59. Ibid.
60. Thomas, Liberace, 106–7; see also Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 177.
61. Moehring, Resort City, 47; Knepp, Las Vegas, 112–13, 176–77.
62. “Fresh Flowers from Friend Elvis,” n.d., Liberace File #83, Milwaukee Public Library.
63. Knepp, Las Vegas, 66; Thomas, Liberace, 117.
64. “Fresh Flowers from Friend Elvis,” n.d., Liberace File #83, Milwaukee Public Library.
65. Thomas, Liberace, 116.
66. See Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 73.
67. I am indebted to my friend Alberto Bueno for this insight. The mob’s loss of control of Las Vegas, coupled with sociological changes within America after the early eighties, has changed the meaning of the gambling center for American culture in yet other ways. Las Vegas has shifted its focus to families and even children in the last twenty years, so that the relationship between Disneyland and Las Vegas has become closer still.
68. Knepp, Las Vegas, 132.
69. Variety, Nov. 11, 1977, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 79.
70. Variety, Nov. 11, 1978, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 80.
71. See chapter 4, for example.
72. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 182, 289–90.
73. Thomas, Liberace, 212–14; “Sequin Expert Keeps Liberace in Stitches,” July 3, 1977, Liberace File #28, Milwaukee Public Library.
74. Knepp, Las Vegas, 132.
75. “Pianist’s Garb Dazzles Fans,” July 3, 1975, Liberace File #26, Milwaukee Public Library.
76. “Still Some Skill Behind the Glitter,” Aug. 2, 1978, Liberace File #34, Milwaukee Public Library.
77. N.t. ,n.d., Liberace File #21, Milwaukee Public Library.
78. “Whatever It Was, It Was All Liberace,” Aug. 9, 1977, Liberace File #30, Milwaukee Public Library.
79. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 178–79; 179–81.
80. Ibid., 178–79; 180. Thomas, Liberace, 162–64.
81. Variety, July 10, 1963, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 73.
82. Variety, June 27, 1964, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 74.
ELEVEN
1. Paglia, Sexual Personae, offers a thorough discussion of visual perception, sensuality, art, aesthetics, and beauty. I am indebted to her insights.
2. Bersani, Homos, emphasizes the centrality of seeing in homoerotic culture throughout his work.
3. Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, in Remembrance of Things Past, tr. C. K. Scott-Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, 3 vols., (New York: Vintage, 1982), 2: 638–39.
4. Bersani, Homos, 134.
5. Kaiser, Gay Metropolis, 119.
6. Besides White’s Genet, see also Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, especially 212–51, for an important if sometimes obscure description of homosexual visuality; see also 131–81.
7. Bersani, Homos, 141.
8. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 157.
9. Ibid., 174.
10. Ibid., 158–59; also Thomas, Liberace, 78.
11. “Strain Put on Fuses at Liberace Concert,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 6, 1954; for quotation, see Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 54.
12. Quoted in Larry Kart, “Liberace, 67, Pianist Turned ‘One-man Musical Circus,’” Chicago Tribune, Feb. 5, 1987, cited in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 30.
13. Dance Magazine, July 1984, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 85.
14. William A. Henry III, “A Synonym for Glorious Excess,” Time, Feb. 16, 1987.
15. Randy Lewis, “From Liberace, More and More and More,” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1984.
16. Billboard, Feb. 18, 1978, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 117.
17. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 160.
18. Ibid., 166.
19. His sympathy for blind deaf-mutes has another potential source, too, in the circumstance of the homosexual unable to speak or describe his passions to a heterosexual audience.
20. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 116.
21. Ibid., 156.
22. Ibid.
23. “The ‘Great’ Liberace.”
24. Michael Segell, “It’s All Wunnerful for Liberace: An Extraordinary Visit with the Gilded Cherub of American Camp,” Rolling Stone (Oct. 1, 1981). Quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 247.
25. C. Carr, “Astonish Me,” Village Voice, Oct. 28, 1986. Both Carr and Segell write out of certain horrified incredulity. With rather less horror, not to mention incredulity, and employing remarkably detached prose, the West Indian writer V. S. Naipal has come up with a very comparable cultic analysis of the devotees of Elvis Presley. See his A Turn South.
26. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 159.
27. Leslie Bennetts, “Liberace Out to ‘Top Himself’ at Music Hall Show,” New York Times, Apr. 13, 1984.
28. Patricia E. Davis, “Liberace Riding New Wave of Popularity,” Hollywood Citizen-News, Apr. 16, 1970, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 186.
29. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #68, Milwaukee Public Library.
30. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 155.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid., 156–57.
33. Ibid., 157.
34. Ibid., 17.
35. Ibid., 119.
36. Bill Barol, “Wladziu Liberace, 1919–1987,” Newsweek, Feb. 16, 1987.
37. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 195.
38. Jay Joslyn, “Liberace Thrills Crowd as Usual,” Apr. 30, 1986, Liberace File #54, Milwaukee Public Library.
39. Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays, 154–55.
40. Henry, “Synonym for Glorious Excess.”
41. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 156.
42. Bennetts, “Liberace Out to ‘Top Himself.’”
43. “Liberace: His Lord High Excellency of Glitz,” (reprinted from the Washington Post), July 24, 1985, Liberace File #47, Milwaukee Public Library.
44. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 155.
45. Both quotations from Green, “Liberace the Gilded Showman.”
46. See Liberace, Wonderful, Private World, 95–105.
47. “Liberace: His Lord High Excellency,” July 24, 1985, Liberace File #47, Milwaukee Public Library.
48. “Liberace’s Appeal Went beyond Musicianship,” Feb. 5, 1987, Liberace File #58, Milwaukee Public Library.
49. “Gifted and Glitzy, Showman Dazzled the Common Man,” Detroit News, Feb. 5, 1987.
50. Joslyn, “Liberace Thrills Crowd,” Apr. 30, 1986, Liberace File #54, Milwaukee Public Library.
51. “Musical Talent, Likeability, Make Liberace a STAR,” Las Vegas Sun, May 27, 1979.
52. David Richards, “The Sparkling Showman,” Washington Post, Feb. 2, 1987.
53. “Liberace: His Lord High Excellency,” July 24, 1985, Liberace File #47, Milwaukee Public Library.
54. “Liberace’s Appeal Went beyond Musicianship,” Feb. 5, 1987, Liberace File #58, Milwaukee Public Library.
56. Richard Corliss, “The Evangelist of Kitsch,” Time 128 (Nov. 3, 1986): 96.
55. Quoted in Ruth Ryon, “Liberace Called Tune in His Many Real Estate Ventures,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29, 1987.
57. Randy Lewis, “From Liberace, More and More and More.”
58. “King of Keyboard Fashion,” Maclean’s, Feb. 2, 1987.
59. Billboard, Apr. 27, 1985, quoted in Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 87.
60. “Liberace: His Lord High Excellency,” Liberace File #47, Milwaukee Public Library.
61. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #32, Milwaukee Public Library.
62. N.t., n.d., Liberace File #21, Milwaukee Public Library.
63. “Liberace Plays; Tells Jokes, Too.” See above, chapter 7.
64. “Critic Deplores Liberace’s Musicianship,” Oct. 1, 1962, Liberace File #13, Milwaukee Public Library.
65. “Liberace Glistens for Devoted Fans,” Apr. 3, 1975, Liberace File #26, Milwaukee Public Library.
66. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 249–50.
&
nbsp; 67. Liberace, The Things I Love, 148.
68. Ibid., 218.
69. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 128.
70. Liberace, The Things I Love, 218.
71. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 128.
72. Ibid., 7.
73. Liberace, The Things I Love, 220.
74. Ibid., 151.
75. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 247.
76. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 129.
77. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 249.
78. Ibid., 285.
79. Ibid., 160.
80. Ibid., 157.
81. “Liberace Heading for Home,” July 6, 1984, Liberace File #42, Milwaukee Public Library.
82. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 163.
83. “Nobody Can Hold a Candelabra to Liberace in the Mod Music Mood,” Mar. 26, 1970, Liberace File #11, Milwaukee Public Library.
84. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 180–81.
85. Ibid., 181.
86. “Milwaukee’s Liberace Still Sets Eyes Popping with His Colorful Act,” Feb. 4, 1977, Liberace File #27, Milwaukee Public Library.
87. Liberace, Liberace: An Autobiography, 164.
88. Ibid., 11–12.
89. Ibid., 163, 119.
TWELVE
1. William Dreyer, interview with the author.
2. Jerry Lisker, New York Daily News, July 6, 1969.
3. Kaiser, Gay Metropolis, offers a good example of this process. Under the pseudonym of Donald Webster Cory, Edward Sagarin had published The Homosexual in America: A Subjective Approach in 1951, which Kaiser calls “the first essential document of gay liberation in the United States” (125). By the mid-sixties, gay activism was repudiating Sagarin, even as he returned the favor. Although hardly a youth in 1964, the forty-year-old Frank Kameny represented the full tilt of Judeo-Calvinist righteousness that was delegitimizing moderates as well as conservatives. Kameny led the charge both within and without the community. Organizing public demonstrations at Independence Hall in 1965, he also relegated Sagarin to the realm of queer outer darkness: “You have fallen by the wayside,” he instructed him. “You have become no longer the rigorous Father of the Homophile movement, to be revered, respected and listened to, but the senile Grandfather of the Homophile Movement, to be humored and tolerated at best; to be ignored and disregarded usually; and to be ridiculed, at worst.” (Kaiser, Gay Metropolis, 142).
4. Only within the 1990s have these identities been seriously challenged. Among African Americans, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, and Ward Connolly defy both the internal and external hegemony of the left, while individuals like Andrew Sullivan and groups like the Log Cabin Republicans dispute the hegemony of the straight order on the one hand, and radicals’ domination of homosexual politics on the other. The cartoonist Garry Trudeau captures both the post-Stonewall legitimizing of homosexuality and the contemporary—and ambivalent—relegitimizing of homosexual conservatism in one series of “Doonesbury” comic strips. Outing his character Mark, he couples this former radical leftie with a caricature of a button-downed, overweight, WASPy stockbroker type. In one strip, the lover is holding forth to Mark’s father. “The way I see it, Phil,” he says, “being gay is a private matter, not a political rationale for offensive public behavior. In my view, the flaunting of homosexuality is all part of a larger breakdown of an orderly society, of common decency, of civil virtue!” Dumbfounded, Phil then inquires of his son, “Is he just sucking up to me here?” Whereupon Mark responds, “No, no—He really IS a fellow Nazi!” The fictional Mark’s affectionate tolerance of his boyfriend’s conservatism, however, hardly characterizes the general response. Indeed, both black and homosexual challengers of the post-sixties radical orthodoxy continue to elicit the most rancorous antagonism.
5. Quoted in Kaiser, Gay Metropolis, 54.
6. Ibid. The issue of promiscuity in male-male sex remains an intensely debated and even political issue. In the first place, how characteristic is it of the gay community? Second, even accepting the tendency of homosexuals to have more sex than heterosexuals do, problems still remain. Thus, does the tendency represent something pathological or something natural? Can an activity be both pathological and natural? Gay Power’s friends and foes alike wind up on both sides of the debate.
7. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 40, 169.
8. Hemming interview.
9. Ehrenstein, Open Secret, 122. For another version of the encounter, see Rechy, Sexual Outlaw, 87–89.
10. George Campbell, interview with the author.
11. “Frank,” interview with the author. The interviewee requested anonymity.
12. “Raji,” interview with the author. The interviewee requested anonymity.
13. Carl David, quoted in Hadleigh, Hollywood Gays, 149.
14. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 85.
15. Rechy, Sexual Outlaw, 88. See also Rechy’s interview in Ehrenstein, Open Secret, 122.
16. See Thorson deposition, in Thorson v Liberace, Los Angeles Superior Court.
17. Ehrenstein, Open Secret, 122.
18. See his City of Night for Rechy’s discussion of his conscious effort to disguise himself and the odd consequences when the mask slipped.
19. Campbell interview.
20. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 39, 40, 79, 180, 73.
21. Ibid., 180, 176.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., 162–63.
24. Ibid., 179.
25. Ibid.
26. Fleming and Fleming, First Time, 143.
27. James R. Gaines, “Liberace,” People, Oct. 1, 1982.
28. Dates, as always, remain a problem when one attempts to reconstruct Liberace’s life. Scott Thorson’s chronology is often confused. Thorson met the celebrity in 1977, and he maintained that Liberace had discovered Cardell “four years earlier”—or in 1973. After Liberace’s death, Cardell himself told a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal (Feb. 6, 1987) that he had lived with Liberace for six years. That would put his initial encounter with the entertainer at around 1972. The earliest published references to the Cardell-Liberace relationship is also a little vague. Its general chronological order suggests late 1974 or early 1975 for the first meeting: See Bob Doerschuk, “Vince Cardell: Liberace’s Piano Protégé,” Contemporary Keyboard, Jan. 1978. As Cardell had cut a record with the showman by 1975, it would seem more plausible that their relationship began around this date or perhaps a little earlier.
