20. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #4, Milwaukee Public Library.
21. A search of the television listings of the Los Angeles Times confirms that the show appeared for the first time on February 3, 1952, at 7:30 P.M.; the same source confirms these other programs. Thomas and Faris list other dates, perhaps on evidence from Milwaukee, which asserts other information. Thus, the drama critic of the Milwaukee Sentinel wrote on January 17, 1952, that “Liberace has decided to take some time off from supper club appearances and give TV a try. On Tuesday in Hollywood, he began his own weekly half hour show.”
22. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #10, Milwaukee Public Library.
23. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #4, Milwaukee Public Library.
24. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #10, Milwaukee Public Library.
25. Richard Donnovan, “Nobody Loves Me but the People,” Collier’s 134 (Sept. 17, 1954), 74.
26. Thomas, Liberace, 67.
27. Marjorie Dent Candee, ed. Current Biography: Who’s News and Why (New York: W. H. Wilson, 1954), 408–9.
28. See for example, “Popular Piano,” Time, Oct. 5, 1953.
29. Current Biography, 408–9.
30. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 158.
31. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #9, Milwaukee Public Library.
32. Thomas, Liberace, 69.
33. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #3, Milwaukee Public Library.
34. Los Angeles Times, Feb. 6, 1953.
35. “Fishing for an Idea,” n.d., Liberace File #9, Milwaukee Public Library.
36. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 96–98.
37. Ibid., 96, 97–98.
38. Ibid., 9.
39. Horace Newcomb, “Towards a Television Aesthetic,” in Horace Newcomb, ed., Television: The Critical View (New York: Oxford University Press), 1982), 480–81.
40. Ibid., 481, 483.
41. Ibid., 489, 490–93.
42. “What Happened to Liberace?”
43. “Mail Call for Brother Rudy,” n.d., Liberace File #4, Milwaukee Public Library.
44. Variety, July 16, 1953, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 110.
45. Quoted in “Liberace: Musical Showman Dies.”
46. “Liberace Signs Huge TV Deal,” Down Beat, Feb. 11, 1953.
47. Castleman and Podrazik, Watching TV, 75.
48. Frank Sturcken, Live Television (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1990), 24, 42.
49. “What Happened to Liberace?”
50. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #9, Milwaukee Public Library.
SEVEN
1. Thomas, Liberace, 76.
2. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 214.
3. The data above is drawn from videos of The Liberace Show and also from Liberace: The Golden Age of Television, vol. 1 (compact disc), #D2-74516, Curb Records (Burbank, Calif.).
4. For a full discussion of the theme song, see below.
5. Keith Monroe, “Liberace and His Piano,” Coronet, May 1954, 121.
6. Harvey Taylor, Detroit Times, quoted in “Liberace—Virtuoso or Ham?” TV Guide, Aug. 28–Sept. 3, 1954.
7. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 99, 100.
8. Ibid., 99.
9. See, again, videos of The Liberace Show, and also Liberace: The Golden Age of Television, vol. 1.
10. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #9, Milwaukee Public Library.
11. “What happened to Liberace?”
12. Current Biography, 408–9.
13. Liberace (as told to Edythe Witt), “Mature Women Are Best: TV’s Top Pianist Reveals What Kind of Woman He’d Marry,” Coronet, Oct. 1954.
14. “Goose Pimples for All,” Time, June 7, 1954.
15. “Popular Piano.”
16. “Liberace Warms Crowd with a Smile and ‘Hello,’” n.d., Liberace File #5, Milwaukee Public Library.
17. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #8, Milwaukee Public Library.
18. Johnson, Liberace: A Collecting Guide, passim.
19. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 64–65.
20. Howard Taubman, “A Square Looks at a Hotshot: An Ivory-tickling TV Virtuoso like Liberace Really Drags this Music Critic by His Long Hair,” New York Times Magazine, Mar. 14, 1954; see also Johnson, Liberace: A Collecting Guide, passim, and Thomas, Liberace, 83–84.
21. Current Biography, 408–9.
22. Thomas, Liberace, 89–90.
23. Time, Oct. 1, 1954, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 251.
24. “Fishing for an Idea,” n.d., Liberace File #9, Milwaukee Public Library.
25. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #9, Milwaukee Public Library.
26. Taubman, “A Square Looks at a Hotshot.”
27. Thomas, Liberace, 89.
28. Boze Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays (New York: Barricade Books, 1996), 113. Ten years after Liberace’s death, some of these jokes were still making the rounds: When Liberace died and appeared at the pearly gates, St. Peter told him he had sinned and could not enter. “What have I done wrong?” Liberace asked. “You fucked a parrot,” replied St. Peter. Liberace thought for a while, brightened and replied, “I never fucked a parrot—I only sucked a cockatoo.”
29. Thomas, Liberace, 69.
30. Taubman, “A Square Looks at a Hotshot.”
31. Donnovan, “Nobody Loves Me,” 28.
32. “Popular Piano.”
33. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #4, Milwaukee Public Library.
34. “Key to Whole Thing Is More than Keyes,” n.d., Liberace File #6, Milwaukee Public Library.
35. “Not Rain or Popcorn Can Deter Liberace,” May 2, 1954, Liberace File #6, Milwaukee Public Library.
36. “Liberace Plays; Tells Jokes, Too: Capacity Crowd at Carnegie Hall ‘Delighted’ by Recital—Pianist Gets Fanfare,” New York Times, Sept. 26, 1953.
37. “Popular Piano.”
38. Thomas, Liberace, 89.
39. “Liberace Charms 15,000 at Garden,” New York Times, May 27, 1954.
40. Monroe, “Liberace and His Piano,” 119.
41. “Music by Horowitz, Motions by Liberace” Newsweek, June 7, 1954.
42. “Goose Pimples”; “Liberace Charms 15,000.”
43. “Why Women Idolize Liberace,” Look 18 (Oct. 19, 1954), 1014.
44. Thomas, Liberace, 133.
45. Floyd C. Watkins, “Gone with the Wind as Vulgar Literature,” in Richard Harwell, ed., “Gone with the Wind” as Book and Film (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1983), 210.
46. In his unpublished essay, “The Academic Elvis,” Simon Firth treats these difficulties especially well. His essay has illuminated and enhanced my own understanding not only of Elvis Presley—that most unlikely competitor of Liberace’s—but of popular culture in general.
47. See also Ross, No Respect, for a more general treatment of the same problems. Sharply ideological, his study is also elliptical in both prose and content, but No Respect makes brilliant work of the American popular culture that also informs this biographical study.
48. “When Will Liberace Marry?” TV Guide, Sept. 18, 1954.
49. Thomas, Liberace, 86–87.
50. International Artists, Ltd. v Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Respondent Walter V. Liberace, Petitioner, v Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Respondent. Docket Nos. 1569–68, 1570–68, United States Tax Court, Oct. 22, 1970.
51. Thomas, Liberace, 67.
52. Johnson, Liberace: A Collecting Guide, 95.
53. Ibid., 42, 95, 31, 84.
54. Ibid. 42, 84; 70, 42.
55. Ibid., 31, 42, 41.
56. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 167.
57. “The ‘Great’ Liberace,” Look 18 (June 29, 1954), 62.
58. Donnovan, “Nobody Loves Me,” 74.
59. “Don’t Laugh,” TV Guide Feb. 26–Mar. 4, 1954.
60. Barr v Liberace, Los Angeles Superior Court.
61. For the specific reference to the motel chain, see Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 243. Otherwise, the pages of this reference book contain almost innumera
ble references to Liberace’s moneymaking schemes.
62. “Class of ’37 Remembers,” Feb. 10, 1987, Liberace File #77, Milwaukee Public Library.
63. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #8, Milwaukee Public Library.
64. “Key to Whole Thing,” n.d., Liberace File #6, Milwaukee Public Library.
65. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #8, Milwaukee Public Library.
66. Les Perrin, “Liberace-Purveyor of Musical Pop-corn,” Melody Maker, Aug. 11, 1956, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 241.
67. “Don’t Laugh.”
68. “Why Women Idolize Liberace,” 1014.
69. Donnovan, “Nobody Loves Me,” 30.
70. “Goose Pimples.”
71. Liberace, Wonderful, Private World, 40.
72. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #9, Milwaukee Public Library.
