Peggy Siegal in 2006.Photo: Getty Images
Publicist Peggy Siegal was on Barbara Walter’s Sirius Radio show today — we know, right? Everyone has one of those things now — talking about how the best thing she ever did for her first client, Liza Minnelli, was, er … introduce her to controlled substances.
I walk my way up … and I get to the rope [saying] “Liza’s in the car, Liza’s in the car” and there was Steve Rubell … who owned it … who I went to Syracuse with … he said go get her … I take her to the velvet rope — opens up — he grabs her, he kisses her, he gives her God knows what in her pocket, they go off into the sunset and they forget to open the rope for me … and that’s how Liza met Steve Rubell, that’s how all that trouble began with Studio 54 and that was probably the only good thing I did for her.
But one imagines that night at Studio 54 wasn’t just a turning point for Liza, but for Peggy Siegal. Picture her there, standing in front of the closed velvet rope, abandoned by her famous friends, left literally and metaphorically out in the cold as the beautiful people float by her. What was young Peggy saying to herself, do you think? That moment, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of moment that makes a publicist.
