• 51:48Chris Winterbauer?

  It's so tragic.

• 51:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, how Joel Grey got cast in the film depends very much on who you ask. According to the producers, it sounds like they had always wanted him for the role, which makes sense. He won a Tony for this. He came up with so much of the part. I can imagine that on paper, this was a hard character to grasp, but I think he's said that because there's not much to it. So like, he really, really created this. And according to some sources, he was cast prior to Fosse joining the project. But there was one big problem now, Chris. What could the problem be? Who could the problem be?

• 52:19Chris Winterbauer?

  It's the problem Bob Fosse doesn't want Joel Grey?

• 52:21Lizzie Bassett?

  The problem's Bob Fosse, yes. Fosse wanted to recast every single role in the movie.

• 52:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Does he want Richard Dreyfuss?

• 52:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, he wanted to recast every role in the movie. And on the one hand, I understand, he is trying to make this his production of Cabaret. He wants to put his stamp on everything. He just had a massive failure with Sweet Charity and feels like everything is riding on this for him. So I'm not going to completely vilify Bob Fosse for this because I get where he's coming from. This is not the role to recast, though.

• 52:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 52:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, Grey was at the dentist when he picked up an issue of Variety and read the following. He said, quote, "Ruth Gordon had met with Bob Fosse regarding playing the emcee in the upcoming Allied Artist film Cabaret." What? "After five years of deliberation, a movie version of Cabaret had finally been greenlighted, which set off a flurry of rumors that had been flying for weeks." She's such a weird choice.

• 53:11Chris Winterbauer?

  I actually thought you were going to say that Bob Fosse was going to cast himself as the emcee.

• 53:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, hold that thought.

• 53:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay.

• 53:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Other actors continued to be rumored for the part. Meanwhile, Joel Grey is sitting there like, what the fuck is going on? According to Grey, six weeks before production was set to kick off in Munich, they still did not have an emcee. And here is what it seems like was really going on. I'm doing a little bit of reading between the lines, but I think this is pretty supported. "I believe the producers had very much told Grey that he would be a part of the film, but maybe had not officially signed him on, anticipating no objection from the director." Then Fosse joins the project and wants to put his stamp on everything, so he pushes hard to replace Joel Grey. And Joel Grey has publicly theorized that Fosse wanted to play the role himself. And as we discussed, I absolutely believe this because of the Richard Dreyfuss stuff in All That Jazz. So they were down to the wire and a

• 54:04Lizzie Bassett?

  meeting was called with all the producers, studio execs and Bob Fosse. And Bob Fosse decided to play hardball. He figured surely they're going to kick an actor to the curb over the director. So he walked in and he said, I guess this is the moment of truth. It's either Joel Grey or me. And with zero hesitation, Marty Baum, then president of ABC, said, then it's Joel Grey.

• 54:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow. I mean, kudos to him.

• 54:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 54:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Because I'm not saying it's the right choice in that you should choose Grey over Fosse, but it is strategically the right move in that he knows Fosse's not going to walk, right?

• 54:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:39Chris Winterbauer?

  But he knows he needs both, I'm sure, to make the movie succeed.

• 54:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, and I think it's also, it would be important to call Fosse's bluff at this point because-

• 54:46Chris Winterbauer?

  That's my point.

• 54:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 54:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. You have to at some point show him that there's a limit that he can come up against.

• 54:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 54:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Because otherwise Fosse will take everything, as we've learned.

• 54:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. But from this point forward, Bob Fosse was an absolute dick to Joel Grey. In terms of their communication, as Grey put it, the only thing that came out of Fosse's mouth was cigarette smoke. But it didn't matter because Joel Grey kicked ass prepping for this movie. He worked with a dialect coach to perfect not just a German accent, but a specifically Berliner accent, and did it so convincingly that the German extras hired to play the audience assumed he was German. Apparently so did the German crew, who were pretty upset to discover at the end of production that he was American. And that betrayal runs a little deeper than you might think. The German crew were very concerned that the movie was going to demonize a whole generation of Germans. So finding out that the guy leading the nightclub was not, in fact, German would be a pretty big slap in the face. And here's Liza Minnelli talking to Alan Cumming for the BBC's documentary, The

• 55:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Real Cabaret, about this.

