Liza Minnelli’s longtime friend, singer Michael Feinstein, shared a video Tuesday showing the 76-year-old icon in good spirits as she was being driven to the Academy Awards last month.
Minnelli, with a cigarette in hand, is seen in the back of a limousine singing “(It’s Gonna Be A) Great Day” from the 1975 Funny Lady soundtrack.
Feinstein made headlines recently when he claimed Minnelli was “sabotaged” by the producers of the Oscars, where she presented Best Picture with Lady Gaga.
Appearing on the Jess Cagle Show, Feinstein said his friend agreed to be on the show if she could sit in a director’s chair because she was having back pain. “She said, ‘I don’t want people to see me limping out there.’ She said, ‘You know, I want to look good. I don’t want people to worry about me.’”
Feinstein claimed that minutes before she was due to take the stage, Minnelli was told she would be in a wheelchair instead. He said she was “shaken” and “discombobulated” – which is why she seemed disoriented and during the presentation with Gaga
“It made her look like she was out of it,” Feinstein said. “Can you imagine being suddenly forced to be seen by millions of people the way you don’t want to be seen? That’s what happened to her.”
Robyn Beck / AFP/Getty Images
Neither the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nor Minnelli’s rep has publicly addressed Feinstein’s version of events.
The Daily Mail published paparazzi photos of Minnelli in a wheelchair on April 21 outside Il Piccolino in West Hollywood. A month earlier, photographers snapped Minnelli in a wheelchair outside the same restaurant.
Watch Feinstein's video of Minnelli singing "(It's Gonna Be A) Great Day" on the ride to the Oscars: