Liberace: An American Boy

by Darden Asbury Pyron

  56. Thomas, Liberace, 139.

  57. Fleming and Fleming, First Time, 142. Although I had read this passage a score of times, it took student inquiries in my colleague Mitchell Hart’s graduate seminar in autobiography to point out the double meaning of top/bottom in this revelation. The usage is interesting. In effect, Liberace defends his economic manhood in terms of being a top or on top. He was a man, he was ambitious and hard working; he was not a woman, he was not passive, he was not a bottom. This usage also raises other issues in homosexuality and gender relations, notably the old assumption that only receptive partners in male-male sex are the deviants, because they play a “passive” or a “woman’s role.”

  58. Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays, 201.

  59. Hudson and Davidson, Rock Hudson, 42.

  60. Ibid., 49.

  61. Gavin Lambert, On Cukor (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), quoted in Ehrenstein, Open Secret, 15.

  62. Hudson and Davidson, Rock Hudson, 33.

  63. “The Liberace Show,” Time, June 22, 1959, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 217.

  64. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 233.

  65. Ehrenstein, Open Secret, 118–19, 120. Kevin Kopelson’s Beethoven’s Kiss confirms the same position, even to the point of assenting, as Ehrenstein does, to “Cassandra’s” polemic, too. Where Kopelson, however, admits to a potential connection between his distaste for the performer, snobbery, and even his own latent homophobia (see the epilogue of this book), Ehrenstein argues from assumptions of the objective truth of his position. His position is otherwise clear, however, in his references to Liberace’s “modest pianistic ability,” “turning performances of classical music into a form of parlor trick,” and reaping a “publicity bonanza” from the trial.

  As should be apparent from the text, my own understanding of the Cassandra affair and trial is rather more complicated. During the early stages of this study, more than once, I could have echoed Kevin Kopelson’s expressions of ambiguity on reading Cassandra’s diatribe. The piece was profoundly discomforting from both a sexual as well as cultural position. Here was the question: Was Cassandra merely dealing with matters of taste, as Ehrenstein insists, or was William Conner’s diatribe governed by homophobia? It is more involved yet. What is the nature of homophobia itself? Was it homosexuality that offended, or rather the performer’s queeniness? The issue still reverberates through even contemporary discussions of homosexuality: What is homosexuality’s error? Is it indulging in same sex practices, or bending social definitions of gender? Is a queer Jack Armstrong passable, a flitty—and chaste?—Richard Simmons not? If such matters are not complicated enough in themselves, class issues tangle the question more. As George Chauncey and Rictor Norton have argued, the “fairy” or swishing queen appears usually from a lower- or working-class background (one might add the aristocracy as well), while the bourgeoisie, both gay and straight, has tended to repudiate this form of sexuality or gender play for a stricter definition of masculinity. Nor do the complications stop here. Insofar as the United States is the bourgeois nation par excellence, being “American” or a “good American” affects—and even confounds—these sexual issues. Are the working-class Italian boys looking for tricks in Bryant Park, with their plucked eyebrows and swishy mannerisms—as Chauncey describes them, good Americans?

  Such issues as these have, at least in part, inspired this book. In contrast to the dismissal of Liberace characteristic of fifties critics like Howard Taubman and William Conner or modern ones like David Ehrenstein and Boze Hadleigh, this examination approaches its subject as mediating and negotiating various and mostly conflicting loyalties and obligations in one man’s life.

  66. From The Captive, as quoted by Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 67.

  67. Michel Foucault, “Sexual Choice, Sexual Act,” interview conducted by James O’Higgins, Salamagundi, fall/winter 1982–83; reprinted in Foucault Live, Semiotext(e), Foreign Agents series, 1989, quoted in Ehrenstein, Open Secret, 118. In treating this episode, while giving with one hand, David Ehrenstein takes back with the other. Offering the Foucault quotation, he immediately judges that it applies only to the lowly or talented, not to “a highly paid and well-connected showbusiness figure . . . [of] modest pianistic ability. . . .” Thus, he also exempts George Cukor and other gay actors from the condemnation of leading double lives, if not actually lying under oath about their affection for other men.

