Behind the Candelabra

by Scott Thorson

  BEHIND THE CANDELABRA: MY LIFE WITH LIBERACE

  Copyright © 1988, 2013 by Scott Thorson and Alex Thorliefson

  This electronic format is published by Tantor eBooks, a division of Tantor Media, Inc, and was produced in the year 2013, All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Introduction

  “Too much of a good thing is wonderful,” Liberace used to say when commenting on a flashy new costume or a wild idea for his act. He loved being known as the most outrageous entertainer in show business and went to outrageous lengths to perpetuate and reinforce that image. Predictably, his passing was outrageous too. From January 24, 1987, the day when front-page headlines in the Las Vegas Sun revealed that Lee had contracted AIDS, his illness and death became a media event.

  Television reporters camped in front of the Palm Springs mansion where he lay dying, subjecting every arrival and departure to intense scrutiny. Was it true, they ghoulishly asked cornered delivery boys, doctors, and family members alike, that Liberace was dying from AIDS? Lee’s staff, under instructions from Lee and others, created an impenetrable wall of denial. Lee had spent his lifetime building what he fondly called “the legend of Liberace.” He’d go to hell before he’d see that legend destroyed.

  “I don’t want to be remembered as an old queen who died of AIDS,” Lee told me, clinging to my hand with failing strength when we met for the last time a few weeks before his death.

  But Lee, whose every wish had been scrupulously obeyed during his lifetime, would be denied this final one. The zealous Riverside County coroner, investigating the cause of Lee’s death, would reveal the truth at a nationally televised press conference. A commemorative service held in Palm Springs two days after Lee died attracted fifteen hundred irreverent curiosity seekers, carloads of press, but few genuine mourners. In celebrity-saturated Palm Springs only two stars—neighbor Kirk Douglas and actress Charlene Tilton—took the trouble to pay their last respects. To avoid another media extravaganza, the time and place of Lee’s funeral were kept a closely guarded secret.

  February 7, 1987, was a beautiful, sunny, almost smog-free day, just the kind of day Lee would have chosen to make his final curtain call. The service was scheduled for one-thirty in the afternoon and I arrived right on time. But security guards kept all but a select few from entering the chapel, and I wasn’t on their list. I stood outside during the brief service. When the mourners came out I realized that they couldn’t have numbered more than twenty. I may have been mistaken, but to me they seemed embarrassed at being seen in that place at that time, as though grieving for Liberace was something to be ashamed of. I recognized most of their faces. All of them had been on Liberace’s payroll. He referred to them as “his people,” as if paying their salaries conveyed ownership. That’s the way he was. Lee had millions of devoted fans, hundreds of acquaintances, fanatically loyal employees, but few real friends.

  As they filed away I entered the empty chapel and looked around, surprised by the drabness of the room. I saw no floral tributes, nothing to indicate that people had gathered to mark the passing of a remarkable man. As a memento of the occasion, the mourners had been given a simple card that bore a prayer to St. Anthony, Lee’s personal patron saint. At its top there were the words, “Liberace; May 16, 1919–February 4, 1987.” I looked at it for a while, unable to believe that he was gone. His coffin had been whisked away so quickly, with so little pomp, that there’d been no time to say good-bye.

  This isn’t the way Lee would have wanted it, I thought sadly. He’d have arranged to bring this final curtain down in a spectacular way. I took a seat in the empty room and bowed my head, imagining the funeral Lee would have planned. I’d been with him during the staging of so many shows that I felt I knew exactly how he’d do this one. The entire funeral would be vintage Liberace, a facsimile of the thousands of performances he’d given during his lifetime. Lee loved an audience and he always left them feeling good. I couldn’t imagine that he’d have wanted to do less when he took his final bows.

  He’d have wanted to make his entrance in an expensive Rolls-Royce, just the way he made the entrance for his Vegas act. The Rolls hearse would come to a stop center-stage and be bathed in blazing spotlights while soaring trumpets and thundering timpani heralded its arrival. The sarcophagus would be draped in Lee’s favorite fur, a $300,000 virgin fox cape with a sixteen-foot train. Then Lee’s valet would appear and remove the cape from the coffin, just as he’d removed it so many times from Lee’s shoulders. The valet and the cape would be driven off in a miniature Rolls. Lee loved telling an audience that “the damn coat was the only piece of clothing in the world to have its own car and driver.”

  The chapel would be full to overflowing with all the great Vegas stars and Lee, aided by Ray Arnett, his production manager, would have arranged to keep them entertained. They’d have hired a big chorus and a symphony orchestra. Lee would be resting in a jewel-encrusted, gilded coffin designated by Bob Lindner, the man who designed all his spectacular jewelry. The coffin would be surrounded by a floral display that would put the Rose Parade to shame. Little boys dressed as cherubs would descend from the ceiling and fly across the chapel, just as Lee had so often flown above the Vegas Hilton stage, looking like a phantasmagoric Peter Pan.