73. “Liberace Bares Teeth in Chi Sheets,” Billboard, Mar. 13, 1954, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 204.
74. “Popular Piano.”
75. Incredible to the Time writer, this linking of Valentino and Liberace makes perfect sense to Garber in Vested Interests. She cites the male reviewer’s rebuke of Valentino’s femininity on pages 361–62. As suggested by his lesbian wife and his own homoerotic tastes, of course, Valentino’s sexual ambiguity went beyond mere perception of the old girls at matinees, too. Although apparently unaware of the Liberace-Valentino connection in the popular mind, Garber makes Liberace one of a trilogy with The Sheik star and Elvis Presley in her study of dressing.
76. Jackie Freers, Indianapolis News, quoted in “Liberace—Virtuoso or Ham?”
77. Donnovan, “Nobody Loves Me,” 73.
78. Although Kevin Kopelson focuses exclusively on the homosexual aspects of Liberace’s fascination for women, his analysis otherwise parallels my own: “It’s also possible they liked the fact that he was gay. It meant they had a man they could talk to, if only in their dreams—an intimate associate who engaged in conversations their husbands weren’t keen on, but who wouldn’t prove to be a sexual ‘threat.’ For homophilic female fans, then, Liberace was a nonsexual lover, whereas for homophobic fans he was a presexual, or infantile one—one they, too, could mother.” Beethoven’s Kiss, 143–44.
79. For an early, sociological rendering of such relationships, see Philip E. Slater, The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968).
80. Here I have drawn specifically on Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), but, in a more general way, Paglia’s work has been important to informing my own understanding of Liberace’s life and the significance of his career. It was Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays (New York: Vintage, 1992) and then Sexual Personae that finally convinced me in the fall of 1992 to undertake this biography.
81. “Goose Pimples.”
82. J. Wayne Taylor, interview with the author.
83. Quoted in Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays, 148.
84. Quoted in the Miami Herald, July 10, 1997; original reference in Rolling Stone.
85. Perhaps the antagonism of males to females’ idols is actually an unexplored reality. In her Vested Interests, Marjorie Garber has chronicled some of this masculine hostility to Rudolph Valentino; see above, this chapter. Just so, it crops up in contemporary notions of the pop singer Johnnie Ray (who also had homosexual connections) and even of Elvis Presley, who possessed a certain early reputation as a sissy.
86. “What Do Men Think of Liberace?” Inside Story (Oct. 1954), quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 254.
87. Joseph E. Persico, ERM: An American Original (New York: McGraw Hill, 1988), 350.
88. Exploring the sources of societal antagonism toward homosexuality has offered a particularly interesting sidestreet in gender studies as our century winds down. Hocquenghem’s insights in Homosexual Desire, cited earlier, are especially useful, not least in that they illustrate why male-ordered society, for example, focuses its most intense skepticism on male-male sexuality rather than on lesbianism. Male sexuality, liberated from the family, threatens social order altogether in this paradigm. In proof of the contention, Hocquenghem cites the work of Andre Morali-Daninos: “Were homosexuality to receive, even in theory, a show of approval, were it allowed to break away even partially from the framework of pathology, we would soon arrive at the abolition of the heterosexual couple and of the family, which are the foundations of the Western society in which we live” (Hocquenghem, 60).
If the French scholar uses such references as proof of societal “paranoia,” some gay critics begin, effectively, with similar insights to argue for the ways homosexual subculture can guide and instruct a postmodern world in which family (not to mention Western Civilization) has already disintegrated: See Morris B. Kaplan, Sexual Justice: Democratic Citizenship and the Politics of Desire (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), and Bronski, The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). Edmund White’s essays tend to confirm the same view.
89. See Ross, No Respect, for a persuasive argument linking the two kinds of containment during the Cold War.
90. See Ross, No Respect, for an excellent treatment of how bebop and its aficionados fit this pattern.
91. Again, see Ross, No Respect, for the degree to which such biases still permeate scholarly discourse. My seminar on twentieth-century American culture at my university in 1999 enriched my own understanding of these movements. Alex Ayala, a student in the seminar, offered me special insights into Ginsberg in particular and also into the other Beats and their relationship with national culture.