• 55:42Speaker 06

  And what did people think about the fact that there was this kind of Americanized version of what had gone on? Well, they, you know, they were a little weird about it. I mean, we're going to Germany to film a movie about the Nazis? What are we going to call it? The nifty Nazi follies? No, I mean, come on. So when they just told these guys who were cast as the Nazis, you know, we found them hiding, you know, they didn't even want to be seen. Oh, I see, right. So when it came out, they realized that it was really important and really on their side.

• 56:23Lizzie Bassett?

  And the German crew had already been a bone of contention for Fossey. Fuer wanted to hire an entirely European crew for cost reasons, but Fossey was dead set on hiring Robert Sertes, who had been his DP on Sweet Charity. Now, the shit really hit the fan when Fossey overheard a conversation between Fuer and Marty Baum, in which Cy Fuer said that Sertes was not going to happen and told Baum not to worry because, quote, "I can control him," meaning Fossey. And Bob Fossey lost his mind. He accused Cy of hiring him as a director so he could use his choreography and then replace him. I don't think this was true. It does seem like Cy Fuer maybe thought that Fossey was perhaps easier to control than a bigger, more experienced director because of the failure on Sweet Charity, but boy, was he wrong.

• 57:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and like Bob Sertes, to be clear, like, you know, Quo Vadis, and he also did Ben Hur. He did The Last Picture Show in 71.

• 57:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, this guy would not have been cheap. I understand why they're pushing back.

• 57:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, no, he was one of the greatest cinematographers working and of all time.

• 57:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. Marty Baum flew out to facilitate a truce, and they eventually settled on Jeffrey Unsworth as the DP, who does an incredible job.

• 57:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Shot 2001, Space Odyssey.

• 57:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 57:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 57:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, not exactly, you know, not exactly a dog's body, if you will.

• 57:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Chopped liver, yeah.

• 57:39Lizzie Bassett?

  But Fossey was not done fiddling. With production looming closer, he decided, oopsies, I hate your script, J. Preston Allen. And he decided it was too close to the Broadway production, so even though she had spent 10 months on the script, he kind of kicked her to the curb and brought in Hugh Wheeler, who was a friend of the actual Christopher Isherwood, to rewrite it. And it was Hugh Wheeler who made some of the biggest changes from stage to screen by bringing the film closer to Isherwood's original work, Goodbye to Berlin. It was, I believe, Wheeler who made the Brian Roberts character explicitly queer, which of course was accurate to Isherwood's own life experience. Well, he was gay. But despite the massive changes he brought to the script, Wheeler was credited only as a research assistant. He does not get a screenwriting credit at all.

• 58:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I think I saw his credit on this. That's interesting. I assumed that that was more to do with making sure that the period details were appropriate.

• 58:27Lizzie Bassett?

  No, he did a major rewrite on this.

• 58:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 58:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Three songs were also added to the film. That are not present in the play. Do you know what they are?

• 58:35Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't. I have no idea.

• 58:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Mine hair.

• 58:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, really?

• 58:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Written for the movie, which is amazing. Money, money, written for the movie.

• 58:43Chris Winterbauer?

  My personal favorite. I just love watching her and Joel Grey together do it. It's so good.

• 58:48Lizzie Bassett?

  They're just both so good together. And this also feels a little bit to me like a precursor for something like, oh, yes, they both reached for the gun, the gun, the gun, the gun. Oh, yes, they both reached for the gun, for the gun. You know, they're really fun two-handers between Roxy Hart and Billy Flynn in Chicago. And then also maybe this time was added. Now, that had been written prior to the movie by Candor and Eb, but of course, Liza Minnelli had been performing it for years and she advocated for the inclusion of it in the movie and they did it. And I think most stage productions after the film actually do include these songs because the movie made them so iconic. Now rehearsals finally began in early 1971 at various studios 20 minutes outside Munich. And right away, Joel Grey and Bob Fosse were like oil and water.

• 59:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Because Grey felt very protective of the character he had created and Fosse wanted to Fosse it up. According to Grey, quote, "Very often every word had a move assigned to it. He never expected improvisation and wanted every muscle choreographed to counts." The two were locked in a constant power struggle to the point where one day Bob Fosse was like, "Can you do a backflip?" And Joel Grey was like, "No, I can't." And Bob Fosse goes, "There's nothing to it. Let me show you." And then according to Joel Grey, here's what happened next.

