Martin Scorsese Was ‘Cringing’ at the Thought of Inviting Ex-Paramour Liza Minnelli to an Event

In the late 1970s, Martin Scorsese directed the film New York, New York starring Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli. At the time, Scorsese was married to Julia Cameron and Minnelli was married to Jack Haley Jr., but this didn’t stop them from becoming romantically entangled. Years after their affair, Scorsese reportedly did not want to see Minnelli at a ceremony celebrating his work.

Martin Scorsese didn’t want to see Liza Minnelli years after their affair

While filming New York, New York, Scorsese and Minnelli became romantically involved. Their relationship was heavily fueled by drug use; they once reportedly showed up at fashion designer Roy Halston’s door seeking whatever he could give them. Two decades after their affair ended, Scorsese wanted little to do with Minnelli.

“The Minnelli affair of adultery and drug debauchery is one that Scorsese would like to forget,” Vincent LoBrutto wrote in Martin Scorsese: A Biography (via The Telegraph). “Twenty years later during the planning of a tribute to his directorial achievement, Scorsese asked that Liza Minnelli not be invited, cringing at the thought.” 

Liza Minnelli said she liked working with Martin Scorsese 

According to Minnelli, she spent months rehearsing for New York, New York. She felt this was a necessary part of Scorsese’s creative process.

“Because, what happens, you see, is it changes on you,” Minnelli told Rolling Stone in 1977. “Suddenly something you thought of before you started working together … is not in character anymore. We only got to rehearse like that two hours a day, and then we decided that wasn’t going to do at all. So we went into these six-, seven-hour sessions.”

She admitted it was exhausting work, but she liked doing it.

“It is [intense], but with the two of them it’s terribly exciting,” she said. “Marty does rehearsals on tape, and he takes all the videotape home.”

She had great admiration for Scorsese and her co-star, De Niro.

“Marty’s incredible, isn’t he?” she said. “And Bobby is so dedicated.”

He said he was near death after shooting the film

After he finished filming New York, New York, Scorsese wound up in the hospital because of cocaine and prescription medication. 

“After finishing New York, New York, I took chances,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “[I was] out of time and out of place and also in turmoil in my own life and embracing the other world, so to speak, with a kind of attraction to the dangerous side of existence. Then on Labor Day weekend, I found myself in a hospital, surprised that I was near death.”

He said the moment changed his life.

“A number of things had happened,” he said. “Misuse of normal medications in combinations [to which] my body reacted in strange ways. I was down to about 109 pounds. It wasn’t only drug-induced — asthma had a lot to do with it. I was kept in a hospital for 10 days and nights, and they took care of me, these doctors, and I became aware of not wanting to die and not wasting [my life].”

How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.