Behind the Candelabra

by Scott Thorson

  It wasn’t easy. He turned out to be the shyest person I’d ever met. I had a hard time reconciling the soft-spoken, almost withdrawn young man wearing his habitual faded blue jeans, baseball cap, and two-dollar T-shirt with the gyrating, sequin-gloved performer the world knew. Offstage, Michael was often forced to hide within a protective cocoon created by his security people. His undistinguished dress and dark glasses were a poor disguise that failed to fool the avid Jackson fans who pursued him everywhere. He never went anywhere without Bill Bray, his head of security, by his side. But it would have taken a full-time army to give Michael the kind of protection he needed. He bore the burden of his fame quietly, but anyone could see that it was almost intolerable.

  Lee and I saw Michael and his sister Janet off and on over the next few months. When they were in Vegas they came over to our house to swim because they couldn’t relax around a pool in public, not even at a posh Vegas hotel, without being mobbed. But it was in London, where Lee was making another appearance at the Palladium, that I came to know Michael well.

  Before every show, Lee had me “walk the house” to get an idea of the size and mood of the audience. One afternoon, as I walked the Palladium’s aisles before a matinee, I saw a single darker face in the midst of all those pale, English complexions. The owner of the face jumped up from his front-row center seat and, calling my name, waved at me frantically. It was Michael!

  Neither Lee nor I had had any idea that he was in town, let alone that he would be in the audience that day. Michael, who had come to England to do an album with Paul McCartney, was feeling lonely and anxious to see a familiar face from home. For the next few weeks we saw each other every day. We talked about music, show business, his passion for cars—which I shared—as well as his love for animals. Just a year apart in age, we seemed to have a great deal in common.

  To my surprise, Lee didn’t object to the many hours I spent away from him in Michael’s company. I think even he was in awe of Michael’s giant fame. I still spent my evenings with Lee, but during the daylight hours, Michael and I roamed through London. I went to the recording studio to watch him work and, when he was finished, we went to all the usual tourist places.

  At Buckingham Palace we decided to try to shatter the impressively uniformed guard’s perfect composure. Those guards are supposed to stand in front of the gates, hour after hour, without giving any indication that they are aware of the steady stream of tourists who come to stare at them and take their pictures. Considering his fame, Michael didn’t think he’d have any trouble getting their attention. When they failed to respond to his overtures he approached one of the guards and put a pound note on the end of his bayonet. The guard didn’t even blink. So Michael put another pound note on the bayonet and stepped back to see if he would get any reaction. Again, the guard didn’t blink. Then, with increasingly frenzied glee, Michael put more and more pound notes on the bayonet until it was completely covered with money. I was laughing so hard by then that I almost fell down. Several hundred pounds later I managed to tell the guard that all Michael wanted was to have his picture taken with him. Although it is against all the regulations the guard finally obliged, stripping his bayonet of the hundreds of pounds he’d collected at the same time.

  The rest of the day was equally crazy. Thinking he’d be safe from being mobbed in laid-back London, Michael had gone out with just one bodyguard, Bill Bray. We’d toured Buckingham Palace and gone to the Tower of London to see the crown jewels without having any trouble. But our luck came to an end when we got to Piccadilly Circus, where we planned to do a little shopping. Michael was recognized and a few fans began to follow us.

  At first it wasn’t too bad. They jostled and pressed close, but Bray and I managed to keep our bodies between Michael and the young people who seemed to want nothing more in this world than to touch him. But then the teenagers were joined by a noisy, aggressive group of punk rockers, and all hell broke loose. We were desperately trying to flag down a cab as the crowd grew larger and more unruly. By then all three of us were running and it was obvious Michael would be in real danger if we didn’t get him away quickly.

  It was a terrifying experience. The fans, who’d seemed merely curious minutes before, were now pursuing us frantically, breathing down our necks and shouting at us. Bray finally got a cab and we jumped in and pulled away, with desperate teenagers still clinging to the door handles. Three cab changes later, we’d finally shaken the last of our determined pursuers.

