Prophets of Doom: Liza Minnelli in Bob Fosse's Cabaret

SteynonLine ^ | May 30, 2026 | Rick McGinnis

[Twotone]

Bob Fosse's career as a Hollywood director looked to be over after just one film when the failure of Sweet Charity at the box office nearly took down Universal Studios in 1969 and ended the era of the big-budget movie musical. He'd always have work on Broadway but his new status as toxic in Hollywood was a blow his ego couldn't accept and he was desperate for a comeback.

The abiding fame of numbers like "Hey Big Spender" and "Rich Man's Frug" on Fosse highlight reels and as YouTube clips have lent Sweet Charity posthumous influence that nobody would have believed at the time. Fosse's problem, as far as his critics (and even some of his friends) were concerned was that he put far more effort into his musical numbers than whatever strung them together.

His solution was to make his reputation away from musicals and to this end he spent three months working on locations and budget (against the advice of his friend, director Stanley Donen) for a horror picture that would end up getting made several years later as Burnt Offerings.

Somewhere else during this wilderness period he was drawn out of his endless funk again by a script called The Eagle of Naptown; that would also fall by the wayside though it did end up getting made in 1978 by Peter Yates as Breaking Away. Somewhere out there an alternate universe hosts a fascinating and horrifying Fosse filmography.

---

TOPICS: History; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: bobfosse; cabaret; lizaminnelli; movies

[jonascord]

"But five decades passed before we arrived at the present moment..."

The problem today is that the fascists BELIEVE that they are Antifascist. Somehow, they convince themselves, and deny that Naziism and Fascism are flavors of Socialist dogma.