• 59:59Chris Winterbauer?

  He broke his back.

• 1:00:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Just wait.

• 1:00:02Chris Winterbauer?

  That's just what I'm imagining.

• 1:00:04Lizzie Bassett?

  We all watched as Bob threw himself backward into the air, but he didn't make it. Instead, he came crashing to the ground and landed on his face. For several horrifying long seconds, he lay there without moving. All of us around him were frozen with shock. Had he broken his neck? After a stunned moment, we all went to his aid. Bob stood up slowly and with an arm around each assistant, he was taken to the studio infirmary. When Bob came back to the studio the next day, he had the usual cigarette hanging out of his mouth, but the whole left side of his face was black and blue. No one mentioned his injuries or the backflip again.

• 1:00:41Lizzie Bassett?

  So embarrassing.

• 1:00:43Chris Winterbauer?

  In a way, though, is there a world where this is the best thing that could have happened to the production and Joel Grey and Bob Fosse because he gets taken down just one peg?

• 1:00:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:00:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Right?

• 1:00:54Lizzie Bassett?

  He needs it.

• 1:00:55Chris Winterbauer?

  He does need it. Bob Fosse is a genius.

• 1:00:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Literally, he's a genius.

• 1:01:00Chris Winterbauer?

  But he also needs to be reminded, perhaps on occasion, that the people he's working with are brilliant, too.

• 1:01:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I would argue Joel Grey's performance in this is genius.

• 1:01:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I think it absolutely is.

• 1:01:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, speaking of the cigarettes, as in All That Jazz, people had to come over and remove them from Fosse's mouth before they burned his lips because he wouldn't even notice. Meanwhile, Michael York very politely mentioned to Fosse that he now felt his character was a little underwritten, to which Fosse said, "Don't worry, we still have two weeks", and then proceeded to lock himself, Minnelli, Wheeler, and York into a room for those two weeks, making final adjustments to the script. And Minnelli was one of the only people who really did get along with Fosse, perhaps because she was used to strong perfectionist personalities.

• 1:01:39Chris Winterbauer?

  I was just gonna say, she took care of her mother, you know.

• 1:01:41Lizzie Bassett?

  She's Judy Garland's kid. How much harder can Bob Fosse be?

• 1:01:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Judy Garland, who probably smoked more cigarettes on the production of The Wizard of Oz than Fosse had in his entire life at this point, you know?

• 1:01:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, at 14, she's packing in six at a time. Also, I mean, they continued to work together. He directed her TV special, Liza with a Z, as well.

• 1:01:59Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right, Liza, yeah.

• 1:02:00Lizzie Bassett?

  But one problem he had with her was that she cried way too easily. So he told her, "If you feel like crying, I want you to fight like an animal trying not to cry", at which she immediately cried, but she took the note, and you can see it really well in the film. She also contributed an enormous amount to the character of Sally Bowles, including her iconic look. Initially, she thought she should wear a blonde wig and do herself up like Marlena Dietrich. Side note, that's probably the best Halloween costume I've ever done was Marlena Dietrich. But her father, Vincent Minnelli, said, "No, no, no." And he showed her pictures of Louise Brooks, a huge film star from the 20s and 30s, one of whose most famous roles was the German film Pandora's Box. Would you like to see a picture?

• 1:02:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:02:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, check it out.

• 1:02:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Of course. Look at those bangs.

• 1:02:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah. So Liza with a Z was like, OK. And she cut her hair into the iconic Sally Bowles cut, picked up some gigantic fake eyelashes and slapped those on, then showed up to see Fosse on set and was like, what do you think, Bob? And according to her memoir, she said, quote, "Talk about naivete. I had taken an incredible risky chance. What if the producers and Fosse didn't like the way I looked? What the hell would I have done then? I should have run this past them if only as a sign of respect. They told me as much, but they also loved it." Whew. The cameras began rolling in Munich.

