Behind the Candelabra

by Scott Thorson

  We saw very little of Lee’s people during that Tahoe stay. Lee wanted our time alone to be uninterrupted. He did, however, agree to join Jerry and the valet one evening when they were going to see Lawrence Welk’s show. Although I didn’t care for the idea, Lee insisted I accompany him. As I feared, it proved to be a bizarre outing. Jerry seemed to be flaunting his friendship with the valet, perhaps in an effort to make Lee jealous. But Lee acted as if he was oblivious of any of the undercurrents flowing around him.

  Another night Lee took me to meet his brother George, who was working locally as a lounge act. Although we were in Tahoe for several weeks, it was the only time they saw one another. The playboard advertising George’s appearance billed him as “george LIBERACE.” Seeing it really upset Lee. “Hell,” he fumed, “I made the name what it is, and now they all take advantage of it.”

  It was my first exposure to Lee’s complicated and often contradictory relationship with his family. I couldn’t help wondering how George felt, playing a small lounge when his younger brother was so successful. When I met him after his performance George proved to be a quiet, gentle man who walked softly in his brother’s shadow. Lee told me George had made a small fortune in his lifetime, but that his many wives had taken it all. The brothers treated each other with a distant, uncomfortable politeness, and the evening turned out to be far from a joyous reunion. It gave me some insight into the complexities of Lee’s relationships and how little I really knew him. I would later come to know most of the Liberace family quite well. Like all families, they had their share of problems getting along with each other. However, despite Lee’s often voiced complaints about this one or that one, I found all of them to be devoted to him. They did their best to protect him and his reputation, right up until the day he died.

  While we stayed in the entertainment house I couldn’t help worrying about how our relationship would be perceived, not realizing that Lee’s homosexuality was an open secret in the show-business world. Like other gay entertainers, he was protected by the people who worked for him or with him. They would never risk their lucrative jobs by talking to the press. Even if they did, the press wouldn’t publish their stories. The entertainment world is a closed fraternity—and the media are as much a part of it as the stars.

  Back then I was scared to death the staff would catch us in a private moment. Lee didn’t share my concern. His sex drive was at an all-time high and it made him reckless. He had a dread of growing old and ill and insisted that contact with me made him feel young again. He’d suffered an impotence problem before we met and had a silicone implant that made him semierect all the time. Lee never admitted his problem to anyone, not even to me—and I never questioned him. I felt it was a sensitive issue that he would discuss if and when he felt the time was right. But various members of his inner circle had learned about the surgery. They whispered and giggled, assuming it had been done to enlarge Lee rather than to deal with a legitimate medical problem. Sadly, Lee preferred to leave people to draw that sick conclusion rather than tell them the truth.

  In our first months together Lee’s weaknesses and faults made me feel even closer to him. He wasn’t a vain man in the usual sense. He didn’t regard himself as a musical genius and he wasn’t in love with his own appearance. But he was very protective of the Liberace image and would go to any lengths to maintain and perpetuate it. A major part of that image was his full head of thick, curly hair.

  Lee had started balding in his thirties. By his fifties he’d lost almost all his hair. The first time I saw him getting out of the shower without a wig, I hardly recognized him. He looked like a nice, middle-aged man with a too-big nose, an ingratiating smile, and a bald head. Lee had a paranoid fear when it came to letting anyone see him that way. He didn’t even swim, although all his homes had pools, because he was afraid his wig might come off underwater. When Lee turned the care of his many hairpieces over to me, it was the ultimate compliment. It signaled that he now trusted me with his life.

  By the time we left Tahoe, Lee and I were well on our way to a very solid relationship. He confided that he felt he was getting too old to start over again, that he wanted ours to be the final relationship of his life. “I saved the best for last,” he said.

  10

  After three weeks in Tahoe we returned to the chaos of our strange Vegas household. It seemed we’d no sooner walked in the door than Carlucci picked up where he’d left off: trying to be a part of every facet of Lee’s life. The size and scope of Jerry’s bouts of anger escalated. He and his roommate, the valet, continued to make me feel ill at ease.