29. Doerschuk, “Vince Cardell: Liberace’s Piano Protégé.”
30. The story of the grieving chauffeur is a little odd on its own terms, but it is more curious still in that Scott Thorson, Cardell’s successor as driver, was called home for his foster mother’s death in 1982, and Liberace plugged Cary James into the old driver spot almost at once, even as he substituted James for Thorson in his bed.
31. Liberace deposition, Thorson v Liberace.
32. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 70.
33. See “Leapin’ Lizards, It’s Liberace!” (video LFV 2001), copyright 1978, Liberace Foundation for the Performing Arts.
34. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 69, 70.
35. Ibid., 51. “Midway through the act Lee introduced his protegee,” Thorson says, “a man I will call Jerry O’Rourke.” See pages 66 and 209 for the slips.
36. Ibid., 69, 64.
37. Ibid., 51.
38. See Thorson v Liberace.
39. See the Cardell interview after Liberace’s death, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Feb. 6, 1987, in which he is quoted as referring to Liberace as “the inspiration for my career since childhood.” The reporter also asserts that Cardell appeared with Liberace for more than five years. “I got to live in his fabulous Las Vegas house for six years. To work with him was an honor, but to have him as a friend was something I never imagined.” The dates and chronology here, again, are very loose.
40. Johnson, Liberace: A Collecting Guide, 111. While Johnson does not catalogue the second alb
um, Faris, Bio-Bibliography, names it on page 147.
41. Doerschuk, “Vince Cardell: Liberace’s Piano Protégé.”
42. “Whatever It Was, It Was All Liberace,” Aug. 9, 1977, Liberace File #30, Milwaukee Public Library.
43. See Faris, Bio-Bibliography, 79.
44. “Still Some Skill behind the Glitter,” Aug. 2, 1978, Liberace File #34, Milwaukee Public Library.
45. Thorson speaks specifically of a “six-month” obligation, but this does not make sense given the fact that Thorson met Liberace in August 1977. Cardell performed with Liberace for exactly a year, not six months, after this.
46. Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, 69, 70.
47. Ibid., 65.
48. Ibid., 66.
49. Ibid., 69.
50. Ibid., 81–82. Inexplicably, Thorson fails to note that Cardell continued to participate in Lee’s act at least through his European tour of the spring of 1978 and on to the summer of that year.
51. See Matias Viegener, “Kinky Escapades, Bedroom Techniques, Unbridled Passion, and Secret Sex Codes,” in Bergman, ed., Camp Grounds.
52. The issue of homosexual marriage touches some of the deepest chords and profoundest disagreements in homosexual and mainstream culture. Andrew Sullivan has offered one defense for formalizing homoerotic unions in Virtually Normal: An Argument about Homosexuality (New York: Knopf, 1995). He bases his argument in human sympathy, Christian charity, and the natural and, effectively, legitimate affection between same-sex partners. Morris Kaplan’s much more formalistic, legalistic treatise, Sexual Justice, arrives at the same conclusion—in the process repudiating Sullivan—from the philosophical deconstruction of the social, political order. If one is a journalist and the other an academic, their disparities also reflect in part the differences between the Catholic Christian and the Jewish intellectual traditions. Thus, the more traditional and churchgoing Sullivan longs, in effect, to integrate homosexuality within the larger loving family of Christians, while Kaplan sounds the prophetic voice for a radical restructuring of the entire social order. The redefinition of family, however, is critical for both. One part of both arguments revolves around a tacit understanding, for example, that childbearing and childrearing no longer drive the family. Both are tone deaf to the significance of children in a marital or family unit. Insofar as male same-sex couplings have nothing at all to do with children, their arguments make an effective case for homosexual unions as the model for the new marriage, the new family. While much less concerned with formalizing marriage and family, Michael Bronski, in The Pleasure Principle, extends this notion of homosexual love providing the basis of a new, improved social order. He wants no institutionalization of homoeroticism, but advocates the extension of homoerotic plasticity to all human relations. Plastic and fluid of its nature, homoeroticism, for Bronski, provides the perfect model for love and human relations in a plastic and fluid world.
Liberace: An American Boy Page 65