  After that ordeal I better understood Michael’s fear of people. His fame cut him off from the world as surely as if he’d been marooned on a desert island. I’d been somewhat envious of his position, but the events in Piccadilly Circus convinced me that I wouldn’t change places with Michael for anything in the world. For me, it had been a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But he faced danger from that kind of manic adoration every time he went out. Our final experience in London proved to be equally unpleasant and served to ring down the curtain on our friendship.

  Lee, Michael, and I had been invited to dine at Lord Montague’s palatial mansion on the outskirts of London. Neither Michael nor I knew the nobleman but Lee had met him several times and we had all heard stories about him and his opulent lifestyle. As we drove out of London all three of us were excited over the prospect of seeing Lord Montague’s internationally famous collection of cars, which now boasted the addition of the great Harrah collection.

  His home proved to be an incredible display of inherited wealth and privilege, far surpassing even the largest mansions in the United States. Lee practically drooled over the antiques, all of them authentic pieces that had been in the Montague family for generations, rather than bargains carefully purchased at flea markets the way so many of Lee’s had been. Lee’s taste may not have been flawless, but he knew the real thing when he saw it.

  Six of us sat down to eat in the main dining hall that night at a table that would have comfortably seated forty. What the room lacked in intimacy, it more than made up for in grandeur. I was relieved when the main course turned out to be fish. Thank God, I thought to myself, Michael will be able to eat.

  That night Lord Montague’s companion was a young woman—the blonde flashy, trashy type that manages to insinuate herself into high places because of her looks rather than breeding or brains. We were all seated at one end of the table, our voices echoing in the huge room, when the young woman gave Michael and me a long, appraising look.

  “Tell me,” she said in an accent that sounded more like Piccadilly than Mayfair, “do you and Michael get it on? You’re always together.”

  Lee and Montague pretended not to hear her. They continued talking about cars, but I could feel myself turning beet red from embarrassment and rage. Next to me, Michael shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Somehow, I knew our friendship would be ruined from then on. Rumors about Michael’s publicly acknowledged virginity and apparent lack of masculinity were already circulating. He couldn’t take a chance on being branded as gay because of his association with gay men, no matter how innocent that association might be.

  I saw him a few more times after we returned to the States, but the carefree quality of our friendship had been irreparably damaged by that one thoughtless remark.

  17

  Lee said that age is just a state of mind. “You’re as old as you feel,” he’d boast. And he felt very good as he began his sixth decade. When he was involved in one of his pet projects, decorating a new house, buying a car, planning a new act, playing with a new puppy, his enthusiasm and energy were absolutely contagious. He had a childlike quality that his advancing years didn’t diminish.

  Less charming was his ability to shut out everything that displeased him. He mercilessly erased unpleasant realities from the slate of his life. If they had to be dealt with, he delegated that responsibility to Seymour Heller. One of the unpleasant realities Lee chose to ignore was the fact that he was growing older. “You make me feel young,” he’d say, as if he could pay me
no higher compliment. Feeling young had a very high priority in his life. Looking young was equally important.

  One night, after taping the “Tonight” show, Lee unexpectedly found himself face to face with the reality of how much he’d aged. He hadn’t done television or movie work in a while, hadn’t subjected himself to the camera’s harsh scrutiny. That night we were in the Carson show green room, watching the tape of Lee’s interview. Lee had done his own makeup prior to the taping, doing it exactly the way he’d been doing it for years. But the lighting on the Carson show was not flattering. Lee looked lousy on screen, old and tired—every sag, every age line exposed by the camera’s inquiring eye. I could see that it really bothered him even before he turned to me, whispering, “I look like hell. Why hasn’t anyone told me how old I look?”

  I couldn’t answer. Lee was Lee, so close and familiar to me that I’d long since stopped seeing him objectively.

