Behind the Candelabra

by Scott Thorson

  Lee’s closest associates were gay men who worked for him. When Lee needed companionship or a sexual encounter he called men he knew and trusted. In turn they’d call a friend, or a friend of a friend, until they found someone who could deliver the kind of kid that appealed to Lee. Then a meeting would be arranged. For Lee, it was as easy as snapping his fingers, and almost as risk free.

  The growing sexual permissiveness of the late fifties and sixties had a profound effect on the gay community. Promiscuity, which had been somewhat suppressed, became socially acceptable. Having multiple partners was both pleasurable and chic. Bathhouses, pickup bars, and clubs that existed for the sole purpose of arranging sexual encounters between strangers all thrived in that “anything goes” atmosphere. Lee, who had an insatiable sex drive, took full advantage of the developing situation. He admitted to spending more time thinking about sex during those years than he spent thinking about his act. And he preferred to have a variety act—onstage and behind closed doors.

  The homosexual community was ideally structured to satisfy all his desires. Gays make up one of the largest subcultures in the United States and, because the majority were “in the closet” then, each gay man had his own network to rely on. Lee never used male prostitutes. He was an intensely romantic man who preferred the thrill of the chase rather than the cold reality of a cash transaction. Young men eager to make a connection with a big show-business personality usually jumped at the chance for a date with him. He used his success, his fame as foreplay. If they pleased him he would keep them around for a while—a week, a month, a year or two. If not, he would send them on their way with a gift. In the gay community money seldom changes hands for services rendered. It’s more a matter of exchanging favors. Lee could be very generous to friends who granted him favors.

  During those first years of fame, he became even more skilled at leading a double life. The matinee idol dated glamorous women and then headed for his Hollywood apartment to meet a homosexual lover. Onstage he smiled sweetly and flirted with his fans. In private he built an enormous and expensive collection of pornography that he shared at all-male parties. Although the family never discussed Lee’s sexual identity, they had to know he was gay. His mother may have known too. But she undoubtedly thought there was nothing wrong with her son that the right woman couldn’t cure.

  Frances herself played an unwitting role in Lee’s carefully crafted public image. She often attended his performances and he proudly introduced her as “My mother, Mrs. Liberace,” thereby negating Alexander Casadonte’s existence. Lee’s publicity people churned out endless stories about the first lady in his life, his mother. But having a mother like Frances could be difficult.

  Touring abroad gave him an occasional break from his problems. He said he felt safer, more free to be himself in countries where his name was not yet a household word. In the mid-fifties he was invited to play the famed London Palladium and he jumped at the offer. The Palladium is to stage acts what Nirvana is to Buddhists. To be asked to perform there signaled Lee’s arrival as a star of international magnitude. He would have other, greater thrills, but that first show at the Palladium ranked right up there with his first appearance in the Hollywood Bowl. London, he said, sounded like heaven. Before he returned to the States it was to feel more like hell.

  Lee’s enthusiastic British audiences were very much like the ones he attracted in the States—mostly middle-aged, working-class housewives. He enjoyed a huge box-office success in Britain, but the critics united in attacking him. One columnist for the London Daily Press launched an all-out war, describing Lee as a “deadly, sniggering, snuggling, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love.” “Fruit,” of course, was the colloquial expression for homosexual.

  For the first time in his career Lee was publicly branded as gay and it devastated him. He imagined himself stripped of his fame, success, wealth, and power—all the things he’d worked so hard to achieve. Seeing the London Press article made him feel naked in front of the world. His entire career had been jeopardized. Lee burned with impotent rage for days. In Vegas, where he had connections, he’d have known exactly how to handle the situation. He’d have used his influence, his power, or his dangerous friends. But in London he felt helpless. So he struck back in the only way he could. He sued.

  Lee didn’t care what the lawsuit cost in time, effort, or money. Money was surely no obstacle to the highest paid performer in the world. In the past he’d used his wealth to attract friendship and love. In England he used it as a tool to buy vindication and revenge. Lee made up his mind to prove, for all time, that he wasn’t gay, even if it meant bringing another woman into his life. This time she would be far better known than JoAnn Del Rio.

