Schwei, Joseph, 56
Scortenu, Gregory, 323
Search for Bridey Murphy, The (Bernstein), 265
seeing/looking, and art and sexuality, 273–82
Segell, Michael, 69, 283
Selznick, David O., 121
“September Song” (recording), 166
sexuality, L’s. See under Liberace, Wladziu
Sexual Outlaw (Rechy), 38, 244
Shaw, Barclay, 269
Shearing, George, 383
Shirley Street house (Las Vegas), 341–43, 361; and Sistine Chapel ceiling, 342
show, L’s. See under Liberace, Wladziu
“Showmanship, Mr.,” as L’s nickname, 6, 266, 280, 284
Siegel, Bugsy, 262–63
Signature recording label, 120
Sinatra, Frank, 132
Sincerely Yours (movie), 23, 111, 184–86, 420
Sing Out! Gays and Lesbians in the Music World (Hadleigh), 417
Skelton, Red, 158
Smith, Jack, 132
Smrz, Zona Gale, 32
soap operas, 145–46
Society of Musical Arts, 46
Song to Remember, A (movie), 94, 268
Sonora recording label, 120
Sound and the Fury, The (Faulkner), 275
South Seas Sinner (movie, originally titled East of Java), 124–25, 203, 420
Souvenir label, 120
Spivy, 96–97, 110
Spivy’s Roof, xii, 88, 91, 101, 102
Stapleton, Vivian (Blaine), 62
Startz, Jack, 349, 368, 391
St. Florian parish church, 36, 282–83
Stock, Frederick, 46–47, 62
Stokowski, Leopold, 68
Stonewall Inn Riot, 238, 303, 304–5
Street, Robert (Bob Black), 332–33, 335, 342
Streisand, Barbra, 270, 300
Strote, Joel, 370, 371, 407, 408, 409; lawsuit against, 415–16; and television movie, 417–18
Sullivan, Andrew, 122
Sullivan, Ed, and L’s appearance on show, 157
“Summit of Sex” phrase, 226
Sunday Night at the Palladium, 191, 194
supper clubs, 9, 87–89, 116, 119
Suppressed article, 214
Swedish, Steve, 22, 34–35, 55
Targ, William, 365–66
Taubman, Howard, and New York Times critique, x, 180–81, 421, 422
“Tea for Two” (recording), 120
television: and domestic ritualization, 133–34, 146, 155; early days of, 132–34; and intimacy and closeness, 144–46; network, 133; and popular versus particular audiences, 135–36; and syndication, 148–49; and trend to filmed programs, reruns, and Los Angeles, 134–35
television and Liberace: 1958 daytime show on ABC, 201–2; and 1960s and 1970s, 254; The David Letterman Show, 253, 381; The Dinah Shore Show replacement programs, 142, 146; The Ed Sullivan Show, 157, 253–54, 270; and emphasis on visuals, 278–79; and L as first matinee idol, 150; Good Morning America, 373; The Jack Benny Show, 158; The Liberace Show (KLAC), 139–49; The Liberace Show (nationally syndicated), 16, 148–49, 151–56; The Merv Griffin Show, 401; The Oprah Winfrey Christmas Show, 401; Person to Person, 157–58, 165; and Red Skelton, 158; Sunday Night at the Palladium, 191; The Tonight Show, 12, 247–48, 253
Templeton, Alec, 66–67, 78
Terrace Room (Statler Hotel, Detroit), 93
Texaco Star Theater, 132
Things I Love, The (Liberace), 368; and children, 205; and name “Walter Buster Keys,” 63; and shift to New York City, 82; and use of Liberace name, 95
Thomas, Bob: and biography of L, xii, 417, 439n.23; and L’s homosexuality, 234; and The Liberace Show, 151; and L’s relationship to Heller, 127; and Eddie Rio, 209
Thomas, Danny and Rosemarie, 207
Thompson, Jimmy, 193–94