  68. See Kaplan, Sexual Justice. Additional problems with male-male sex arise given the peculiar circumstances of homosexual activity. As described by much of the literature, much of gay sex transpires outside the traditionally defined privacy of the home, in “public,” in effect. While some sexual reformers argue for the anomalousness of such “violation” of public space as a function of heterosexual oppression that would deny “home” and “domesticity” to gays, others see it as a natural outgrowth of normal male libidinousness, and especially of homosexual male lustiness. By this measure, the state’s effort to police such sexuality is just as oppressive as law officers’ entry into private homes. Contradictions pervade both positions.

  69. The modern tendency to sexualize public discourse has a paradoxical antithesis as well. Thus, the leading proponents of radical academic discourse on sexuality have virtually eliminated sensuality, passion, sexuality, or even feeling from their writing. Sexuality in most of their treatises is so abstract, that, as Leo Bersani, one of their critics, has noted, it is difficult to imagine that a core of gay identity might actually reside in one man’s delight in another man’s penis: Leo Bersani, Homos (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995). Rictor Norton’s criticism of the deconstructionists and other adherents of Foucault resembles Bersani’s.

  70. See Kaplan, Sexual Justice. Kaplan, a scholar-activist, defends the latter position and advocates the radical restructuring of social, economic, and sexual order in contemporary society, but he also offers a clear and important analysis/overview of the categories of the discussion, with particular relevance to homosexuality.

  71. In still another manifestation of the peculiarities of public and private, Liberace himself trumpeted over and over, especially in his last book, The Wonderful, Private World of Liberace, that he was indeed revealing the most private parts of his biography. If he took readers into his bath and sleeping chambers, however, he created, one more time, a public fiction called Privacy. The paradox borders on the grotesque. While not ideologically driven, it is, as John Waters has indicated, more than mere hypocrisy as well—even though that motive is hardly absent from The Wonderful, Private World. Waters calls this last book “over the top Americanism,” a fabrication so fabulous it becomes credible.

  72. Ehrenstein, Open Secret, 101.

  73. New York Times, June 9, 1959.

  74. “Networks Shadowboxed with ‘Homo’ in Reporting Liberace’s Libel Action,” Variety, June 24, 1959.

  75. Thomas, Liberace, 95.

  76. “FBI’s Files Offer Quirky Treasures,” Chicago Tribune, Nov. 24, 1984, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 190.

  77. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 38.

  78. Ibid., 33.

  79. Ibid., 33, 39.

  80. Ehrenstein, Open Secret, 122; for an earlier, published version of the encounter without names, see Rechy, Sexual Outlaw, 87–88.

  81. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 38–39.

  82. Chuck Conconi, “Personalities,” The Washington Post, Feb. 6, 1987.

  83. Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays, 146–47.

  84. Ibid., 146.

  85. Quoted in Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays, 147. See also Hudson and Davidson, Rock Hudson, passim; and the quotations from Marc Christian, Hudson’s former lover, in Alan Brabam Smith, “Storm over Author’s Claim Linking Liberace & Rock Hudson,” National Enquirer, Mar. 4, 1987.

  86. Quoted in Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays, 147. See also Hudson and Davidson, Rock Hudson, passim.

  87. See, generally, Davidson and Hudson, Rock Hudson.

 
88. Rechy, Sexual Outlaw, 87. See also the Rechy interview in Ehrenstein, Open Secret, 73.

  89. Ibid.

  90. Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays, 146.

  91. Ehrenstein, Open Secret, 73.

  92. “Liberace and George Split,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, Dec. 3, 1957.

  93. International Artists v Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

  94. Johnson, Liberace: A Collecting Guide, 16.

  95. “Liberace Family Unity Broken by Dissention,” Hollywood Citizen-News, Oct. 23, 1958.

  96. Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 10.

  97. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 78.

  98. “Liberace Family Unity.”

  99. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 32, 33.