  Sonja Henie had been the world’s premiere figure skater in the 1920s and thirties. She’d parlayed ten world championships and three Olympic gold medals into an enormously successful show-business career. Blonde, blue-eyed, she had an attractive figure and, more important, a celebrity name. Sonja was seven years older than Lee and her fame was waning when they met. I think mutual need drew them to each other. Together, they generated more publicity than either one could separately. The aging skater merited a lot of space in movie magazines and tabloids when she became the woman Liberace spent his evenings with. Lee used his romance with Sonja as proof of his sexual preference.

  Lee’s acquaintances describe Sonja as a motherly type; but Lee told me they had an affair. If he was being honest—and with Lee you could never be sure—it would be his last relationship with a woman. After the London court case came to an end Lee never again felt the need to camouflage his true nature by dating ladies. In 1959 Lee was completely vindicated and his name cleared. On June 9, 1959, the New York Daily News ran an article under the headline I’M NO HOMO, SAYS SUING LIBERACE. Before the year ended Lee was completely vindicated; his name and reputation were freed of any blemish.

  Lee’s lawyers had managed a miracle. They’d actually convinced a judge and jury that black was white. Lee was awarded a $22,500 settlement. He gave every penny of it to charity. Never mind how much he’d spent during the three-year legal action; Lee had been officially, in a court of law, cleared of any suspicion of homosexuality. He’d have gladly spent a fortune to achieve that goal. In 1987, after Lee’s death, there were reports that the London Daily Press, feeling they’d been had, was considering suing Lee’s estate to get that money back. From 1959 on Lee turned to the courts whenever he failed to get his way by other means. His lawyer soon found that handling Liberace’s considerable legal affairs provided a lucrative livelihood. Given Lee’s stubbornness, his power, and his money, he usually got what he wanted by simply wearing his opponents down. When Lee and I finally confronted each other in a court of law, the bitterly contested case dragged on for five years.

  In the coming years Lee’s vindication in the British courts would have one penalty. As America’s social climate became increasingly liberal, other gays came out of the closet. Lee felt compelled to keep his silence. “I can’t admit a thing,” he said, “unless I want to be known as the world’s biggest liar.”

  After winning the case Lee went on to an escalating series of triumphs. ABC signed him for a TV variety show that ran in 1958 and 1959. He was in even greater demand as a live entertainer and set new attendance records wherever he appeared. The money came rolling in faster than even he could spend it. He sold his Sherman Oaks property and bought Rudy Vallee’s fifty-room house in the Hollywood Hills. Lee also acquired a mansion in Las Vegas, another one in Palm Springs, and a place in Malibu overlooking the ocean. He had the power he’d always wanted. And he’d finally distanced himself from his family. According to Lee, it hadn’t been easy.

  At the beginning of his “white heat” period, his family had made an all-out effort to become indispensable to him. George was an intrinsic part of Lee’s early act and Angie went on the road with her brothers too. Lee promoted her to his manager and, from that position of responsibil
ity, whether true or not, Lee told me that she convinced him that George was taking advantage of his position as favorite brother. Lee never knowingly permitted anyone to take advantage of him. Whether he was right or not in this instance, he dropped George from the act. When Lee’s income plummeted under Angie’s stewardship, he dismissed her as well. The turmoil capped the Liberaces’ already troubled relationships, resulting in a prolonged period of estrangement during which Angie worked at other jobs while George’s career sagged.

  Meanwhile, Rudolph, the youngest of the Liberace children, passed away. He left behind a widow, Isabel, and four children. Lee drifted away from Rudolph’s widow and children just as he drifted away from George and Angie. He couldn’t turn his back on his mother as easily, but he did the next best thing. He moved her into the Hollywood mansion and then spent most of his time elsewhere. For the first time in his life, at the age of forty-five, Lee felt relatively free of his family and, based on what he told me, from what he regarded as their never-ending demands. His life seemed to hold endless happy possibilities; he had everything to live for when a bizarre accident almost ended everything.