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• 1:04:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, Fosse and Cy Fuhr continued their rivalry on set. The fight was now about the look of the film and specifically, the light of the film. Fuhr wanted it to look like a traditional musical. Bright, everything very obvious. Color, punchy. And Fosse was like, make it imperceptibly dark. He told camera operator Peter McDonald and DP Jeffrey Unsworth, quote, "If you see me doing that show-offy stuff I did in Sweet Charity, stop me." But he was taking a pretty big risk with this. You couldn't really check the shots and there was no way to correct an underexposed shot in post-production at that point. So if they fucked it up, they were screwed. Fortunately, they were filming in Germany, so the studio execs couldn't walk onto the set the way they could in Hollywood. And according to Minnelli, quote, "We'd take chances and the studio would send telegrams

• 1:05:08Lizzie Bassett?

  like, 'Too much smoke, the picture will break up on drive-in screens.'" And Bob would tear it up and throw it over his shoulder in front of the whole crew.

• 1:05:16Chris Winterbauer?

  It's worth mentioning that Sweet Charity really, for example, they have a whole number in Sweet Charity that feels ripped out of West Side Story to me.

• 1:05:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, well, I think it's making fun of it.

• 1:05:23Chris Winterbauer?

  It is, yeah, exactly. But it visually very much evokes that type of musical, whereas this does not.

• 1:05:28Lizzie Bassett?

  No. Now, while Minnelli seemed to enjoy her time on set, she was also having a rough go of it personally. She was, of course, working her ass off, eating a diet of mostly Coca-Cola and chips, all while becoming obsessed with doing everything Bob Fosse asked of her. And here she is again in the BBC documentary with Alan Cumming interviewing her.

• 1:05:46Speaker 06

  Everyone is mesmerized by Mine Hair.

• 1:05:49Speaker 04

  That must have been exhausting. Is that why you've got two false hips?

• 1:05:52Speaker 06

  Probably. I look at some of those poses and think, oh my God, they were so hard to do because, you know, when you're like this and leaning on the chair, and then this leg is way back here, so you're literally like that, right? With your legs. The chair kept sliding. And finally, after about 20 minutes, he said, "Nail the chair down." And that's the only way that we could shoot his poses. Ooh, she'll be secret.

• 1:06:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I've wondered how they balanced in nailing the chair down.

• 1:06:25Lizzie Bassett?

  You'd have to.

• 1:06:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:26Lizzie Bassett?

  But in addition to all of this, she was struggling with substance abuse of her own. She was known to be somewhat unreliable on set, according to a 2004 article in The Times of UK, quote, "On bad days, she would rave until she collapsed." The code phrase for these spells was "she's having a willy," prompting a search for airsickness pills or something stronger. And she admits to this in her memoir, saying, "There were whispers in the gossip sheets that I was popping pills, drinking too much, and snorting cocaine behind the scenes. Some of the stories were sympathetic, saying I was fighting off stress and tension, and that was the truth, as much as I didn't want to admit it publicly." And the press was not kind to lie. When whispers of this started leaking, as Minnelli put it, quote, "I don't need to spell out for you the inevitable comparisons. Mama had been there, done that."

• 1:07:06Lizzie Bassett?

  The February 20th, 1972 headline read, "Liza Refuses to Be Shocking. I was becoming Sally Bowles in real life," the writer said, "decadent and outrageous, as well as a mirror image of my legendarily tormented mother. I was now, get ready for this, quote, "a heartless hoyden dancing atop a table, drink in hand, and devil may care look in my brown eyes. It was just plain cruel." Minnelli did find a good friend and confidant in Joel Gray, who she'd known for years. He said, quote, "There was something about Liza that invited you to take care of her. I relished our morning rides to the studio, during which she would often fall asleep on my shoulder." Meanwhile, Fossey was doing the other thing that he does best besides fighting with collaborators, dancing, and directing films: having affairs!

• 1:07:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah. I was seeing popping pills, but yes, also having affairs, yeah.

• 1:07:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, smoking cigarettes, you're right. He does, he does other things very well. He was having a very public affair with a German translator he'd hired named Ilse Schwarzwald, and this was unusual because normally he kept his affairs far more private. Maybe it was because he was far away in Germany, so his wife Gwen Verdon wouldn't see, but wait, no, that's not it, because she was there on set and she was helping his ass out. The gorilla costume, originally provided for if you could see her through my eyes, was blue velour for some reason, and Fossey hated it. So Gwen Verdon flew back to New York, handpicked a new gorilla costume, and flew it back to Germany herself. And then, she walked in on Bob Fossey in bed with a couple of German girls, and she had it. She sent him a letter saying she wanted to separate. By July of 1971, filming had, of course, run way over schedule, which Fossey blamed