Thorson, Scott, 43, 44; arrogant nature of, 308, 344–45, 391; background and upbringing of, 331–33; and Behind the Candelabra, xi–xii, 234–38, 351, 417; and contact with L, post-AIDS, 405–6; drug habit of, 348–49; and end of relationship with L, 352; and first encounter with L, 306–7, 308, 333–34; involvement with Odyssey drug/sex group and murders, 351–52; and Liberace Museum, 362; and L’s elimination of from his life, 370, 389; and L’s failure to identify him as his lover to his family, 416; and L’s memoirs, 368; and objection to L’s sexual qualities, 345–47, 348; and palimony suit, ix, 332, 353, 370–77; physical description, 331; and plastic surgery to look like L, ix, 43, 326–27, 343, 471–72n.83; and proposed adoption by L, 328, 341; and relationship with L, 314, 315, 320, 322–23, 331–53; and signing of legal agreement with L, 371; as son to L, 327–29
Tonight Show, The: L’s appearance with Shelley Winters, 12; with Jack Paar, 247–48, 253; with Johnny Carson, 253
Tony’s Club, 97
Travis, Michael, 268
Truman, Harry S, 7, 117
Tucker, Sophie, 261–62
Tuttle, Lurene, 111
Valentino, Rudolf, 13, 172, 447n.75
Valley Vista Boulevard house: difficulties with and sale of, 255–56; as dream house, 164–65; and only occasional use of in late 1950s, 240, 241; and piano-shaped pool, 24, 165; L in sunken bath of, 36
values, L’s. See under Liberace, Wladziu
Variety, and Abel Green’s review of L, 85, 90–91
Venturi, Robert, 266–67
Vidal, Gore, 98–99, 101, 102, 305
Vince (recording), 314
Waldorf-Astoria (New York), Empire Room, 294
Wallace, Irving, 185
Warhol, Andy, 299
Warner, Jack, 189
“Warsaw Concerto” recording, 120
Washington Press Photographers Ball, 15, 117
Waters, John, 387
Waxman, Henry, 414
Weissmuller, Johnny, 120–21
West, Mae, 33, 209
West Allis and West Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2–7
West Milwaukee High School, 55–61
Weston, Paul, 157, 234
White, Betty, 138
White, Bill, 123
White, Edmund, 277, 305, 345, 393
Why My Mother Likes Liberace: A Musical Selection (Wakoski), 420
Wild, Earl, 383
Wilde, Cornel, 94
Wilde, Oscar, 233
Willing, Neville, 191–92
Winchell, Walter, 92, 119, 217
Winters, Shelley, 124–25
Wisconsin College of Music, 46
Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra, 46
Wisconsin Theater, 51
women: as fans, 21, 22, 169–70, 170, 181; and “finer things” as their domain, 174; and “mature women” as best, 171–72
Wonderful, Private World of Liberace, The (Liberace), 70, 205, 368, 369, 387, 401, 417, 476n.23
WTMJ radio station concerts, 52
Wunderbar saloon, 63
Wyeth, Andrew, 177
Wylie, Philip, 181
“Y, Mr.,” 350, 352–53. See also Cox, Chris
Young, Loretta, 241–42
Young Americans, 389
Zabach, Florian, 183
Zingsheim, Joe, 52, 54, 55
Zuchowski, Frances. See Liberace, Frances Zuchowski
Zuchowski, Frank and Anna (maternal grandparents), 27–28, 32
1 The “artiste”—as Salvatore Liberace called himself—cut a darkly handsome figure despite his diminutive height of five foot three. Violent, irascible, and relentlessly devoted to music, he was nearly equal parts Latin machismo and bohemian self-indulgence. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
2 Materialistic and possessive, headstrong and outspoken, Frances Zuchowski Liberace never transcended her rural Wisconsin, Polish immigrant roots. From her marriage in 1910 until her death, she had two passions in her life, the church and her children. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
3 The union of the conservative Polish farm girl and the worldly Neapolitan musician was not made in heaven; it was, however, fruitful.