  From then on he became obsessed with his appearance and the need to repair the age lines and bags under his eyes. If Lee could have arranged for a face-lift the next day, I’m sure he would have. I’d grown so used to seeing him morning, noon, and night, in stage makeup or scrubbed clean after a shower, that I’d paid no attention to the deepening grooves on either side of his mouth or the fact that his eyelids sagged. Sure, he was jowly, but Lee had ballooned up to 250 pounds during the years we’d been together. I weighed 240 myself—the result of Lee’s and Gladys’s good cooking and very little exercise. It had happened so gradually that I hadn’t paid attention to the way either of us looked.

  After the Carson show, Lee couldn’t think about anything else. “I need a complete face-lift,” he moaned, after seeing himself on tape.

  Lee had already been through at least one face-lift. But he chose not to use the doctor who had operated on him in the past. He couldn’t seek out a new plastic surgeon the way anyone else would, by talking to a number of physicians and choosing the best doctors from a list of candidates. He didn’t want anyone to know that he was about to go under the knife. It had to be kept secret so that his public image of vitality and agelessness, so important to what he called “the legend of Liberace,” would remain untarnished.

  I didn’t agree with the need for secrecy, but I knew Lee too well to argue with him. One of my best friends, a man who made all of Lee’s wigs, had recently had a successful face-lift and I told Lee about it. He knew the man well and invited him to visit us in Vegas so he could see the results of the plastic surgery for himself. When my friend arrived at the house, Lee and I were impressed. The man had seemingly shed a decade or more in the months since we’d last seen him. Lee decided he need search no further for a doctor. The man who’d operated so masterly on our friend would be asked to do the surgery on Lee as well.

  Jack Startz was a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon with an impressive address. Lee wasted no time calling and asking Startz to fly out to Las Vegas to discuss what Lee wanted done. My first impression of Startz wasn’t very good. He was a poor advertisement for his profession. His face had so many silicone implants that he looked more like a Kewpie doll than a living, breathing human. He also seemed very fond of booze. Lee had offered him a drink and the doctor had taken several in quick succession. Tragically, in view of what happened as a result of my association with Startz, I failed to see that as a potential sign of danger. We were all drinking that afternoon and the fact that Startz had more than anyone else didn’t seem worth worrying about. I would later learn that the doctor was addicted to both alcohol and drugs but, by then, it would be too late.

  Lee told Startz that he wanted to be rid of his drooping eyelids, the heavy lines on either side of his mouth, the spider web of wrinkles that were slowly turning his face into a road map. Startz checked him over and then recommended a complete facelift, with silicone implants to prevent the return of the lines around Lee’s mouth. He also recommended that the face-lift be followed in a few days by a deep skin peel. The doctor assured Lee that the results would be fabulous. “You’ll look younger than Scott here.”

  Lee was thrilled by the prospect. Startz had promised that the operation would remove all the lines, sags, and wrinkles that spoiled his appearance. In addition, he said the deep skin peel would give Lee the skin of a thirty-year-old. It sounded like a dream come true. Startz did quite a selling job. He’d found Lee’s weakness—his fear of aging—and played on it. Both of us were impressed by the man’s self-assurance, his firm conviction that he could give Lee whatever he wanted.

  When they finished discussing the surgery, Lee suddenly said, “I want to talk to you about doing some surgery on Scott.”

  It really took me by surprise. No way, at the age of twenty, did I need a face-lift. Nor had Lee ever voiced any unhappiness with my appearance, other than to suggest I try to lose a little weight—a suggestion I intended to take very seriously. I’d always been Lee’s “blond Adonis”—his words, not mine. So the mention of plastic surgery for me came as a complete surprise.

  Startz turned and began to study my face. “What would you like me to do with Scott?” he asked.

  Lee jumped up and ran into another room, returning with a large oil portrait of himself. “I want you to make Scott look like this,” he said, propping the painting up in front of the doctor. I was so stunned that I didn’t say a word. Meanwhile, Startz looked at the painting and then back at me, studying my face and then the painting with intense concentration. It was a full-face portrait of Lee and one of his favorite paintings of himself, clearly showing his prominent cheekbones, slightly arched nose, and pointy chin in the most flattering way. If anything, it also emphasized the differences between my face and his. Even the most casual observer could see that Lee had a heart-shaped face while mine was round. We had completely different bone structure.