  100. Ray Mungo’s Palm Springs Babylon: Sizzling Stories from the Desert Playground of Stars (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993) promises more than it delivers. Although devoting a chapter to Liberace, it adds little to Thorson’s account, upon which it seems chiefly based.

  101. Bob Colacello, “Palm Springs Weekend,” Vanity Fair, June 1999, 211.

  102. Ibid., 192.

  103. Ehrenstein, Open Secret, 53.

  104. Here again, the dates are unclear. Mungo offers 1952 as the year the showman first appeared here; if Goldstone indeed introduced him to the Springs, however, it was probably not before their association, which began in the early winter of 1953.

  105. Thomas, Liberace, 150.

  106. See information in Liberace Museum.

  107. Stefan Hemming, interview with the author.

  108. See The Liberace Legend, n.d., n.p. (ca. 1968), the program brochure of Liberace’s concerts.

  109. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 267.

  110. Mungo, Palm Springs Babylon, 120.

  111. Stefan Hemming interview.

  112. “Liberace’s Desperate Battle with AIDS,” National Enquirer, Feb. 10, 1987.

  113. James Robert Parish, Gays and Lesbians in Mainstream Cinema: Plots, Critiques, Casts and Credits for 272 Theatrical and Made-for-Television Hollywood Releases (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1992), 123.

  114. Thomas, Liberace, 151, allows this same interpretation of events, but he fictionalizes the affair and fabricates a conversation between the two brothers, including George’s criticism of Lee “hanging out in The Springs with a bunch of faggots.”

  TEN

  1. The Jack Paar Show, New York. T82:0144, Museum of Broadcast History.

  2. “Liberace Condition Good,” n.d., Liberace File #12, Milwaukee Public Library.

  3. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 304, 305, 306.

  4. Ibid., 306.

  5. “Reviewing His Life over the Years,” July 23, 1982, Liberace File #37, Milwaukee Public Library.

  6. “Liberace Puts Punchline First,” n.d., Liberace File #16, Milwaukee Public Library.

  7. The New York Times—and its index, of course—offers a neat gauge of status in the United States insofar as having a name in New York is tantamount to being a national figure. After the Cassandra trial, then, Liberace virtually vanishes from the pages of the great “newspaper of record.” Between 1959 and 1982, he appears only four times. As another judge of his changing status afterward, his name becomes a regular item after 1981.

  8. “But Where’s Rock and Roll?” n.d., Liberace File #11, Milwaukee Public Library.

  9. Liberace Puts Punchline First,” n.d., Liberace File #16, Milwaukee Public Library.

  10. “Liberace Candles Light Up Big Season,” Sept. 24, 1961, Liberace File #12, Milwaukee Public Library.

  11. “Liberace Concert Slated on Sept. 27 at Oriental,” n.d., Liberace File #12, Milwaukee Public Library.

  12. Jane Heylmun Roberson, interview with author.

  13. Variety, Mar. 20, 1957, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 60.

  14. Variety, Sept. 9, 1959, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 72.

  15. Variety, June 29, 1960, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 69.

  16. Variety, Mar. 21, 1962, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 72.

  17. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #16, Milwaukee Public Library.

  18. Heller v Liberace, Los Angeles Superior Court.

  19. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 105.

  20. The Jack Paar Show, “The Final Program,” T80:0074, Museum of Broadcast History.

  21. Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 112. Although he offers no substantiation, in Liberace, Bob Thomas maintains that Liberace offended the TV host, who vowed he would not invite him back.

  22. The Ed Sullivan Show, Dec. 16, 1962, Museum of Television and Radio, Los Angeles, California.

  23. In his autobiography, Liberace himself does not seem exactly clear about what to make of the movie or his part in it. Unable to acknowledge its campy queerness, the source of the movie’s endearing charm (and of his own part), he apologizes for its “raunchiness”—which he also concedes wasn’t very raunchy. Oddly, he uses the movie to defend artistic integrity against censors and to criticize “nudity, pornographic explicitness, and violence” in contemporary films as one explanation of why he doesn’t make movies. His treatment offers a fairly typical version of his sincerity, playing to his audience, and self-serving explanations that often characterize the “morals” of his narratives. The explanation caters to his audiences even as it provides evidence of the showman’s propensity for providing self-serving justifications of his career. See Liberace: An Autobiography, 117–19.