  Lee loved opulence—flashy jewels, sumptuous furs, luxurious cars, fabulous homes. These were as much a part of him as his trademark smile. He could afford and always demanded the best. His burial service should have been an event, a last hurrah to mark the passing of the man who called himself “the greatest showman on earth.” In sad reality, the occasion was sterile and devoid of color. No matter how or why he died, Lee deserved to be ushered out properly, to be mourned and buried with his habitual opulence rather than with secrecy and haste.

  Alone in that gloomy chapel, I experienced an overwhelming feeling of regret and loss. It just shouldn’t have ended this way. Lee’s people had seemed to be in an almost indecent hurry to put the funeral behind them. Six pallbearers, employees of Forest Lawn rather than devoted friends, had whisked the coffin away after the brief service. Then the handful of mourners had scattered quickly, like the fans of a losing team.

  Driving home that afternoon, I couldn’t still the questions racing through my mind. After all the triumphs, why had Lee’s life ended as a tawdry bit of gossip for the tabloids, a footnote to the medical history of the disease called AIDS? Images of Lee flashed through my mind, as diverse as if he’d been a split personality. In many ways, despite our long relationship, he remained an enigma. Who was he, I asked myself—glittering entertainer or petty despot, generous giver or self-gratifying spender, devoted lover or promiscuous thrill seeker? I had lived intimately with Lee as his lover, friend, and confidant. No one knew him better than I; no one else could give me the answers.

  The search for answers would be long and sometimes pa
inful. Lee and I had met for the first time in 1977 when he was a fifty-seven-year-old man and I was an eighteen-year-old kid. I’ve never forgotten that night, seeing my first Liberace show, my curiosity and awe at meeting the legendary entertainer. But that was not the place to start looking for answers. The place to begin is the beginning.

  1

  On November 11, 1918, headlines around, the globe trumpeted: PEACE! World War I, the war to end all wars, had come to an end. American doughboys were headed home and with them came a new sophistication, a new worldview. A popular song posed the question, “How’re you gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”

  There would be no keeping the boys who fought their way across Europe “down on the farm.” America was poised on the brink of an urban explosion that would be fueled by a technical revolution. Women abandoned their hobble skirts, became flappers, and emerged as a new social force. A booming economy and increased leisure time helped popularize new diversions like movies and radio. Flickering figures on a theater screen and electronically amplified voices coming from crystal tubes right in the living room pushed vaudeville to the brink of extinction. The entertainment industry would never be the same. All these events would have an effect on Liberace’s future.

  His birthplace, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was a quiet backwater which didn’t respond quickly to the great events at home and abroad. Local farmers and men who worked the Great Lakes shipping trade still counted the weather more important than events overseas. The majority of the people descended from German immigrants; God-fearing, churchgoing, hardworking Lutherans who relaxed on weekends drinking the beer for which their city was famous. In the early years of the twentieth century, Milwaukee was a quiet, conservative community, an unlikely birthplace for the man who would call himself “Mr. Show Business.” Lee would never feel he belonged there.

  His birth foreshadowed the immoderate man he would become. Lee tipped the scales at more than thirteen pounds when he was born on May 16, 1919, in the suburb of West Allis. His tiny shriveled twin, an apparent victim of Lee’s greed in the womb, was stillborn. Lee’s mother, Frances, named her enormous surviving infant Wladziu for his Polish ancestors and Valentino for the era’s reigning movie idol. But he would grow up being called Wally or Walter, names he detested until, in his twenties, he anointed himself as “Liberace” (his actual surname) on stage and as “Lee” to his friends.

  He was the third Liberace offspring, having been preceded by George and Angelina. Brother Rudolph wouldn’t be born for a decade. The four of them inherited their mother’s short, stocky build, her pointed chin and prominent nose. But their musical talent came from their father. Salvatore Liberace was a classical musician who played French horn with the Milwaukee symphony. Lee recalled sounds as his earliest memories—the lush music of a symphony orchestra pouring from an expensive record player counterpointed by his parents’ angry voices arguing over the family budget. Lee told me that the excitable Salvatore and the more practical Frances were ill suited to each other.

  Other than music the Liberaces had no cultural interests. Lee recalled no mention of art, literature, theater, ballet, politics, world or national affairs in the household unless they were directly related to music. He would have no interest in these things as an adult. In fact, when he became a superstar, Lee would heartily disapprove of other stars, such as Ed Asner and Jane Fonda, who used their fame to champion a political cause or candidate.

  Catholicism was the tie that held the Liberaces together. Frances was devoted to three things: her church, her children, and, most of all, Lee. She adored him. George and Angelina had inherited some of their father’s musical ability but Lee, who began playing the piano by ear at the age of four, was clearly a prodigy. His mother would later claim that his talent confirmed her instinctive knowledge that Lee was special.

  “You never saw a more beautiful baby,” she later told me. From the time of his birth she cherished Lee more than the others. As a little boy Lee remembered being happiest sitting on her lap. Frances soon decided he’d be better off sitting on the piano bench, practicing.

  “She pushed me from the beginning,” Lee recalled, with a trace of bitterness. “I never had a chance to be a kid. George was studying violin and Angie took piano lessons, but they had time to go outside and play. Mom didn’t nag them the way she nagged me. It was always, ‘Walter, come in the house this minute! You’ve got to practice.’”