  In the fall of 1963 Lee was playing the Holiday Inn in Pittsburgh, part of his regular circuit. He felt sick after the opening of the engagement and got progressively worse with each succeeding performance. On November 22 he woke up late in the afternoon, as was his custom. A cold sweat bathed his body when he got out of bed to turn on the television, running through the stations searching for one of his favorite soap operas. That particular day all the network shows had been cancelled in favor of a steady stream of news programming. Lee soon learned that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.

  Lee wasn’t political in any way. His first thought was “What a tragedy,” but his second was “Thank God, I won’t have to go on tonight.” Lee had never felt sicker in his entire life.

  The country came to a halt that day as grieving, stunned Americans sat in front of their television sets watching the tragedy unfold. Millions would forever mark that date in their lives by where they happened to be when they got the news. An entire nation sat, transfixed, as they watched a stunned Jacqueline Kennedy, in a suit stained with her husband’s blood, setting an example of dignity and courage.

  But Lee was too ill to feel anything except his own growing discomfort. He was planning to spend the next twenty-four hours in bed until one of his people—he was too ill to remember which one—told him the show would have to go on after all. The Holiday Inn’s entire showroom had been booked weeks in advance for that particular night, and the group that had booked the room wanted to see Liberace despite the day’s tragic events.

  Lee was astonished. He couldn’t believe anyone would want to go to a show the very day the president had been shot. But Lee was a trooper. Shaking with weakness and fatigue, he dragged himself out of bed and laboriously made his way to his dressing room to prepare for his act. By then the performances depended on costumes as much as they did on piano playing. That night Lee attempted to make his normal lightning quick changes in a makeshift dressing room in the wings while the singer, Claire Alexander, entertained the audience. Lee didn’t remember how much of his act he managed to complete but, during one of his changes, he collapsed. His powerful will couldn’t drive his failing body back onstage.

  “I can’t go back on,” he told Ray Arnett, his producer.

  Ray, who’d been with Lee for years, knew something was terribly wrong. Lee lived for his act and his audiences; he’d never missed a performance before, let alone walked out in the middle of one. A simple case of flu wouldn’t be able to sideline him, Ray thought. But he had no idea just how sick his boss really was. It was a day for ill omens and unpredictable events; a day in which the stars seemed malevolently misaligned.

  Lee had been felled by the most bizarre set of circumstances. During his act he worked under blazing lights which caused him to sweat profusely. Consequently, his costumes required frequent cleaning. Before arriving in Pittsburgh one of his costumes had been cleaned with tetrachloride. Sweating heavily on opening night, Lee absorbed the deadly chemical through his pores. Lee wore that costume for part of each performance on all the ensuing evenings, absorbing more and more of the lethal chemicals. By the time he collapsed, his kidneys had shut down completely.

  The doctors at St. Francis Hospital diagnosed his ailment as uremic poisoning. Their prognosis sounded ominous. Waste fluids had already collected in Lee’s tissues. His feet and legs were already swollen. If the swelling couldn’t be halted before it reached his vital organs, Lee would literally drown in his own body fluids. Kidney dialysis, a relatively new treatment, was the only thing that could save him. Lee, expecting to die, began spending money from his hospital bed. “What the hell,” he told me later, “you can’t take it with you.”

  He ordered jewelry from Tiffany’s, furs and many other things he hadn’t yet gotten around to buying. He also made arrangements to give away many of his possessions. It must have been weird in that hospital room, as he bought things and gave others away in frantic haste to squeeze the last ounce of pleasure from all the money he’d earned.

  His worst fears were realized when the first dialysis treatment failed to improve his condition. The doctors told him he’d die if they couldn’t get his kidneys working again. But they didn’t dare administer another dialysis treatment for thirty-six hours. During those hours Lee’s life would be hanging by a thread. He was given the last rites.

  Said Lee, “I knew prayer was the only thing that could help me, so I began to pray harder than I ever had in my life.”