Taken around 1925, this photo shows the three eldest Liberace children: Wally on the left, wearing the cap; George, holding his brother’s dog; their cousin Esther; and, on the right, sister Angelina. Aged six or seven, the youngest child had already established his reputation as a musical prodigy. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
4 As an adult, Liberace called the move from West Allis to West Milwaukee a traumatic experience. The new house on National Avenue, however, was a step up in every way for his family. Indeed, from 1926 to 1929, before the Depression, was the best time the Liberaces ever experienced as a family. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
5 Around the time of the move to National Avenue in 1926, a series of events changed Wally Liberace’s life. Besides weathering the “trauma” of the move itself, he began studying with a new piano teacher. Florence Kelly was more than his teacher, however; for almost two decades, she remained the most important person in his life outside his family. A disciplined pianist herself, she was also “an elegant lady” who was at the same time furiously uncompromising, willful, and demanding. She was the perfect mentor for the distracted prodigy. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
6 As a small child, Wally Liberace knew the Polish virtuoso Ignacy Paderewski from his father’s collection of famous Victor Red Seal recordings. Around 1926 or 1927, he actually met the great man. From then on, the brilliant, eccentric Paderewski acted as a goad and model for the young pianist. Liberace identified himself publicly with his idol, especially early in his career, as demonstrated in this photo of the twenty-four-year-old musician placing a wreath at Paderewski’s tomb. Photo: Chase Statler, Washington, D.C. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
7 Performing in Chicago’s Kimball Hall, winning auditions with Frederick Stock of the Chicago Symphony, and even soloing with that august ensemble in 1940, Walter Liberace had established a musical reputation that provided the basis for numerous concert tours of the upper Midwest, from Sheboygan to Omaha, in the late thirties. Already keen to public relations, he was still a teenager when he circulated attractive publicity stills like this one prior to his engagements. Photo: Maurice Seymour. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
8 Despite his passion for classical music, popular performance attracted him, too. The cash appealed, but playing pop music also resolved some of the deepest tensions of his interior life. In any case, 1937 was not a bad time for playing jazz and boogie-woogie. The teenaged Wally Liberace—hands on the piano on the right—profited twice over, then, by performing with various local bands in the mid-thirties. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
9 Around his twenty-first birthday, his life changed. He began jazzing up his formal concerts even as he dressed up his supper-club show, as here at an unnamed club, appearing in the most elegant eveningwear. The watershed year of 1939–40 also saw his break with his father, and his discovery of homosex when he was playing a six-month gig in Wausau, Wisconsin, just inland from Greenbay. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
10 In 1941, he decamped for New York to make his “big splash.” “I had gone as far as I could in my home town,” he said. “I was still only a big frog in a little pond. I felt I wasn’t getting the recognition I deserved.” Glory followed only after four years of relentless effort and deprivation, but his poverty during those first few years did not diminish the pleasure he took in Christmas in Manhattan, which he celebrated with his elder brother just after Pearl Harbor. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
11 Homosexuality remained his secret in those years, but while he may have resisted having sex with other men, the other manifestations of his queerness were beyond his power of transformation, almost beyond his power of awareness. If men filled his fantasies, so did silk corsages, dandy dress, and pretty pictures. Courtesy of AP/Wide World Photos.
12 Under the aegis of his West Coast patron, Clarence Goodwin, Walter Liberace’s career changed radically around 1946 or ’47. He launched a recording career and gave up his “finger-synching” act. Not least, he bought and traveled with the very grand Blüthner piano. Besides being a brilliant-looking, brilliant-sounding instrument, the “priceless” $25,000 grand became a major ploy in his new publicity offensive after the war. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
13 Among other innovations of his postwar public relations campaign, he adopted the gimmick of going only by his last name. He used its phonetic spelling as an added trick. His move to California, around the time of his Long Beach Municipal Auditorium performance of February 1947, also put him at the center of the American entertainment industry. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
14 A journalist from the Milwaukee years had referred to the pianist as a public relations genius. His self-promotion campaign of 1947 characterized this talent as nothing had before. He flooded the entertainment market with his advertising postcards, and he never missed an opportunity for feeding journalists with “story ideas.” While he filled his 1947 press kit with such leads, it did not exhaust his repertoire. Thus, he introduced in a press release the notion, illustrated here, of “warming his hands with the vapor from hot water to relax his fingers” before every performance. Newsmen ate it up. Courtesy of AP/Wide World Photos.