  The Liberaces were poor. They lived in a tiny, two-bedroom frame house and they struggled to make ends meet on the penny-ante salary Lee’s father made as a classical musician. But somehow Frances always found the money to pay for Lee’s music lessons. She was a determined, proud woman who dreamed of a better life for all her children, but especially for Lee.

  Later, for publication, Lee would describe his family as “typical, all-American.” In private, after a few drinks, he would tell me a very different story, one that sounded more like the soap operas he was so fond of watching. Keeping secrets was impossible in that little house. Lee, who heard his parents arguing late at night, knew his father “played around.” But it still came as a bitter shock when Salvatore walked out on the family while Lee was in his teens and began, as Lee said, “shacking up” with a lady who played in the orchestra.

  “I never forgave my father for that,” Lee confided in me. After Salvatore left home Lee, who could hold a grudge better than most people, didn’t speak to his father again until Salvatore was old and sick. Despite Lee’s enormous wealth, he would refuse to be held responsible for his father’s medical bills. That burden would be shouldered by Lee’s far less successful brother, George.

  Little Lee had adored his father and tried to win his approval. All that changed after Salvatore walked out. As a teenager Lee later recalled seething with helpless rage every time he thought about the old man. He didn’t want to be compared to him in any way, let alone when it came to the one thing that made Lee feel special—his musical talent! After praying over the question of his talent and giving it a lot of thought, Lee managed to convince himself that his musical talent resulted from divine intervention rather than genetic inheritance; in short, it was a gift from God.

  After Salvatore abandoned his family to be with the woman he loved, Frances and her children were in a tough situation. First, there was barely enough income to support one household, let alone two. Second, as a devout Catholic, Frances didn’t believe in divorce. According to Lee, she couldn’t face the potential scandal, the disgrace that would follow the dissolution of her marriage. Frances didn’t want the world to know that her husband had left her for another woman. She told her four children to keep the secret from everyone: playmates, neighbors, and friends. It was Lee’s first childhood secret—but it wouldn’t be his last. From then on Lee’s life would be built on a foundation of secrets and half-truths.

  One way or another, all four Liberace kids paid a price for their parents’ problems. Family members told me that Rudolph often bore the brunt of his mother’s anger. Rudy was ten years younger than Lee, barely school-age when the family broke up. In a happier household he would have been the baby and his mother’s favorite. But Frances used to look at her youngest and say, “You should never have been born. You’re an accident!”

  From my own observations, all the Liberaces suffered the whiplash of their mother’s anger. She dominated them as youngsters, and she continued to dominate them as adults. On occasion, I actually saw her poke them with her cane to get their attention. Lee lavished public affection on his mother while avoiding her in private. Frances could be a sweet old lady one minute and a merciless nag the next. She frowned on cigarettes and would snatch them from Lee’s mouth as if he were a little kid behind the barn instead of a sixty-year-old superstar.

  Coming from a broken home was one thing Lee and I had in common. By the time I grew up, society regarded having divorced parents and stepparents as no big deal. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case in Lee’s day. His parents�
�� split made him feel embarrassed and ashamed. The situation was aggravated by the appearance of a new man in Frances Liberace’s life. Alexander Casadonte, who would eventually become Frances’s second husband, was an old family friend. According to an article published in the Globe, Frances began sharing her home with Casadonte shortly after Salvatore moved out. Again according to the article, she lived as Casadonte’s common-law wife for sixteen years.

  When I questioned him about those years, Lee refused to discuss the man who formally became his stepfather in 1943. But other family members told me that Frances did, in fact, know Casadonte well enough, long before she legally married him, to freely borrow money from him whenever she needed to. From their reports it’s apparent that Frances did have an intimate relationship with Alexander Casadonte prior to their marriage. But his real place in the family history remains another Liberace secret. While her children were young, Frances kept up the pretense, for the sake of appearances, of maintaining her marriage to Salvatore. Lee said that she warned her children, time and again, not to discuss things that went on at home. Her furtive lifestyle would be the launching pad for Lee’s passion for secrecy. As an adult, he would never reveal what actually went on behind the closed doors of his many luxurious homes.

  As youngsters the Liberace children were highly competitive rivals who didn’t get along. The scarcity of money forced Frances to choose among them. Inevitably, Lee got more than the others: better clothes, the finest music teacher, nicer birthday presents. He felt that the inequity made Angie, George, and Rudolph resent him. But being resented by his siblings was only one problem the youthful Lee faced.

  He said he’d always known he wasn’t like other boys, but he’d never been able to label the difference. Then, at the age of ten, he began to have crushes on male teachers. It scared the hell out of him. In the twenties and thirties, nice people from proper families didn’t talk about sex. Pregnant women stayed at home behind closed doors and children were told that storks delivered babies. Like most boys, Lee picked up his knowledge of sex out on the street. And street talk was damned ugly when it came to gays. Homosexuals were referred to as fairies, fags, queers, or perverts—and these were the nicer terms. The unprintable terms were a lot more graphic. Homosexuality was regarded as a particularly shameful form of mental illness.