  24. Quoted in Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays, 142. Liberace sets Hadleigh frothing. He introduces the showman with the movie, and develops on the first page the objections that dominate his treatment: the showman as a sissy, contradictory liar.

  25. Johnson, Liberace: A Collecting Guide, passim.

  26. International Artists v Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

  27. He released his first album, Mr. Showmanship, using the name in 1963 on the Dot Label, and subsequent albums and tapes followed regularly for almost twenty years. He institutionalized the identity. While its invention is interesting for itself, even more extraordinary—and suggestive, too—was Liberace’s power to impose its usage on critics, commentators, and reviewers. Whether they loved him or loathed him, journalists, almost to a person, quickly fell into rank. This offers another manifestation of what that earliest of Milwaukee newspapermen referred to as Liberace’s public-relations genius.

  28. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 159.

  29. See Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 243.

  30. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 261.

  31. Ibid.

  32. International Artists v Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

  33. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 261.

  34. International Artists v Commissioner of Internal Revenue; also Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 261.

  35. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 262.

  36. Ibid., 262, 263.

  37. See “Disputes IRS in US Tax Court,” New York Times, Apr. 16, 1968. Also, International Artists v Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

  38. See “Court Allows Him Tax Deduction,” New York Times, Nov. 1, 1970.

  39. International Artists v Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

  40. Barr v Liberace.

  41. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 105.

  42. Eugene Moehring, Resort City in the Sunbelt: Las Vegas, 1930–1970. (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1989), 42.

  43. Moehring, Resort City, 43–44, and Donn Knepp, Las Vegas: The Entertainment Capital (Menlo Park, Calif.: Lane, 1987), 34–35.

  44. Moehring, Resort City, 45–46; Knepp, Las Vegas, 38–39.

  45. Knepp, Las Vegas, 35, 43.

  46. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 172–73; also Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nov. 23, and 27, 1944; and “Piano Virtuoso Is Big Hit,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nov. 25, 1944.

  47. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 173. Here, again, the performer simultaneously overplays and underplays his achievements. He was nowhere near the category of Sophi
e Tucker at this time, despite the references that would tend to put him there. If this reflects his vanity and ambition, his statement about being underpaid, even at $700 a week, suggests that he often felt that he was not being adequately compensated. Thus, while he identifies himself with superstars on the one hand, he downplays his compensation on the other. The response permeated his sense of himself, and even entered into his act: he was Mr. Everyman boasting of his riches; Mr. Showmanship mocking his own celebrity.

  48. For the bill, see the casino’s advertisements in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nov. 23, 1944.

  49. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 174–75.

  50. In 1944, this was an enormous amount of money, and the sum is all the more impressive, considering that this was only one gig of many. It is not unlikely, of course, that Liberace parlayed this figure to up his salary for other engagements, as well, just as he had done in that notable letter he wrote to Max Pollack of Milwaukee’s Plankton Arcade Red Room. It is worth noting that in his autobiography, however, he was still poor-mouthing his economic status, despite the fact that his yearly income had reached perhaps fifteen thousand dollars, which probably put him in the top 10 percent of all American households in terms of earnings.

  51. “Piano Virtuoso Is Big Hit,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nov. 25, 1944. For the shift in advertising, see the local newspaper for Nov. 25, 1944, and Nov. 27, 1944, when he assumed top billing.

  52. “All Time High Is Reached in Frontier Show”; also “Classical Pianist Heads New Show,” Mar. 28, 1947, and “Piano Artist Delights All At Frontier,” Mar. 31, 1947.

  53. Knepp, Las Vegas, 44–45, also Moehring, Resort City, 49.

  54. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 175–76.

  55. “Piano Artist Delights All At Frontier.”

  56. Moehring, Resort City, 46–47.

  57. Ibid., 78.

  58. “Riviera’s Premiere Stars Liberace,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, Apr. 21, 1955.