• 1:08:34Lizzie Bassett?

  on fewer because the original schedule had been developed based on J. Preston Allen's terrible script, and it's everyone's fault, but Bob Fossey's fault. And the night before filming wrapped, Bob Fossey decided to throw a dinner party for the members of the crew that he felt had had his back throughout production, Chris. But it turns out, the invite was maybe more of a punishment. Because at this dinner, Fossey announced, "Now that I brought you all the dinner, I want you all to make big speeches about me, telling me how wonderful you think I am." And it was not a joke. Michael York, who initially had really admired Fossey and even taken up smoking to try and impress him, described the dinner as such, quote, "It was like King Lear asking which daughter loved him the most."

• 1:09:12Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, it reminds me of Michael Scott asking The Office to roast him in the office. And he gets so mad when they don't say something nice about him.

• 1:09:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, there's definitely some Michael Scott in Bob Fosse.

• 1:09:24Chris Winterbauer?

  There is, yeah.

• 1:09:25Lizzie Bassett?

  As the film headed into post-production, Fosse's personal anxieties continued to get the better of himself. He was convinced he had failed again, like on Sweet Charity. And I suspect he was trying to distance Cabaret even farther from that film, which is why, when he screened the first cut for the cast and crew, almost every musical number had been gutted. Of the screening, Joel Grey said, "When in that screening room, I watched all the hard work I had done cut into a million pieces. I was stunned to the point of tears. He had reduced the numbers to ins and outs so that they acted only as transitions or the glue between scenes. Not a single one was anywhere close to complete. That had been one of the worst moments of my career." And Grey was so upset that he called up Marty Baum, Freak It Out, and Marty Baum was like, "Don't worry. No one is ever gonna see that version of the film again.

• 1:10:10Lizzie Bassett?

  The musical numbers will be in the film." And obviously Baum got through to Fosse because I think this movie has maybe the most perfect balancing act of musical numbers of any movie musical ever. On February 13th, 1972, Cabaret premiered at New York's Ziegfeld Theater. And unlike Sweet Charity, it did great. On a budget of about $4.6 million total, so it did go over, Cabaret grossed over $40 million worldwide. It went on to win eight Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor for Joel Grey, who was a class act, and profusely thanked Fosse in his acceptance speech, saying he had an enormous gift and had helped him out tremendously. Best Actress for Liza Minnelli, and of course, Best Director for Bob Fosse. And Chris, I would like to play his speech for you.

• 1:10:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Thank you very much. Thank you.

• 1:11:00Lizzie Bassett?

  I must say, I feel a little like Clint Eastwood, that you're letting me stand up here because Coppola or Mankiewicz hasn't shown up yet, but...

• 1:11:12Speaker 04

  Characteristically pessimist and cynic, this and some of the other nice things that have happened to me in the last couple of days may turn me into some sort of hopeful optimist and ruin my whole life.

• 1:11:28Speaker 04

  There's so many people to thank. You've heard a lot of the names, but it's important for me to say them. And I'm sure I'm gonna miss some of the ones and regret it tomorrow. Of course, Liza and Joel, Michael York, Marissa Berensen, Marty Baum, Manny Wolf,

• 1:11:44Speaker 04

  Candor Neb, a terrific guy, Doug Green, a dear friend of mine by the name of Gwen Verdon.

• 1:11:51Speaker 04

  And I'd also like to mention Cy Fier, the producer, with whom I had a lot of disputes. But on a night like this, you start having affection for everybody. Thank you.

• 1:12:06Lizzie Bassett?

  He cannot help himself.

• 1:12:08Chris Winterbauer?

  No, he can't. It's also interesting, I think we should mention, that the big movie it was going up against at the Oscars that year was The Godfather. And he won Best Director over Coppola, hence that reference. And Cabaret beat The Godfather, I think The Godfather won three Academy Awards and Cabaret, you said, won eight? It kind of stomped it at the Oscars. I know in box office, The Godfather was the biggest movie of the year, but...

• 1:12:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. I have a controversial opinion about that, which is that I think The Godfather winning Best Picture and Cabaret winning Best Director is correct.

• 1:12:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I don't think that's controversial. I agree.

