This living legend who is an offspring of a legend is being robbed blind by those closest to her.

Liza Minnelli

Michael Feinstein

Frail Liza Minnelli’s NY friends worried about her care in LA

Fifty years after “Cabaret” made her a superstar, Liza Minnelli lives a quiet life in an apartment in West Hollywood.

At 76, and with enough headlines behind her for three lifetimes, the singer and actress is rarely seen in public.

But in what would prove to be the second most surprising moment at March’s Oscars, the icon joined Lady Gaga to hand out the Best Picture award — and her frail appearance and confused demeanor was a shock to many.

Now in a wheelchair after battling years of ill health, an emotional Minnelli was given a standing ovation by the A-list audience.

“Oh! It’s so exciting,” Minnelli exclaimed as Gaga — who had stepped away to allow her a moment in the sun — told her: “You see that? The public, they love you.”

Her mother suffered tremendously from alcohol and drug problems. It was said that Garland began using barbiturates and amphetamines as a teenager, to help her stay peppy, sleep and stay slim as she made such movies “The Wizard of Oz,” “Babes in Arms” and the Andy Hardy franchise with Mickey Rooney.

Garland was a full-on alcoholic and drug addict by age 30, when Liza was just 6 years old.

When her mother died in 1969, at just 45, Minnelli was prescribed Valium to help deal with her grief. It led to her own abuse of prescription drugs and alcohol. In his diaries, Andy Warhol noted that she arrived at fashion designer Halston’s home in 1978 and said, “Give me every drug you’ve got.”

Minnelli had the first of multiple trips to rehab in 1985.

“So what do you do?” she asked on the “Today” show in 2005 after a relapse. “You get up and you go on, and you try not to do it again.”

In 2000, Minnelli was admitted to the ICU at a Florida hospital with partial paralysis, slurred speech and drooping facial muscles. She was diagnosed with viral encephalitis and, at the time, a doctor said that “she was quite sick and was in very serious condition” when she came in.

“I couldn’t walk and I couldn’t talk, and they told me I wouldn’t … ever again,” she told NBC. “After I was told that, everybody left the room and I turned my face to the wall and started to go ‘A – B – C.’ You know, that’s what it felt like because I had Carnegie Hall to rehearse. I want to live. I have always wanted to live.”

In 2015, Minnelli sold her Upper East Side co-op for $8.37 million and moved to the West Coast, leaving behind Gorenstein and longtime assistant Nicole Guest, who were, he said, both deeply devoted to her and devastated by her departure.

But they no longer have direct contact with Minnelli. Multiple sources added that many from Liza’s old life in New York City have lost touch with her.

“There are definitely people [in New York City] who love Liza, who miss her,” Gorenstein said.. “We want her to be healthy and we worry that there is no one around [in LA] to look after her like we would in New York.”

She is believed to have caretakers who help her. One of her closest friends is pianist and performer Michael Feinstein, whom she discovered playing in a piano bar in NYC in the 1980s.

“Liza is someone who would admit to being needy. She’ll say, ‘Do this for me, honey,’” one showbiz insider told The Post. “When she moved out to LA, she reached out to Michael and he’s helped take control of her life.” – Source


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