Liza Minnelli calls Gene Hackman 'downright rude' in memoir

Liza Minnelli, 75, recalls in her memoir Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! that working with Gene Hackman on the 1975 film Lucky Lady was difficult. 'It's hard to go to work when the chemistry is absent,' she writes, adding, 'I think it's fair to say that Gene was downright rude.' In Lucky Lady she played Claire, a widow who begins smuggling alcohol with her lover Walker (Burt Reynolds) and his friend Kibby (Hackman); the trio become entangled in a messy love triangle as they try to avoid jail.

Minnelli notes that director Stanley Donen later shared publicly that Hackman was dismissive of her, and she writes, 'I don't like to whine.' The film flopped at the box office and drew negative reviews. Roger Ebert gave it two stars out of four and called it 'a big, expensive, good-looking flop of a movie; rarely is so much effort expended on a movie so inconsequential.' Minnelli's remarks come more than a year after Hackman died on Feb.

18, six days after his wife Betsy Arakawa passed away; he was 95 and she was 65.

liza minnelli, gene hackman, lucky lady, memoir, burt reynolds, stanley donen, roger ebert, box office, 1975 film, betsy arakawa