  Lee faced a three-month hiatus before his next booking and I made up my mind to use the time to sort out our lives. I’ve been told I was the only one of Lee’s lovers to insist on playing more than a passive role in his life. But I wanted him to be happy, and I didn’t see how that was possible unless I changed the way we lived. Gays have no choice when it comes to their sexual preference. We are what God, or fate, or our environment, or whatever higher power you hold dear has made us. But we do have a choice when it comes to the life we lead and the people we associate with. I felt that our present lifestyle was intolerable and unhealthy, that having so many men living under one roof would lead to serious trouble. Yet Lee continued to tolerate what seemed to me to be an intolerable state of affairs. He turned a seemingly deaf ear to all my pleas to change the status quo.

  I was disgusted, baffled, angry, afraid Lee still cared for Jerry enough to want to keep him around. All I knew was that I couldn’t continue sharing a home with my lover’s protégé—and the protégé’s roommate. It was just too bizarre. Once again I told Lee I’d have to leave and once again he broke down and wept, but I was beginning to be leery of tears that came so easily and conveniently. Lee was a consummate actor and Camille his favorite role. He played the part again and again during our years together. I never did learn to ignore his tears; knowing my weakness, he cried when he couldn’t get what he wanted any other way.

  Jerry, however, seemed immune to all Lee’s blandishments. Tears, anger, coldness, had no effect on him. Saying he had no place to go, Jerry simply stayed on in the Vegas house on Shirley Street. So Lee did what he always did when he needed someone to play the heavy. He called in Seymour Heller. Their discussion foreshadowed future discussions they would one day have about me. According to Lee, they agreed that Jerry must be made to understand the jeopardy of his position. Lee didn’t want to risk rejecting Jerry and having him take his revenge by telling the world that Lee was a homosexual. In the past Lee had gone to great lengths to protect his name and his reputation, to keep the secrets of his homosexuality from the world. He was prepared to do so again—and he wanted to be sure Jerry knew it.

  Carlucci was given a leading role in the plan to get Jerry to move. First, Carlucci and Lee found a house for Jerry and, according to Lee, secretly made a deposit on it. Then Carlucci, acting under Lee’s orders, packed Jerry’s belongings. Jerry came home one afternoon to find his bag and baggage neatly stacked outside by the front door.

  Carlucci had the responsibility of asking Jerry to leave. Lee, who had been through this particular situation in the past, arranged to be out of the house when it happened. He seemed to be afraid to deal with Jerry face to face. But Carlucci suffered no such fear. Matter-of-factly, he told Jerry he had two choices: he could leave the house under his own steam, or be removed bodily. Anyone who knew Lee knew he had some dangerous friends. Jerry did the sensible thing and left quietly.

  By then four months had passed since my arrival in Las Vegas. Lee had been brooding the entire time, trying to figure out how to rid himself of his live-in protégé. When Jerry finally departed it happened so quickly and completely that I felt as if someone had waved a magic wand. Once he’d gone Lee went about systematically removing all traces of the life he and Jerry had shared. He stripped Jerry’s bedroom and bath down to the bare walls, disposing of the furniture and repainting and papering. He went through the house, ga
thering every item they’d bought together so Carlucci could get rid of them. Clearly, Lee wanted no reminder of Jerry in the home we now shared. It was a frightening display of Lee’s ability to shut the door on unhappy memories. A voice in my head warned that one day I might receive the same treatment, but I blithely managed to ignore it.

  We redid those empty rooms together, shopping with a vengeance. Lee loved to spend money; the more he spent, the better he seemed to feel about himself. Roaming through stores with him, knowing we could buy anything that took our fancy no matter how foolish that fancy might be, was a blast—the ultimate ego trip. That shopping spree would be just the first of many. For Lee and me, they soon became a way of life. In the future, I would develop a taste for flamboyance, for the good life, that rivaled Lee’s. Like him, I would come to believe that “too much of a good thing is wonderful.” It would come close to ruining me for life.