  “Yes,” Startz said into the room’s silence, “I think I can do what you want. He’ll need to have a nose job, and I’ll have to restructure his cheekbones and chin with silicone, but it’s possible. I can make Scott look a lot like you, if that’s what you want.”

  The two of them were discussing me as if I wasn’t in the room, but it didn’t occur to me to object. I’d never been crazy about the way I looked and felt flattered, touched, by Lee’s desire to have me look like him. I didn’t think he was handsome in the conventional sense, but he had an interesting face, whereas I always thought mine looked as if it had been made from Play-Doh. If Dr. Startz could give me a clearly defined bone structure like Lee’s, I wasn’t going to object. In any case, I knew it would do no good. Once Lee made up his mind to do something it would take an act of Congress to prevent him from doing it. If he wanted me to have a new face I could either go along with it or get out of his life. The choice was that simple. No one defied Lee—not ever!

  Startz advised Lee that he would need to plan on spending two months at home after his face-lift. But he also promised that Lee would return to work looking like a new, much younger man. They agreed to schedule the surgery in six months when Lee had a large block of time free. The whole thing had to be planned like a covert military operation because of Lee’s desire to keep the entire procedure a secret from his fans.

  Lee and I never discussed the surgery he wanted me to have, either before or after the doctor’s visit. I knew how pointless any discussion would have been, even if I had any real objections. The truth is it never occurred to me to oppose Lee. My future was completely in his hands, as it had been from the day I accepted his offer of employment. Lee was much more than my lover, from the beginning. If he wanted me to spend the rest of my life with a new face, one that looked like his, that’s exactly what I would do.

  The six months between our first meeting with Startz and the scheduled surgery passed quickly. Lee was busy, working very hard, and we were happy together. Occasionally I’d be swept by waves of restlessness, concern about where my life was headed. I’d remember my dreams of being a vet and working with animals, look at the life I had instead—however rich and luxurio
us—and wind up feeling disgusted with myself. My youthful dreams and plans hadn’t included being a gigolo for men. When I tried to discuss my doubts and concerns about my future and where I was headed with Lee, he’d act withdrawn and hostile.

  “Don’t be a goddamn kvetch,” he’d say. “There are thousands of boys who’d love to be in your position!”

  Of course, he was right. Sections of Vegas and L.A. teemed with hungry-looking, runaway kids—guys who would do anything to make a connection with someone like Lee. The entertainment industry was full of struggling young performers who would give their souls to be in my place. Lee’s eyes were constantly straying toward such men and he often flirted with them outrageously. I felt threatened and insecure every time he behaved that way and we would wind up having a fight about it. Then Lee would sulk. It wasn’t easy to live with him, day in and day out, but I could no longer imagine my life without him.

  My family and friends all told me how lucky I was. One former foster mother even said she’d never speak to me again if I screwed things up by alienating Lee in any way. There are far worse things, she told me, than being Liberace’s shadow. The Scott Thorson I liked, who had initiative—the kid who’d found his own foster home with the Brummets so he’d have a home for his own animals, that kid was getting lost as I followed wherever Lee led. Life in the fast lane had changed me, and not necessarily for the better.

  I’d become dependent, unable to make a major decision on my own, and admittedly spoiled. I’d met Lee at a time when other young men my age were getting out on their own. But Lee didn’t want me to take responsibility for myself. He wanted unquestioning loyalty and slavish devotion, and he was willing to pay for it. All I had to do was admire something once and it was mine. I had a closet full of clothes and furs, a jewel case loaded with rings and necklaces, a Rolls-Royce, a Camaro, a van, a Cadillac, an Auburn, my three dogs, a couple of horses, and my own house; and, in addition, my salary had been increased. I lived in the average man’s idea of paradise. But, in the end, I’d pay a high price for the years I spent loving Lee.