Wladziu Walter Liberace was born in 1919 in Wisconsin. His father, an immigrant from Italy who played French horn in orchestras providing background music for silent movies, instilled a passion for music in his four children. Liberace was picking out tunes on the piano by the time he was four. At age seven, he was already a prodigy pianist and received the first of many music scholarships, this one to the Milwaukee Conservatory of Music, where he was classically trained on the piano. He was a concert boy wonder at 14.
In high school, Liberace participated in the annual Character Day, in which he dressed up as Emperor Haille Sellasie of Ethiopia, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and, in his senior year, as Greta Garbo.
When he was 20, he auditioned for and was accepted into the Chicago Symphony. At age 23, he dropped his first name and became, simply, Liberace. His friends called him Lee.
His early performances were strictly classical, but they started to evolve when he began adding light-hearted encores, such as pop tunes, marches, and boogie woogie. His act eventually changed to a style that he described variously as "pop with a bit of classics" and "classical music with the boring parts left out." That was when Liberace's popularity soared and he was suddenly in demand in dinner clubs and nightclubs around the U.S., rather than just symphony halls.
When he was 25, his fame had spread far enough that the entertainment director for the Last Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas called and asked him to perform for the outrageous sum of $750 a week. The opening-night crowd went crazy over his high-energy act and that same night, the entertainment director doubled his salary.
From then on, Liberace not only adopted Las Vegas, but he turned himself into a one-man walking advertisement for the extravagance, flamboyance, and uninhibited tastelessness usually associated with the place. His stage costumes started as a way to stand out, but then he had to keep topping himself with outrageous gimmicks -- gaudy rings on every finger, white-fox-skin capes, ostrich-feather suits, Uncle Sam hot pants, multi-color beaded tuxedos, rhinestone vests, sequin neckties, gold-lamé pants, feather boas, and, of course, a white-llama fur coat with a 16-foot train. Don we now our gay apparel, indeed.
He began collecting pianos, art, rare automobiles and antiques, which he used to furnish his growing number of houses. There's a great scene with Liberace at his Palm Springs’ mansion in the movie Good Night, and Good Luck with David Strathairn playing the pioneering broadcaster Edward R. Murrow interviewing him.
Liberace appeared for ten years in the '40s and '50s at the Last Frontier, once performing a duet with Elvis there. In the '70s, he worked at the Las Vegas Hilton, making $300,000 a week. Along the way, he became one of the most popular entertainers of all time. "Mr. Showmanship" racked up six gold records and at one time was in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's highest paid entertainer.
Liberace's public persona was that of an effeminate mama's boy. Yet for most of his life, he steadfastly refused to admit to being homosexual. He had some high-profile dates and courtships with women to quell the rumors and he constantly claimed that he was just waiting for the right girl to come along. He was afraid that his most rabid fans -- middle-aged and elderly women -- would desert him if he came out.
It wasn't until he was in his 40s, in the 1960s, that he began to loosen up, hanging out with young men in his homes in Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and Malibu. But that was still in strict privacy; he never flaunted his sexuality in public.
Finally, in 1982, when Lee was crowding 60, "the scandal" erupted. He’d hired an 18-year-old live-in chauffeur, bodyguard, and secretary, whom he later fired and bodily ejected from his house for his drug use and a death threat he made against Liberace. The boy sued, claiming palimony, for $120 million. The case went to court and the testimony was fairly explicit. The judge, however, sided with Liberace and threw out the case. (They settled for $95,000.) Undeterred, Liberace hired another boy; this one went about his business much more quietly.
Liberace’s last appearance was at Caesars in 1986, but it was clear that his health was deteriorating. He died in early 1987 at age 67. His doctors claimed it was heart failure, but an autopsy proved it was AIDS.
The Liberace Museum is one the most popular non-casino-related tourist attractions in Las Vegas. The main building houses the piano, car, and award galleries. More than a dozen of Lee’s rare pianos are on display, including one encrusted in 50,000 rhinestones. The coolest cars are the mirror-tiled Rolls Royce, a custom rhinestone sedan, and a 1940s English taxi. A second building holds the costume and jewelry galleries. Also on display are the world’s largest rhinestone (50 pounds) and a recreation of the opulent master bedroom in Liberace’s Palm Springs mansion.
The museum supports a foundation that funds scholarships to more than 100 universities, schools, and organizations that promote new musical talent.
