Life was a cabernet for Liza Minnelli – and complete hell for husband David Gest, who claims the singer repeatedly pummeled him during alcohol-fueled rages.
“Liza, stop it, stop it!” Gest says he cried during one attack as he tried to cover up his face while Minnelli “pounded [his] head with her fists.”
“I am the star!” she allegedly exclaimed after the beating.
The alcohol that spurred her attacks also appeared to give the icon almost superhuman strength, making it difficult for her husband and others to stop her choking, slapping, punching, biting and lamp-throwing rampages, Gest says in the explosive lawsuit filed yesterday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
In the suit – which seeks $10 million in damages – Gest says the beatings by his estranged wife left him in so much agony, he now has to take “11 prescription medications per day, some more than once,” just to manage the “constant, unrelenting pain.”
The suit says his symptoms include “severe, unrelenting headaches; nausea; hypertension; scalp tenderness; insomnia” and “phonophobia” – a fear of sounds, voices and telephones.
Representatives for Minnelli said they hadn’t seen the suit and declined immediate comment. Gest’s lawyer, Raoul Felder, also refused to comment, except to say that “domestic violence against men is an unspoken epidemic in this country . . . men just don’t speak up.”
Gest, 50, met Minnelli, 57, in June 2001, while he was organizing a concert for Michael Jackson at Madison Square Garden.
“At the time of the marriage, [Gest] was a world-renowned event and concert producer/promoter,” while the Academy Award-winning Minnelli’s career “had been eclipsed,” the suit says.
The “Arthur” actress “was an alcoholic, overweight” and “could not get insurance to perform concert dates on stage” when they first got together.
Minnelli allegedly first attacked Gest in December 2001, when he tried to get her to a rehab center.
The “Cabaret” star apparently wanted one last hurrah and drank an entire bottle of wine while in a limo en route to the Charon Foundation in Pennsylvania.
She “commenced to hit [Gest] in and about his head with open hands and closed fists employing all her strength . . . in the back seat of the car,” yelling, “Don’t make me go! I don’t want to go!” the suit says.
The stint in rehab worked, and Gest and Minnelli tied the knot at the Marble Collegiate Church in March 2002 in a star-studded ceremony that featured “King of Pop” Jackson as best man, Elizabeth Taylor as maid of honor and actress Mia Farrow and The Post’s Cindy Adams among the 15 bridesmaids.
The honeymoon was over before it even started, however. Minnelli – daughter of the addiction-plagued Judy Garland – fell off the wagon again that August, while she and Gest were vacationing at the Villa D’Este in Lake Como, Italy.
Minnelli raided the hotel mini-bar and “consumed six small bottles of vodka, gin and scotch,” the suit says. “Once intoxicated, [she] she became verbally abusive and physically abusive,” beating Gest “in the head and body.”
The boozing and beatings continued when they returned to New York, as they stayed at the Hotel Plaza Athenee while their East Side apartment was being renovated. Minnelli ordered three glasses of vodka on the rocks from room service – and became enraged when Gest found out and canceled the order.
She stormed out and went out boozing with her bodyguard, returning to the hotel “extremely intoxicated, upset, agitated, uncontrollable and angry.”
Minnelli “immediately attacked” Gest, beating him on his face and chest, “concentrating on the right and left sides of his head, shouting insults and obscenities throughout the attack.” She finally broke off the attack and went to lie down in another room, where she called for her production manager.
When the manager went in, she allegedly “wrapped her arms around his neck so that it was nearly impossible for him to breathe.” When he finally managed to break free, he ran into another room, and told Gest “she’s stronger than any woman I’ve ever seen . . . I can’t believe how strong she is on alcohol.”
The rampaging Minnelli then tried to run out and get another drink but was stopped by one of Gest’s security guards. Gest says he heard the guard moan while he was restraining Minnelli. When he asked the guard why, he answered that Minnelli “had just bitten him on the chest,” the suit says.
That night, the drunken Minnelli slipped in the bathroom and hit her eye. Gest “helped defendant ‘cover up’ the incident in the press,” claiming that Minnelli “had a ‘cancerous’ growth removed from under one of her eyes.”
Minnelli gave Gest another basting on Thanksgiving night, after they came back from dinner at a friend’s house in New Jersey. “The defendant told plaintiff she was going for a walk and instead left to consume alcohol,” Gest said.
She came home “angry and violent” and started pounding the producer “until he was forced to run through the apartment to avoid the blows, while [she] chased after him to continue the abuse.”
In March 2003 – shortly before their first anniversary – Minnelli was on the rocks again. Gest said he “was awakened by crashing noises” coming from his wife’s bathroom, and walked in to see her guzzling from a vodka bottle. She again “flew into a rage” and beat him “about the head until he ran into the other room,” he said.
Gest then called the Charon Foundation for help. When representatives arrived to take Minnelli for treatment the next morning, she became “uncontrollable” and again started walloping Gest.
Gest says the worst beating was the last, which happened this past June while the couple were staying in the Connaught Hotel in London. Minnelli, “claiming she needed some air, offered to fetch take-out food . . . from two nearby restaurants” with their driver.
While they were out, she had the driver buy her two bottles of vodka – and downed one of them before they got back to the hotel. She came back “extremely intoxicated” and started running around from room to room, and then “stopped abruptly and threw a lamp” at Gest, but missed, the suit says.
When Gest tried to calm her down, she began “beating [him] about the head and face with her fists without re- lenting.” Like the Incredible Hulk with anger, “the alcohol gave her remarkable force and strength.”
Gest says she called for her security guard, and when he came into the room, “she punched him in the stomach.” The guard “kept repeating, ‘Liza, it’s me . . . I’m your friend.’
“She replied, ‘I have no friends. My husband is using me to be a star. I am the star. Next he will start a singing career on stage and record albums.’ “
Gest says he told her, “With my voice, baby, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about any competition. I can’t sing.”
They separated soon after, and Gest moved out of the East Side apartment.
The suit, which was written by Felder and signed off on by Gest, says that final beating “caused him to suffer from increasingly excruciating pain in his head for the re mainder of the night,” and that he still suffers today.
In addition to the mountain of prescription pills Gest is taking, he’s also “forced to undergo painful medical procedures including numerous injections into the scalp, temporal area and forehead in an effort to break the cycle of unrelenting pain.”
It’s also allegedly forced him to stop traveling and has had a negative impact on his business. The suit refers to Gest as “a victim of domestic violence.”
At Minnelli’s home, her doorman wasn’t buying what Gest was selling. His jaw dropped when a Post reporter told him about the allegations.
“You believe that?” he said. “That guy’s an animal.”
Additional reporting by Jennifer Fermino
TALE OF THE TAPE
NAME: DAVID GEST
AGE: 50NICKNAME: Svengali
SEX: Androgynous
HEIGHT: 5’10”
WEIGHT CLASS: Definitely lightweight
BIRTHPLACE: Encino, Ca.
TALENT: Name-dropping
NEXT PROJECT: Taking self-defense lessons at Tiger Schulmann’s Karate.
FACE OF: Embittered ex-hubbies.
KNOWN TO HAVE BATTLED: VH1 Producers.
COLLECTS: Shirley Temple dolls.
LATEST HITS: Does producing the 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert count?
NAME: LIZA MINNELLI
AGE: 57
NICKNAME: The Sloshed Slugger
SEX: Androgynous
HEIGHT: 5’4″
WEIGHT CLASS: Ranges from flyweight to super-heavyweight, depending on the meds
BIRTHPLACE: Hollywood, Calif.
TALENT: Singing, acting, dancing
NEXT PROJECT: Appearing on four episodes of Fox’s “Arrested Development.”
FACE OF: M.A.C. Cosmetics.
KNOWN TO HAVE BATTLED: Pills and alcohol.
COLLECTS: Husbands.
LATEST HITS: The slaps she gave Gest before they split-up.