15 The publicity campaign coupled with the shift to Hollywood paid off. By 1949, Liberace was playing the hottest clubs in the United States. He broke into movies and won an invitation to play the White House the same year. On the evening of February 25, 1950, he performed in the East Room for the Washington Press Photographers Ball with such other notables as Dorothy Lamour, Wally Cox, Marge and Gower Champion, Jo Stafford, and Jack Benny. In the audience, of course, was President Harry S Truman. Still, the showman’s ambition remained unsated. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
16 Local Los Angeles television station KLAC broadcast The Liberace Show live for the first time on February 3, 1952. It swept the market. Within a year, the performer had signed on with Guild Films for the nationally syndicated version of the show. With its striking juxtaposition of high style and hokeyness, polish and error, urbanity and provincialism, the production had no counterparts in the industry in 1953. Syndicated to almost two hundred stations around the country, it became the most-watched program in the nation by 1954. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
17 In what he later called his “white heat” period—1953 to 1956—Liberace was one of the two or three most celebrated entertainers in the United States, even the world. Elvis Presley occupied the same category. From their first encounter, the King admired and respected the flashy pianist. On Lee’s return to Las Vegas in the fall of 1956, Elvis shared the audience’s delight in Liberace’s Riviera show. Courtesy of CORBIS/Bettmann.
18 In the winter of 1947, the twenty-seven-year-old Midwestern piano player visited the Hollywood Bowl for the first time. Wandering through the empty amphitheater, he promised himself that someday he’d be on the stage and all the seats would be filled. On July 19, 1952, he accomplished his goal. Fabulously attired in custom-made white eveningwear, he set an attendance record with his performance. He was cracking Hollywood wide open, just as he had promised his old teacher Florence Kelly.
Photo: Rothschild Photo, Los Angeles, California. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
19 Had Paderewski played Madison Square Garden? Lee determined to exceed his hero’s accomplishment. On May 26, 1954, he filled the hall with sixteen thousand rapturous fans, 75 percent of whom were females. A half dozen scowling critics attended, too. The delight of the many was matched only by the rancor of the few. Courtesy of CORBIS/Bettmann.
20 With his trademark toothy grin and wavy hair, Liberace was the most recognized man in America in the mid-fifties. He went nowhere without crowds gathering. Every occasion became an opportunity for an almost ritual showing, as here, upon his departure for Europe on the Queen Mary in Septe
mber 1956. Courtesy of CORBIS/Bettmann.
21 Critics regularly remarked upon the preponderance of women among Liberace’s devotees. Their association of the pianist and women was seldom flattering either to the showman or to his followers, but women, indeed, stoked his white-hot popularity in the fifties. For younger women, as depicted in this 1954 photograph, he represented a desirable, attractive man, but one purged of masculine loutishness. “He is through and through a Continental,” rhapsodized one fan. “When he kisses your hand, you know he isn’t going to chew off your arm.” Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
22 Matrons and grandmothers idolized him, too. They mobbed him at the New York opening of Sincerely Yours. He was the perfect son-man. One fan described him as “loving and artistic,” telling him, “You take care of your mother. You are nice, warm, gentle, polite, considerate and still have a sense of humor. . . . You might be what most mothers had dreamed their sons would be, but didn’t turn out to be.” Courtesy of CORBIS/Bettmann.
23 Liberace always argued that staying on top was harder than getting there. Even at the height of his white-hot fame, then, he was constantly calculating new moves, new tricks, new ploys to guarantee public attention. His spectacular costumes manifested one version of his ability to seize the popular imagination. No less than his headline-grabbing clothes, his own family became an important prop in his publicity campaign as well. His mother, in particular, played a critical role in his image-making. The two of them never looked much better than they do here, at the Hollywood opening of Sincerely Yours. Courtesy of CORBIS/Bettmann.
24 Liberace’s Barnumesque talent for publicity blossomed extravagantly in fame. It influenced everything he did. His “piano-pool house,” constructed in 1954 in Sherman Oaks, California, however, captured the essence of his genius. Here he swims with his little brother, Rudy, that year. Courtesy of the Liberace Foundation, Las Vegas, NV.
Liberace: An American Boy Page 70