• 1:12:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I think most people would probably say Coppola should have, that he was robbed of Best Director for The Godfather. I do not agree at all.

• 1:12:48Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I think Cabaret's pitch perfectly directed. I don't think you can get much better, much sharper than that.

• 1:12:55Lizzie Bassett?

  You can't. It is so, I mean, truly, it's perfect. It's a gem. Like, there's nothing I would change about this movie. The timing of it is insane. And I think maybe that that is Bob Fosse's biggest strength as a director. Not so much in Sweet Charity, but definitely in his later work, is that he is so good at the timing, which makes sense.

• 1:13:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Razor sharp with the editing.

• 1:13:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:13:17Chris Winterbauer?

  I just want to mention, what a great year for movies in 72.

• 1:13:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. The Heartbreak Kid.

• 1:13:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Deliverance as well, which we've covered, which is another movie that deals with the complex male sexuality component. You know, Last Tango in Paris is really controversial, Silent Runnings, Pink Flamingos, like John Waters breaking out. It's a great year in movies.

• 1:13:38Lizzie Bassett?

  It is. And, you know, we just covered Taxi Driver and this movie is really like, it's kind of like Taxi Driver, the musical. I mean, not in terms of the content, but like the vibe and feeling of the seventies, this captured so well in terms of what an audience, I think, would want to watch in a movie musical form. If this had been, you know, super brightly lit, people bursting into song, I think it would have bombed the same way Sweet Charity did. And Cabaret's legacy has continued to endure for over 50 years, and Liza said it best in her memoir, quote, "We got away with murder in 1972. It was the most exciting time of my life. On the day we wrapped, I cried because I didn't want to leave the set. Cabaret is the granddaddy of dark, breakneck movie and

• 1:14:20Lizzie Bassett?

  stage musicals like Chicago, Sweeney Todd, and Moulin Rouge. It's the godfather of Hamilton and other pioneering, shape-shifting shows that tell old stories in new ways. There's a link between Fosse's bold dance stylings and the explosive moves of Michael and Janet Jackson. For me, there's a clear line connecting Fosse's frantic, jump-cutting camera style to the birth nine years later of MTV. Cabaret truly lives on."

• 1:14:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Those are great observations. I completely agree.

• 1:14:46Lizzie Bassett?

  She's very smart.

• 1:14:47Chris Winterbauer?

  The Michael Jackson one, I had not thought of at all.

• 1:14:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, 100%.

• 1:14:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Everything with the gloves and the hat that he does is-

• 1:14:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Down to the way he's dressed, yeah.

• 1:14:54Chris Winterbauer?

  It's so Fosse-esque. And then, yes, the way that, not only the jump cuts, but the use of wide-angle cameras that punch in really close on people's faces for reactions and whatnot. Absolutely, the nineties style, that very in-your-face MTV Beastie Boys, you know what I mean, sort of vibe is very Cabaret.

• 1:15:10Lizzie Bassett?

  It's even like, I mean, you know, people dunk on Sweet Charity, but it's there too. There's some very funny moments, like he'll do a freeze frame and then like punch in on Shirley MacLaine's face.

• 1:15:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Sweet Charity is very unusual. Yeah, they have photo montages throughout it. It's very funny. Oh, my God, what's the actor who proposed the Italian film star?

• 1:15:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Ricardo Montalban.

• 1:15:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Ricardo Montalban. He's very funny.

• 1:15:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he is very funny.

• 1:15:31Chris Winterbauer?

  He's very- Funny. It's a, like you mentioned, it's an uneven movie, but it's a fun watch and it's worth it if you like Fosse and seeing his evolution.

• 1:15:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally.

• 1:15:39Chris Winterbauer?

  For sure.

• 1:15:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, it's where we get big spender.

• 1:15:40Chris Winterbauer?

  And also, Lizzie, you have a little, you have a little early Shirley MacLaine, a little early Shirley MacLaine, looks wise.

• 1:15:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Ooh, what a good compliment, because I will tell you, watching both that movie and Cabaret back to back, I was like, hmm, should I cut all my hair off again? Because they look so cute with those short haircuts. And I, I had a pixie cut at one point and I really loved it.

• 1:15:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Just keep the bangs straight across. Don't love the widow's peak down the top of the nose.

