She's simply 'Z' best

A whole generation knows Liza Minnelli strictly for her antics in the tabloids and her comic turn on Fox's ''Arrested Development." But television producer Craig Zadan remembers the Academy Award-winning singer-dancer-actress in her prime.

The moment was May 1972, just months after Minnelli won an Oscar for ''Cabaret." Zadan was sitting in the audience at the Lyceum Theater in New York for the filming of what would become ''Liza With a 'Z': A Concert for Television."

''It was one of the most earth-shattering nights of my life," Zadan recalls of the concert, which featured a 26-year-old Minnelli dancing and singing her version of classics like ''Son of a Preacher Man," ''Bye Bye Blackbird," and ''God Bless the Child." ''Her performance was jaw dropping. By the end of the evening, people were crying and screaming and cheering. It was an amazing emotional journey."

The show ended up winning Minnelli an Emmy. On Saturday at 8 p.m., viewers can judge the one-hour special for themselves: Showtime and producers Zadan and Neil Meron will premiere the fully restored, digitally remastered film, which has not aired since its three initial broadcasts on NBC in 1972 and 1973.

''Liza With a 'Z' " features a medley from ''Cabaret" and a touch of Minnelli's own brand of comedy as she explains how people mispronounce her name (thus the show's title). For the 60-year-old, who keeps her Oscar and Emmy Awards boxed in a closet now, the return of the show -- written by Fred Ebb and John Kander and choreographed by the Oscar-winning Bob Fosse -- is surreal.

''That particular time was like standing on the inside of a diamond," she recalls. ''I had the greatest collaboration you could ever dream of. You don't realize it at the time. You're so busy doing the work."

Minnelli, the daughter of actress-singer Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, rehearsed for six weeks for her performance. Singer was the sponsor of the program, but Fosse didn't allow any executives to preview it. ''Every time Singer came around or anyone from the network, we went into break," she says. ''I think Fosse was nervous. On television at that time, you weren't allowed to do anything."

Still, NBC almost derailed the whole thing after one of its censors spied Minnelli's super-short Halston red sequined minidress.

''She came screaming down to the front of the theater," Minnelli says. ''She said, 'Hold it! She can't do that! She's naked!' Bob Fosse, Fred Ebb, and Halston jumped in and said, 'Let's talk.' They took her into a dressing room and when she came out I said, 'Excuse me, can I wear it?' She said, 'Yes, it's fa-shun.' And she wandered away. We got away with murder."

The negatives from ''Liza With a 'Z' " were stored in an NBC vault for a decade and then disappeared, says Meron. ''At the time the film was made, people didn't have home videos or DVDs. People were throwing things away."

In 1999, film reconstructor and producer Michael Arick found the negatives -- in Los Angeles and New York -- and used the sound rolls Minnelli had saved (the original master mix was also missing) to restore the program. Zadan and Meron, who had worked with Showtime in the past, approached the network's president, Robert Greenblatt, with a pitch.

''Bob has always been a movie and musical fanatic," says Zadan. ''He has original posters of Vincente Minnelli's movies all over his house. It was a natural fit."

In the 34 years since the broadcast, Minnelli has moved on, to say the least. A New York resident, she recently completed a concert tour of Europe. She takes a jazz dance lesson for two hours every day. In the coming year, she plans to produce a CD using the music of her godmother, singer Kay Thompson.

And like a true Hollywood player, she is also working on a screenplay. The subject? ''They told me not to talk about it," she says.

Is it about her childhood growing up on the grounds of MGM, where her father would teach her a new song to sing on the way home each night? Exhaling the smoke from her cigarette, she replies, ''God, no."

''Imagine if you went as a kid, if you were six, and you went to this big old hall of a place and there were lots of people coming and going and whispering and whispering and you didn't know what was going on. It was boring!

''I wanted to be an ice skater," she adds. ''Then I saw 'Bye Bye Birdie' and everything changed."

Suzanne Ryan can be reached at sryan@globe.com.