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It’s hard to believe, but Liza Minnelli lost her signature role as the free-spirited Sally Bowles to English actress Jill Haworth when the envelope-pushing musical “Cabaret” was originally staged on Broadway, in 1966.
John Kander and Fred Ebb’s title song “was originally written for me, because I was supposed to do the play, and then they decided to make the boy American and the girl English,” says Minnelli, who won the Best Actress Oscar for Bob Fosse’s 1972 film adaptation playing an American version of Sally opposite English actor Michael York.
“But I knew I’d get the movie for some reason!”
The movie’s producer, Cy Feuer, in fact, signed Minnelli for the role even before Bob Fosse was brought on to direct the movie, for which he won the Best Director Oscar — in an upset over Francis Ford Coppola, nominated for “The Godfather.”
“Fosse was one of my heroes,” Minnelli says by phone during rehearsals for her new concert show with Alan Cumming, which plays Town Hall on March 13. “I auditioned for Fosse a couple of times on Broadway, and didn’t get the parts.”
She credits Fosse with reinventing the then-moribund Hollywood musical by throwing out all of the musical numbers that didn’t take place on the stage of a seedy Berlin cabaret — except for a chilling Nazi anthem delivered by a teenager in a Bavarian beer garden.
“My father changed everything when he did ‘Meet Me in St. Louis,’ ” Liza says, referring to the 1944 musical that Vincente Minnelli directed starring Liza’s mother, Judy Garland.
“That was the first time a musical had taken the songs outside of the theater, and people sang at home and on the street. Bob and ‘Cabaret’ changed it back.”
It was Minnelli’s dad who came up with Sally’s famous look — heavily lined eyes and bobbed black hair — after Liza told him she was contemplating a blond look inspired by Marlene Dietrich.
“My father said, ‘No, no, no’ and showed me pictures of Louise Brooks and Theda Bara,” she recalls. “He said they were marvelous brunettes.”
A bisexual love triangle about showgirl Sally, a writer (York) and a dashing German (Helmut Griem) set against the rise of the Nazis in 1931 Germany, “Cabaret” benefited from being shot in that country, far from meddling studio executives in Hollywood.
“We’d take chances, and the studio would send telegrams like, ‘Too much smoke, the picture will break up on drive-in screens,’ ” Minnelli says, with a laugh. “Bob would tear it up and throw it over his shoulder in front of the whole crew.”
“Cabaret” is being released for the first time on Blu-ray Tuesday, in a gorgeous restoration that does full justice to Geoffrey Unsworth’s gritty cinematography — smoke-filled cabaret and all.
lou.lumenick@nypost.com