• 1:16:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Maybe not straight across like Simple Jack in Tropic Thunder.

• 1:16:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, don't go full bangs, as they say.

• 1:16:11Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. Chris, what went right?

• 1:16:13Chris Winterbauer?

  So much went right in this movie. I am gonna steal Joel Grey from you.

• 1:16:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 1:16:19Chris Winterbauer?

  He's perfect. And there's something so knowing about his character. There was, I'm trying to think of the right way to describe it, but you mentioned Greek chorus and that, I think is writer. I, I was thinking about like Cassandra. There's a way in which he can, because he knows us.

• 1:16:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36Chris Winterbauer?

  He knows the audience to their core, right?

• 1:16:38Lizzie Bassett?

  He's omniscient, for sure.

• 1:16:39Chris Winterbauer?

  He's omniscient. He knows what's coming with Nazism, yet he does not leave.

• 1:16:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I think it's a question of perception as to whether he is for it or against it. I would argue neither. I, I think he's a mirror.

• 1:16:53Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree, he's a mirror, but he knows he's going to be consumed by it. He knows it will destroy him, is the way I see it. And what I think is so perfect about his character is that because he's a mirror, we oscillate between, is he a better angel on Liza Minnelli's shoulder? Is he mocking her? Is he a demon, right? You know, is he just a sprite? Is he, is he? He's just so interesting. Like, is he a satyr? Like, what is this character? And mirrors the perfect word for it. He, he reflects us back at ourselves and there's something uncomfortable and also wonderful and beautiful about it. That's why I love the money song so much, is they're clinking the coins against their respective sex.

• 1:17:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Genitalia, yes.

• 1:17:30Chris Winterbauer?

  When we were talking about this movie and All That Jazz, and we talked about it a little bit when we were discussing Dirty Dancing, we had mentioned Joel Grey won Best Supporting Actor. And I remember thinking, I don't remember Joel Grey being in that movie that much, right?

• 1:17:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:41Chris Winterbauer?

  I remember having This thought because I didn't remember the musical stuff as much as I remembered the Minnelli and Michael York stuff. And I was, I remember going into it thinking, oh, man, that's kind of odd that he won best supporting actor. And then I had watched it and I thought this is one of the most deserving best supporting actor wins in the history of film.

• 1:17:57Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 1:17:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I can't imagine the movie without him and I can't imagine anybody else playing this role. So I'll give it to Joel Gray.

• 1:18:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Thank you. I was trying to think of who the performance reminds me of and the clown or the jester in Twelfth Night Fest day is sort of one that comes to mind as being both definitely a clown in the true sense of the words, but also someone who seems to be kind of all knowing and in a weird way, all powerful while holding no actual power over anybody in the story, really. I know I should give it to Bob Fosse and I'm sure he wants it behind the grave because he cares about what went wrong.

• 1:18:30Chris Winterbauer?

  We gave it to him on all that jazz.

• 1:18:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. I'm not gonna give it to him. I do love him. I do love him. He would probably hate me, but I love him. I'm gonna give it to Liza Minnelli. I just think, like you're saying about Joel Gray, I don't know that there has been a more deserved Academy Award than her performance in Cabaret. It is truly transcendent. She takes a role that I think could come across as so sort of maudlin and like treacly and she turns it into someone who is both extremely charismatic and lovable, very annoying, so embarrassing. She doesn't hold back and you know, she's not really winking at the camera at all. It's something you said about Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver where you're like, he's never saying to the

• 1:19:13Lizzie Bassett?

  audience, like, you know, no, no, I, I get it. I understand. She's just completely the character, warts and all. And I really love her as a performer, as a singer, but really as an actor and comedian, I just think she's kind of unparalleled. And I love her hair. She looks great with a short haircut and she's probably inspiring me to make a terrible decision. And Shirley MacLaine, it's both your fault.

• 1:19:33Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, Paul Scheer, when we covered Chinatown said Faye Dunaway feels like porcelain to him and that she could crack at any moment. And I think that's Liza Minnelli's superpower in this movie. You mentioned how easily she cries. She always feels on the verge in this movie, but there's a steeliness beneath it that's really powerful. And the last thing I'd mention is I do think they do a great job, whether it was her or Fosse, whoever they decide. They give her a self-awareness, especially in the back half of the movie, that really is redemptive. And I thought the moment they have between her and Michael York, they're in the forest and she senses his distance and insecurity. And then she decides to have the abortion immediately afterward. And you're just thinking to yourself, Michael, it's because like she lost faith in you in that moment.