  Barely conscious, he directed his prayers toward St. Anthony, whom he described as the patron of the underdog. Sometime during the thirty-six hours between treatments, Lee woke to find a nun dressed all in white seated by his bed. The nun, whom he assumed to be one of the nursing sisters at the Catholic hospital, told Lee that he mustn’t waste his strength worrying because of his illness. She assured him that he was going to live.

  Twelve hours after the second dialysis Lee’s kidneys began to function again. Afterwards the doctors told Lee they’d almost given up hope for his recovery. In their opinion he was a living, breathing example of a miracle. He owed his life, not to their skills, but to divine intervention. As soon as Lee was feeling better he asked to see the wonderful nun who had given him so much faith and courage. He could describe the woman in detail, but none of the nuns in the hospital fit his description, none of them wore all-white habits.

  Six weeks after he’d been taken to St. Francis, Lee was released, weighing twenty pounds less than he had on the day he’d been rushed there by ambulance. He looked like a new man. More important, he had a new view of himself and his position in the scheme of things. Despite the church’s position on homosexuality, Lee firmly believed he wouldn’t have been spared if being gay was the sin Catholic dogma held it to be. He believed he’d been saved because God, and most particularly St. Anthony, looked on him with special favor. As for the mysterious nun, nothing could convince him she wasn’t God’s messenger.

  Knowing God loved him filled Lee with peace and well-being. He’d done things the church regarded as sins—sodomy, homosexual acts with multiple partners—but God had spared him anyway. From 1963 on, Lee, believing there was no sin too great for God’s forgiveness, would stop at nothing in his pursuit of pleasure.

  6

  When I first met Lee in the summer of 1977 I was an eighteen-year-old kid who thought, like most eighteen-year-olds, that I had all the answers. Living with Lee would eventually teach me I didn’t have any of them. I was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, a couple of hundred miles from Lee’s birthplace in Milwaukee, a coincidence he often remarked on. Like him, I am also the product of a broken home and, like him, I am gay. My mother suffered from manic-depression, a chemical imbalance that resulted in emotional problems, and, consequently, most of my early memories are unhappy ones. She married three times but her illness prevented her from settling do
wn with any of her husbands for the long haul.

  I have two sisters, Annette and Carla, and one brother, Jimmy, plus four half brothers and sisters: Gary, Wayne, LaDon, and Sharon. Wayne and Sharon grew up with their father, Nordel Johansen, while Gary and LaDon lived with my father, Dean Thorson. Those of us who stayed with Mother had a rough life. There were times when she’d disappear for days, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Once, when we’d been left with nothing to eat, I begged our landlady for food. She gave us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and called the authorities.

  When the police came, we children were turned over to a welfare agency and Mom was hospitalized. For the next year we lived first in St. Michael’s Orphanage and then in the La Crosse Home for Children. After her release, Mom reclaimed us and headed for California to make a new start. But she was far from cured. She spent a great deal of time in California state hospitals and we spent most of our childhood moving from one foster home to another. One of them, the home of Rose and Joe Carracappa, was memorable for the love and kindness they gave. Unfortunately, my stay with them would be all too brief. My mother soon reclaimed me, and the round of brief stays with her, and then in foster homes, continued. It was a hard, loveless life most of the time. But kids survive. We went to school and did our best to support each other along the way.

  Back then the state paid foster parents three hundred dollars a month to care for a child and that didn’t cover any luxuries. Foster kids soon learn to earn their own spending money. I worked at odd jobs from the age of ten. By my thirteenth birthday I’d grown tall enough to lie about my age and hold down part-time jobs.

  Somewhere along the way I picked up an intense love for animals, maybe because I trusted them more than people. The happiest memories of my youth began when I bought a dog and a horse with money I’d saved. Leonardo was a two-hundred-pound St. Bernard and, like me, in bad need of a home. Beauty was a half Shetland, half Arab horse that no one seemed to want—except me. It didn’t matter that my current residence had no place to keep animals; I just had to have them to love and care for—or I’d shrivel up and die.