  When Jerry’s rooms were redone Lee decided to visit his other homes. We drove to the Cloisters in Palm Springs first. It was even bigger and more luxurious than the Vegas house. The Cloisters had been built in 1925 as a thirty-two-room hotel. When Lee first saw it, fifty years of hard use had transformed it from a resort into a flop joint. He was terribly proud of having seen value and worth in a structure other people wanted to tear down. Lee liked to think of himself as someone who saved things no one else wanted: buildings, stray dogs, even people like me. However, little of the original hotel structure, other than the bell tower, remained after Lee finished what he called “remodeling.” He loved the rebuilt Cloisters, all fifteen thousand square feet. Its most notable features were two small chapels; one in the garden had stained-glass windows and the other, adjacent to the master bedroom, contained a large sculpture of St. Anthony. While at the Cloisters Lee occasionally invited gay priests to say a private mass.

  He liked to boast what a bargain his two chapels had been. His statue of St. Anthony had been covered with several layers of dirt and paint when he found it—and he bought it cheap. Restorers discovered a valuable sixteenth-century wood carving under the layers of grime. The stained-glass windows in the outdoor chapel came from churches that were being torn down. Lee purchased them for little more than the cost of carting them away. He loved a bargain, the feeling of having bested a seller, even more than he loved walking into an expensive store and flaunting his personal wealth.

  The Cloisters, although less formal than Lee’s other homes, was just as much a jumble of flash and trash as the house on Shirley Street. A priceless bronze sat alongside furniture Lee found in Watts. Cement garden sculptures from Mexico stood next to authentic marbles from Italy. Lee laughingly described as “homey” a dining table that seated forty, which he’d bought from the estate of William Randolph Hearst. Lee loved the clutter and waxed poetic as he told how he acquired each individual piece. The history of those inanimate objects was as dear to him as incidents in the lives of children are to their parents.

  Of all his homes, the Cloisters was my favorite. It had an Olympic pool where I swam laps. Lee, of course, never joined me. But he’d sit in the Jacuzzi smoking and having cocktails by the hour. The caretaker family—Hermine, Joe, and their son—watched over the Cloisters in Lee’s absence and waited on him when he was there.

  Lee’s mother lived in her own house behind the Cloisters and I met her for the first time on that trip. Lee didn’t talk about his family very much. He’d been visibly uncomfortable during our brief visit with George in Tahoe. I’d learned that George and his current wife, Dora, lived in Sacramento and that Lee had never visited them there in their home. Sister Angie lived in California too and, again, Lee told me he rarely had time to go and see her. But Mama Liberace was another story. Lee felt a strong sense of obligation toward his aging mother.

  She struck me as a bright-eyed, warmhearted, lively woman, obviously devoted to and very proud of her son. We no sooner were in her home than she began to complain about how seldom she saw Lee. He gave her what I presumed was his standard excuse—he was working hard, always on the road. But, Lee added, he never forgot her in his prayers. He worked hard at looking and sounding like a dutiful son but he seemed very uncomfortable in the role. He embraced his mother as though she were all sharp edges instead of a plump, matronly woman, just made for hugging; and his eyes always slid away from hers when she looked at him with parental love and concern. In my opinion, she made him nervous.

  I never did figure out what Frances Liberace made of me and my presence in Lee’s life on that visit because we soon left for Hollywood, where Lee owned a mansion high in the hills on Herold Way. It was the first truly opulent residence he’d purchased and he had a special fondness for it. The house, originally built by Rudy Vallee, perched on a two-acre ridge crest. Like Lee’s other homes, this one was filled with pianos, including one that had reputedly belonged to Chopin. Lee never played any of them. I was learning that he performed only for money, not for pleasure. Once or twice, at special parties, he played briefly for his guests. The rest of the time those pianos just took up space. They were part of his image but not of his life. Lee told me he’d spent enough time practicing as a kid to last a lifetime.

  Gladys Luckie, a delightful black woman, cared for the Hollywood house. Compared to some of the other servants, Gladys was a breath of fresh air. During our brief visit, we thrived under her care. Gladys confided that she’d been stranded in that beached whale of a house for months on end. Lee rarely came to stay anymore and, as far as Lee and the faithful Gladys were concerned, it was the old story of “out of sight, out of mind.” She’d been left alone on that lonely hilltop with a broken-down station wagon for transportation, consigned to a lonely existence. I felt very sorry for her and very conscious of the difficulties of her position.

  Gladys and I seemed to be on the same wavelength. I made up my mind to get her to Vegas if I could. That meant dismissing Carlucci but, after getting Jerry to move, anything seemed possible. Lee agreed with my plans in principle but left implementing them to me. I talked to Gladys about coming to work for us in Vegas and she agreed, reluctantly. I think she was tired of being taken for granted. When we returned to Las Vegas I used my position as Lee’s favorite to discharge Carlucci.

  Lee’s people soon realized I intended to be more than a boy-toy. Evidently, I intimidated some and made others jealous. Angie began to call me to find out what her brother was doing. But when I reported her calls to Lee, he said, “Don’t tell her a damn thing. My life is none of her business!”

  Seymour Heller and I continued to have a somewhat adversarial relationship. Whether true or not, I even heard he had the police run a check on me. Accountant Lucille Cunningham’s reaction was typical of Lee’s straight employees’ reactions to me. I dropped by her office one day to discuss the payment of some bills—a subject she regarded as her exclusive territory—and she turned on me in a fury.

  “You really think you’re something, don’t you?” she said. “Well, let me tell you, Mr. High and Mighty, Lee’s had a string of boys like you. Has he told you about Bobby or Hans or the male stripper who used to live with him? We called that one ‘the country boy’ because he was such an ignorant hick! I’ve seen them come and I’ve seen them go. You won’t be any different. One of these days Lee will tell Seymour Heller to get rid of you and then you’ll be out on your ear too!”

  If Lucille had been a man I’d have taken great pleasure in decking her on the spot. I knew I wasn’t the first man in Lee’s life, but he’d said I would be the last. Occasionally one of our gay friends would allude to someone from Lee’s past, but Lee would scowl and the subject would be dropped immediately.

  “How dare you talk to me like that?” I said to Lucille. “What Lee does in his private life is none of your business!” I stormed out of her office full of righteous anger. But driving home, I couldn’t help wondering if I was living in a fool’s paradise.

  11

  Life with Lee would never be completely normal, but it did normalize to some
extent once Gladys Luckie took over the Vegas house. I unwittingly became her favorite when, on learning she’d gone without a raise for years, I insisted Lee double her paycheck. Although my concern surprised him, he agreed at once. Gladys had been deeply hurt by her virtual exile in the Hollywood Hills, but she was too loyal and devoted an employee ever to broach the subject of salary herself. And Lee never worried about the nuts and bolts of daily life, especially details as mundane as someone else’s salary. In all honesty, he didn’t have time.

  When Lee worked Vegas he gave two two-hour shows, seven nights a week. He wasn’t a kid and performing took all his energy. By necessity our lives revolved around his needs, his schedule. He’d get up between two and four in the afternoon, shower, shave, and dress for the day, often in one of his favored jumpsuits. A late afternoon breakfast was usually followed by a shopping trip. Lee craved shopping the way an addict craves a fix. He felt the day was incomplete if he didn’t purchase something. Buying his own groceries and browsing in supermarkets would do if nothing more seductive and costly loomed on the horizon. He could wax ecstatic over imported cheese, fresh vegetables, prime beef. “Oooh, fabulous!” he’d say in his benevolent whine when something pleased him.

  By seven we’d be at the Hilton, getting ready for the first show. Lee liked to get there early because he did his own makeup, in part to protect the secret of his baldness. He didn’t want some talkative makeup artist telling the world that Liberace’s luxuriant locks were phony.

  He used the hour and a half between the eight o’clock supper show and the midnight cocktail show to rebuild his energy. It was our private time—and heaven help anyone who made the mistake of intruding. We’d have a light meal and afterward Lee would take a catnap, leaving instructions to be wakened fifteen minutes before he was scheduled to go onstage. Once he nodded off I’d slip out and wander through the casino, gambling or just having a quiet drink by myself. It was the only time in any given twenty-four hours while I shared my life with Lee that I could count on being alone.