92. Ross, No Respect, draws brilliant conclusions about the relationship between intellectual culture in the United States in these years and American foreign policy.
93. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 21.
94. “Liberace Plays, Tells Jokes, Too.”
95. Lewis Funke, “The Theatre: Liberace,” New York Times, Apr. 22, 1957. While no one developed this Liberace-“Auntie Mame” connection, only Camille Paglia has paid much attention to the potential importance of the “Mame” phenomenon, which has enormous potential for gender studies, homosexual culture and values, and popular culture. Charles Kaiser in Gay Metropolis illuminates potential sources of the connection in his interview with “Stephen Reynolds,” who identifies Mame’s author, Patrick Dennis, with the “Taffeta Twelve” of the American Field Service that served with the British in North Africa during World War II. “He got married to a very nice girl and then he ran off with a Mexican boy,” Kaiser quotes his source on page 35.
96. “Liberace,” New Yorker, June 5, 1954.
97. See Kaiser, Gay Metropolis, 165.
98. Taubman, “A Square Looks at a Hotshot,” 195.
99. Thomas, Liberace, 80.
100. Ibid., 82.
EIGHT
1. Thomas, Liberace, 116.
2. If record sales are an indicator, he was in a recessionary state by 1955. See below.
3. Thomas, Liberace, 79; also photographic evidence in the Liberace Museum.
4. Thomas, Liberace, 106–7.
5. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 116–17. Here is another manifestation of Liberace’s retrospective tendency toward sour grapes and self-justification. At the same time, this affair underlines the performer’s alienation, internal as much as external. Although he was doing what he wanted for decades—making a Hollywood career—he felt uneasy among the stars and celebrities. The dual tendencies, here and elsewhere, constantly threw him slightly off stride, as is particularly evident in his reconstruction of such episodes.
6. Thomas, Liberace, 111.
7. Ibid., 112–13.
8. See Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 96.
9. New York Times, Nov. 3, 1955, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 14.
10. “Liberace Sees Silver Lining to His WB Pic’s Present Cloud at B.O.,” Hollywood Reporter, Dec. 12, 1956, quoted in Fari
s, Bio-Bibliography, 215, also 96.
11. Havana Post, August 25, 1956, and Bohemia [Havana, Cuba], August 26, 1956. For this and the other translations of Spanish from Bohemia and Dario de la Marina I am indebted to my friend and former student Kevin Taracido.
12. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 128.
13. Bohemia, Aug. 26, 1956.
14. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 128.
15. Ibid., 129; Bohemia, Sept. 2, 1956; Havana Post, Aug. 25, 1956.
16. I thank Kevin Taracido and his grandmother, Guillermina Rubio de Taracido, who attended this concert, for this information.
17. Bohemia, Sept. 2, 1956; Dario de la Marina, Aug. 26, 1956.
18. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 130.
19. Bohemia, Aug. 26, 1956.
20. Ibid., September 2, 1956.
21. Personal interview with Carmen Regalado, who, after four decades and a country change, still glowed in recalling the events of August 1956.
22. Bohemia, Aug. 26, 1956.
23. Johnson, Liberace: A Collecting Guide, 41.
24. Perhaps he had a fling with the comic, too. This red-haired, vivacious, sometime lover of Laurence Olivier had some sort of special relation with the piano player, as a singular photograph of the two of them preserved at the Liberace Museum suggests. As with his veiled remarks about the “gay” New York club, Spivy’s Roof, his singling out Kaye at all and remarking about his “doing all the things he does so well” hints that their association may have been more than just professional.
25. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 119–21.
26. Ibid., 22.
27. “Liberace with Brother Received by Pope,” New York Times, Nov. 3, 1956.
28. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 214.
29. Ibid., 24.
30. Ibid., 25, 224.
31. Ibid., 26; also 25.
32. Ibid., 225.
33. Art Buchwald, “Liberace Abroad,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 12, 1956.
34. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 30–32.
35. “Open House for Fans,” n.d., Liberace File #9, Milwaukee Public Library.
36. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 29.
37. Quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 57.
38. Ibid., 56.
39. New York Times, Oct. 3, 1956, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 57.
Liberace: An American Boy Page 62