• 1:20:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I think she also understood what the situation was and what it would have been.

• 1:20:17Chris Winterbauer?

  And you know, it's funny, I always think of the last, just because Lena Dunham's new memoir just came out, we'll mention it, like, I think of the last scene between her and Adam Driver in Girls, when they have the conversation about how they're gonna get back together and raise the baby together. And they're at the diner and they start crying because they realize what they're actually doing is saying goodbye. And I always, I now feel like, oh, man, I feel like she pulled spiritually from Cabaret for that scene, which I think is a great scene. Anywho, great job, Lizzie.

• 1:20:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Thanks, Chris.

• 1:20:41Chris Winterbauer?

  What a great, great, great movie. Guys, watch Cabaret. This movie's so good. Lizzie, if folks are enjoying this podcast, how can they support it?

• 1:20:49Lizzie Bassett?

  You can leave us a rating or review on whatever podcatcher you're listening to this on. You can tell a friend or family member that, eh, I like what went wrong. I really enjoyed Cabaret. Maybe you should watch that movie and also listen to this podcast. If you want to take it a step further, you can subscribe on Apple or Spotify, where you will get at least one bonus episode every month. And in fact, this month, if you were a subscriber, you would get two, because we just covered The Devil Wears Prada 2, and we will be covering The Mandalorian and Grogu at the end of this month. Very exciting. And then, if you want to just go even one step beyond that, you can join our Patreon, where you will get everything I just mentioned, plus an ad-free feed of all episodes, plus musings, comments, a fan community, everything you could possibly desire. And then, for $50 a month,

• 1:21:33Lizzie Bassett?

  you can get a shout out from the MC himself, just like one of these.

• 1:21:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Adrian Peng, Coria, Angelique Renee Cook, Beatrix, Earhart. Come on, Savar. Do you feel good? Ben Schindelman, Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Brittany Morris, Brooke, Cameron Smith, C. Grace B., Chris Liel, Chris Zucker, David Friscolanti, Darren and Dale Conkling. Leave your troubles outside. Dawn Scheible, M. Zodiac, Evan Downey, Felicia G., Film It Yourself. Frankenstein, Galen and Miguel, The Broken Glass Kids, The Cast and Crew of Winner Trip to Brown Town. Leave your troubles outside. So, life is disappointing?

• 1:22:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Forget it. Grace Potter, Half Gray Hound, James McAvoy, Jason Frankel, JJ Rappido, Jory Hill Piper, Jose Amilano Salto del Giorgio. In here, life is beautiful. Even Karina Kanaba is beautiful. Kate Ellington, Kathleen Olsen, Amy Elgashlager McCoy, Lazy Freddy, Lena LJ, Lydia Howes, Mark Bertha, Mariposas Humans, Matthew Jacobson, Michael McGrath, Nate Ashley, Nate the Knife, Rosemary Southward, Raul G., I am your host. Sadie, Just Sadie, Scott Oshida,

• 1:23:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Soomanchain Nani, Steve Winterbauer, Suzanne Johnson, The Provost Family, The Oz Sound Like Oz, and Tom Kristin. You are all so beautiful.

• 1:23:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie, thank you for holding that mirror to the grotesque desires of our audience. Next week, we are continuing Chris's sequel month with maybe like, what was my secret favorite Indiana Jones as a child? In the Darkness of My Heart, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a really interesting movie that came at a really interesting time, both in movie history and the personal life of Steven Spielberg. I'm very excited to talk about it. A movie that maybe hasn't aged as well as the other two, Indiana Jones, as we'll get into.

• 1:24:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Indiana Jones: Sex Criminal, as you put in the first time we covered this.

• 1:24:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Less so in this next one, but yes. Kate Capshaw screams her way through this entire movie, as we'll discuss. So, guys, go watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. We'll be back with you in a week.

• 1:24:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Great, can't wait.

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  To support What Went Wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, subscribe on Patreon, Apple, or Spotify for $5 a month. Patreon subscriptions also come with an ad-free RSS feed. You can also visit our website, whatwentwrongpod.com, for more info. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krupso.