Infamous porn star reveals her a list celebrity fans — including Liza Minnelli

Infamous porn star reveals her a list celebrity fans — including Liza Minnelli

Cleanup on aisle 9!

Porn star Robin Byrd and Oscar winner Liza Minnelli were unlikely mutual fans who’d regularly run into each other shopping in the wee hours at the supermarket. 

Byrd — the pioneering porn star of cable access TV — is finally having a moment and related the story about Liza on a new podcast episode. 

The former host of the “The Robyn Byrd Show” — the late-night, low-budget, nudity filled and very odd talk program that ran for 21 years after launching in 1977 on Manhattan Cable Television’s infamously taboo Channel J — is also now the subject of a much more traditional outlet.

Byrd is also a subject of a new HBO doc, “Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story.” HBO

An HBO doc on the late-night- queen is called, unsubtly, “Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story,” and produced by HBO royalty, Sarah Jessica Parker. (“Bang My Box” was the musical number Byrd performed to wrap each episode of her bawdy show.)

Byrd — a pre-digital precursor to OnlyFans and all sorts of pornographic innovations — has also revealed all these years later that she had some pretty mainstream Hollywood fans back in the day.

Barry Manilow… everybody! I was the entertainer’s entertainer,” the now 71-year-old Byrd says in a new episode of “Finding Fire Island,” a podcast charting how tony Fire Island’s Cherry Grove and The Pines areas became gay summertime meccas. Byrd, a longtime Fire Island resident herself, also says that Liza Minnelli and Alan Cumming were secret admirers.

When asked in the podcast episode what her interaction with Minnelli was like, Byrd recalls, “She lived in my neighborhood and we used to run into each other [after] the show… on Wednesday nights. She’d be shopping at [NYC supermarket chain] Food Emporium at, like, two or three in the morning. Because Food Emporium used to be 24 hours when they were around.”

Liza Minnelli and Byrd would have late-night supermarket run-ins. John Salangsang/Shutterstock for Gala of the Stars
Byrd hosted a late-night, low-budget, nudity filled talk program that ran for 21 years. Getty Images
The HBO doc premiered June 30, and is produced by Sarah Jessica Parker. HBO
Byrd said that the “Cabaret” legend once approached her to say, “I’m such a big fan of yours” at Food Emporium Abc/Allied Artists/Kobal/Shutterstock

Byrd tells the podcast’s creator Jess Rothschild that when the “Cabaret” legend, 80, approached her to say, “‘I’m such a big fan of yours’…. And I was like, ‘I’m such a big fan of yours!’ Y’know, we did that.”

We reported that Minnelli was just celebrated at a grand 80th birthday concert at Carnegie Hall. 

The show is co-produced with The Fire Island Pines Historical Society.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *