One night after the show she flew into Lee’s dressing room in a rage over a recent encounter with Heller, insisting that Lee tell Heller to stay away from her. Debbie’s open emotion was refreshing compared to the behind-the-scenes maneuvering Lee employed when he was upset or angry with one of his people.
I wasn’t particularly fond of Heller myself, so I sympathized with her. I didn’t blame her for being upset. Poor Lee felt torn between the two of them. Since Heller was present at almost all of Lee’s performances, there seemed to be no way to keep Debbie from running into him. Lee, who avoided confrontations, had no intention of discussing Debbie’s problems with Heller. But he liked Debbie and didn’t want to lose her friendship. So he decided to play peacemaker and invited Debbie to come home with us to talk things over.
The Shirley Street house was lit like a Christmas tree when we arrived and looking its glittering best. As Debbie walked through the mammoth front doors she threw her arms wide, turned to us and said, “I used to live like this before my husbands took all my money.”
From what she told us of her unhappy marriages, she had every reason to be bitter. But Debbie is the kind of person who will always triumph over adversity by laughing at it. That night, after her initial anger cooled, she kicked off her shoes, sat on the kitchen floor, and drank wine with us until sunrise. It turned out to be one of those rare evenings when Lee forgot about being Liberace the legend and allowed himself to be Lee the man.
Tony Orlando was another of my favorite Vegas entertainers. Tony was battling drug addiction in those days, a problem he has since conquered. He also suffered from manic-depression, a disease I knew firsthand from my experiences with my mother. Nevertheless, we spent most of our time laughing. Everything seemed funny when we were together. After seeing Tony’s act a couple of times I told him he looked very pale onstage. Since his mental and physical problems were well known, the last thing he wanted to do was look sick onstage. It made a terrible impression on his audiences. Tony asked me to come over to his house one night to show him how I did my stage makeup. We laughed through the entire process, but Tony reluctantly agreed that the pancake base and blusher I used on him improved his appearance. When I began putting on eyeliner he got hysterical and made me stop.
“That’s where I draw the line,” he said. Tony made no bones about being heterosexual but that didn’t stop us from being friends. Lee was jealous at first, as he would have been jealous of anyone I was close to. But he came to enjoy having Tony and his wife, Elaine, visit the house. They were our guests one Christmas, along with their son. Having a little kid around made that a special holiday. Show business is full of nice people like Tony, Debbie, and Charo and, once Lee got used to the idea, he began to enjoy mingling with them on a social basis.
One night when we were working the Sahara Tahoe and living at the Tahoe house, we had two of our most memorable dinner guests. Ray Arnett, who’d been a Broadway hoofer in his youth, had a wide show-business acquaintanceship. Shirley MacLaine had worked with Ray and, when she brought her act to Tahoe, Ray suggested that Lee invite her to dinner. Bella Abzug, who was visiting Shirley, came too. There were six of us at the table that night: Lee, Bella, Ray, me, Shirley, and her current lover.
Since Shirley chose not to name her lover in her book Dancing in the Light, I’ll just say he was a well-known director, born and raised in Russia but successful in the States too. As happened so often before, people we barely knew—like Shirley and her lover—seemed to have no qualms about being up front about their relationship with us. The two of them were obviously crazy about each other. In fact, they could hardly keep their hands off one another.
At first Shirley and Ray dominated the conversation, reminiscing about their early days on Broadway. But then, as it was bound to with Bella at the table, the talk turned to politics. Bella was an outspoken activist, an articulate liberal devoted to causes like women’s liberation. She and Shirley expressed their views enthusiastically, talking on and on while Lee got quieter and quieter—until his eyes began to glaze. I remember that Shirley and Bella were quite agitated about a recent incident involving police brutality, but by then I was so afraid that Lee might actually fall asleep at the table that I don’t recall where or when the police brutality was supposed to have taken place.
Politics, world affairs, local problems, meant nothing to Lee. At the time there was a musicians’ strike at the Sahara Tahoe that he had completely ignored. I don’t think Lee would have noticed it unless a picketing musician had thrown himself under our car. Lee was amazed when Bella refused to be his guest at our show because she didn’t want to cross a picket line. Bella and her concerns were totally alien to him, a part of the wider world that Lee chose to ignore. But later he enjoyed telling other celebrities about having his “good friend,” the fabulous Shirley MacLaine, as his dinner guest.
Loretta Lynn, the legendary star of country music, was the exact opposite of outspoken MacLaine and Abzug. Lynn was quiet, soft-spoken. In person she seemed like a shadow of the vibrant performer she became onstage. I first met Lynn in Gary, Indiana, while we were doing a talk show, and we hit it off immediately. From then on Loretta and I made a point of getting together whenever we happened to be in the same city. I liked her a lot, but she concealed a great deal of unhappiness beneath her public façade.
Shortly after the release of the hit film Coal Miner’s Daughter, based on Loretta’s life, she returned to Las Vegas, where she was to appear at the Riviera. The night I planned to see her show she came down with “Vegas throat” (caused by working in the smoke-filled showrooms) and had to cancel her appearance. But she invited me up to her suite for a visit. Her secretary let me in and showed me to the bedroom, where Loretta lay propped up on a pile of pillows. We talked for a while and then I brought up the film, for which Sissy Spacek was to win an Academy Award.
“Don’t believe everything you see in that picture,” Loretta told me.
When I asked her what she meant she put a finger over her mouth, hushing me. “I don’t want anyone to hear what we’re saying,” she whispered, although the only other person in the suite was her secretary. “You see,” she added, “I can’t trust anyone. There are spies everywhere.” Loretta looked and sounded like a frightened women as she talked about her life, her real life rather than the fable dished up on the screen. According to Loretta, she had an unhappy marriage and was actually afraid of her husband. She sounded very sad as she ended our conversation by saying, “I’m an old-fashioned country girl and I believe a woman should stay with her man—until she dies.”
At one time or other every major star seemed to show up in Vegas. Lee introduced me to another living legend, Lena Horne, when she appeared there. If ever Lee looked up to a woman, it was Lena. “She’s been through so much adversity and prejudice—and triumphed over it all,” he said, “that every time I see her up on stage wowing an audience, I get goose bumps!”
Before we went to see her perform he bought her a magnificent Japanese kimono as a welcoming gift. Then he was so anxious to see her that he decided to visit her dressing room before the first show. That’s considered a taboo in Vegas; most stars don’t want to be forced into sociability when they’re getting ready to go onstage.
Not Lena. When Lee knocked on her dressing-room door she opened it herself. I barely recognized her without makeup. “What the hell are you two guys doing here?” she asked, smiling warmly as she invited us into the room. She seemed serenely unconcerned about her appearance, adding, “You all come in here and keep me company and you can see how gorgeous I’m going to make myself.”
I couldn’t have been more surprised. The stars I knew, including Lee, had too much ego to let anyone watch them apply their stage makeup. Lena made a terrific impression on me. She was a real sweetheart. Lee’s gift delighted her. “I just love things like this,” she said, promising to wear the kimono during her performance that night.
Lena began to get ready for the show, chatting easily with
Lee and me the entire time. I remember thinking how lucky I was to have met her. And I owed it all to Lee. He’d given me everything except friends my own age—a gap that would soon be filled by Andrea McArdle and Michael Jackson.
16
I always thought of Gladys Luckie as more than a housekeeper. She became a friend, a good one. On the days when Lee and I were home, I used to enjoy watching television with her in her room. Her comments on the programs were down-to-earth and often perceptive. It was in Gladys’s room, one evening in 1979, that I first saw Andrea McArdle on a variety show. Gladys and I were immediately impressed by the young Broadway star. The minute I heard McArdle sing I knew she’d be right for Lee’s act. Fortunately, he was nearby and I managed to get him to Gladys’s room while McArdle was still on the screen. “Lee, with that big voice, she’d be perfect for Vegas,” I said enthusiastically.
He was putting together a new act and that meant finding new talent. I was eager to help. A few weeks earlier I’d watched the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes and suggested they might be a terrific addition to the new act. There’d been talk about disbanding the Rockettes and their many outraged fans had risen up in their defense. The Rockettes, famous for their high-kicking precision dance numbers, were an American institution, like apple pie and baseball. Lee had instantly agreed with the idea of making them a part of his Vegas show. By employing the Rockettes he’d have a chance to help preserve the act and, at the same time, benefit from all the publicity generated by their proposed disbanding. Lee couldn’t resist the combination.
“Terrific idea, Scott,” he complimented me. “We’ll bring New York to Las Vegas.” It was the kind of “high concept” he favored.
After he heard McArdle sing, his response was equally enthusiastic. “I think we should audition her as soon as possible,” he said. Seymour Heller was given the job of making all the arrangements.
Lee worked with young people whenever he could, in part because audiences were always sympathetic and predisposed to like young performers. In the early days he’d done his chopsticks routine with children from the audience. After the act got too big and elaborate to keep that up, Lee started to feature young performers instead. McArdle would be part of a long line that included such acts as the Little Angels of Korea, the Young Americans, the teenage, banjo-playing Scottie Plumber, and the amazing, under-ten-year-old acrobat David Lee. They were a formidably talented group of young people and very popular with the Vegas audiences. In the future he would pluck his next protégé from their midst.
McArdle flew to Vegas for her audition and she was even more impressive onstage—in person—than she’d been on television. She’d learned her craft on Broadway, where she was an enormous hit in the long-running Annie before growing too old for the part. Those months in a hit show had given her tremendous confidence, a sure knowledge of stagecraft, the ability to project. Her big voice easily filled the cavernous Hilton showroom and barely needed amplification.
She seemed completely at ease both onstage and in the adult world of Vegas. Lee took to her immediately; but, at first, I had reservations about Miss McArdle. She was too self-assured to suit me. Confident, almost arrogant, she came on like a superstar instead of the sixteen-year-old girl she was. In the case of many performers, that cocky attitude covers the real fear that success and fame are all too fleeting, that next year someone else will be the public’s darling. Many big stars suffer painful feelings of inferiority and prolonged bouts of self-doubt. McArdle was not among that group. She was good and she knew it. But I soon discovered that a very sweet girl hid behind the confident performer, a girl who was as normal a sixteen-year-old as anyone could have been under the circumstances.
Andrea McArdle appeared with Liberace, in both our Vegas and Tahoe shows, for the next year and a half. No longer a child and not yet a woman, she was at an awkward age when it came to being cast in movies or stage plays—but she was the perfect foil for Lee’s act. Over the months Andrea and I became good friends. Lee was very fond of her and got along well with her mother, who proved to be a watchful guardian and chaperone. They spent quite a bit of time at our homes in both Vegas and Tahoe.
Andrea and I were thrown together constantly. I guess it was inevitable that we’d get crushes on each other. But Lee and Mrs. McArdle seemed oblivious of our growing attraction. I guess Andrea’s mother thought she was safe with me because I was involved with Lee. As for Lee, he was so thoroughly homosexual that it simply never occurred to him that I might be attracted to a girl, not even one as lively, talented, and dynamic as Andrea.
Occasionally, we managed to escape our elders’ watchful eyes and have a wonderful time together. One crazy, fun-filled day Andrea and I, along with a few of the Young Americans (a singing group composed of talented youngsters), Kristy McNichol, and Lee’s niece, Ina Liberace, decided to go skiing in the nearby mountains. At the time, Kristy was starring in “Family,” a successful television series. She and Ina, the daughter of Liberace’s deceased brother Rudolph, were good friends.
I was chosen as the chauffeur for our skiing expedition. Everyone piled into my van early in the morning, laughing and carrying on like kids playing hooky. Andrea sat next to me; Kristy, Ina, and the Young Americans filled up the rest of the seats. We talked and listened to music, our kind of music—rock ’n’ roll—all the way up the mountain. It was a rare chance for me to feel and act as young as I really was. When we reached our destination and tumbled from the van a wild snowball fight broke out.
As it turned out, everyone could ski but me. I watched, thoroughly impressed, as Kristy, Andrea, and the rest schussed down the slopes, while I could barely stand upright on the flats. But it didn’t matter how many times I fell or how much my friends laughed at me. I felt free for the first time in years. That one carefree day made me realize that no matter how much Lee meant to me, I was constantly on guard around him, measuring every word, every gesture, for its potential effect on him. I lived and worked not in an adult world, but in a completely middle-aged one—with a man who could swiftly change from indulgent parent to ardent lover to outraged tyrant.
In the mountains, on that one day, I was able to forget everything except enjoying myself. But the real world intruded soon enough. My van broke down on the way home and I had to call Lee’s driver to pick us up in the limousine. The group’s laughter was a great deal more subdued as we returned to Vegas and our adult responsibilities.
Stardom can be very hard on youngsters. Andrea, who’d cut her eyeteeth in the theater, handled it very well. The next performer I met seemed oppressed and burdened by a career that had begun during his childhood and grown to mammoth proportions. By the time Michael Jackson called the house one day in 1979, I’d grown used to stars appearing on our doorstep. But no young adult could be blasé about talking to Michael Jackson.
Strangely enough, Michael Jackson and I had attended the same elementary school for a brief time. I attended Gardner Elementary during a period in my life when I was being shuffled from one foster home to another so fast that I don’t recall the name of the family I lived with. But I do remember Michael, who was already famous, in the class just ahead of mine. I’d been his fan ever since.
When Michael telephoned he told Lee how much he’d always admired his work. Lee was very flattered and invited Michael out to the house for lunch. He told Gladys to fix something special and she decided Kentucky fried chicken would be an appropriate dish to serve rock ’n’ roll’s superstar. Michael wasn’t in the house more than a few minutes when he said, “Oh, by the way, I guess I should have warned you that I’m a vegetarian.”
I wish I’d had a camera because the look on Lee’s face was priceless as the delicious aroma of fried chicken wafted throughout the house. He jumped up and fled to the kitchen, leaving me to entertain a somewhat startled Michael. When Lee returned a few minutes later he had regained control, both over the menu and himself. Then, playing the good host, he offered Michael a drink.
“Do you have
any fruit juice?” Michael asked. “I never touch liquor.”
Lee’s eyebrows rose. A rock ’n’ roll star who didn’t eat meat or drink liquor? At that point I don’t think he could have been more surprised if Michael had announced that he was a practicing celibate—which we later learned he was, because his religion forbade premarital sex. Lee, who gloried in all the pleasures of the flesh—eating, drinking, and lots of sex—thought Michael was a very weird guy. But from then on Lee enjoyed referring to Michael, who was one of the biggest superstars in the world, as “my very dear friend.” In reality, it was Michael and I who became dear friends.
At the time of his first visit, Michael was redoing his home in Encino, so Lee gave him the grand tour of the Shirley Street house. At last the two entertainers had found an interest in common: decorating. Michael fell in love with some bronzes we had and wanted to know where he could get them. Like many of Lee’s most treasured possessions, Lee loved those bronzes as much for the bargain price he’d paid for them as for their beauty. They’d come from a place in Los Angeles on Robertson Boulevard, a shop where Lee and I were well known and got a substantial discount.
“You’ll get them cheaper if I send Scott with you to buy them,” he told Michael. I was always annoyed when Lee, who made millions of dollars a year, went to great lengths to save a few hundred. But I never learned if saving a buck was important to Michael too. That afternoon, Lee was so determined to do Michael a favor that he arranged to have me drive into L.A., pick up Michael, and buy the bronzes with a check written by Liberace so that Michael would get the biggest possible break on the price. It seemed like a tremendously elaborate scheme to save a few hundred dollars, since Michael undoubtedly considered that kind of money to be petty change. But I didn’t object because it meant I would have a chance to get to know Michael better.
Behind the Candelabra Page 14
