Friends of Gene Hackman aren’t staying silent amid recent allegations made against him a year after his passing.. Actress Liza Minnelli accused the actor of being “dismissive” and “rude” to her when they worked together on the 1975 film “Lucky Lady,” but Hackman’s friends claim it’s not true.. Gene Hackman, alongside his wife Betsy Arakawa and one of their dogs, was mysteriously found dead in his New Mexico home last February.. Gene Hackman’s Friends Hit Back At Liza Minnelli. MEGA. It’s been more than a year since Hackman’s passing, but he faces a fresh allegation from his former co-star Liza Minnelli, who accused him of being “downright rude” to her in her recently released memoir, “Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!”. According to a report, Hackman’s Friends are not happy with the Broadway icon and have hit back at her claims.. “Gene can’t defend himself,” a longtime friend of the late actor said. “Going after someone who’s dead feels cowardly.”. “If Liza wants to talk about rude behavior, she should look in the mirror,” a harsher source noted. “She was a nightmare on set.”. The Late Actor’s Friends Claim Liza Minnelli Was Not ‘Easy’ To Work With. MEGA. In the Stanley Donen-directed comedy-drama, the 79-year-old Oscar-winning actress played Claire, a singer who promises to help two businessmen, Kibby Womack [Hackman] and Ellison Walker [Burt Reynolds], smuggle alcohol from Mexico to the U.S.. However, it appears that there were some underlying tensions on set as sources told journalist, Rob Shuter, that things didn’t really go smoothly due to Minnelli.. “Liza was often late, sometimes sick, and not always prepared,” the insider said. “Working with someone struggling with addiction isn’t easy.”. “She wanted to be treated like Hollywood royalty,” they continued. “And when she didn’t get that, things got difficult fast.”. Some Broadway insiders also alleged that Minnelli faced such complaints from people who worked with her on “Victor/Victoria.”. “Cast members would call in sick when they knew she was performing,” a theater insider said. “They joked they had ‘influenza with a Z.’”. What Liza Minnelli Said About Gene Hackman. CAMERA PRESS / TSUNI/STILLS/GAMM/ MEGA. The “Cabaret” actress wrote in her book that one of the reasons she agreed to star in the movie despite not liking it was because she “respected” Hackman’s work, although as she puts it, the feeling “wasn’t mutual.”. “I don’t like to whine, but [director] Stanley [Donen] later shared publicly that Gene was very dismissive of me during the film,” she writes, per USA Today. “It’s hard to go to work when the chemistry is absent. I think it’s fair to say that Gene was downright rude.”. In her book, Minnelli also claims that the film suffered from a “cliched script,” which “screamed disaster from page 1,” adding, “The powers that be made the old mistake of count
