"When the reviews are bad I tell my staff that
they can join me as I cry all the way to the bank."—Pianist and flamboyant
showman Liberace (1919-1987), Liberace: An Autobiography (1973)
From the Fifties through the Seventies, Liberace—born 100 years ago today in West
Allis, Wisconsin—endured one critical brickbat after another. But as this quote
indicates, he just chuckled and shrugged it off, taking solace in being one of
the best-paid entertainers in America.
What he could not shrug off were suggestions that he
might be homosexual. In the late 1950s, he brought a lawsuit against someone
claiming exactly that. But the protests became more hollow with time,
especially by the mid-1980s, when a severe weight loss was attributed to a
strict watermelon diet. The coroner’s eventual verdict about his death in 1987—AIDS—merely
confirmed growing suspicions about his last illness.
The mocking showman, it turned out, cared more about
what people thought than he ever let on. It wasn’t just that he guarded knowledge
of his sexual orientation so zealously (a “secret” that really wasn’t a secret),
but that he hoped that, by setting up scholarships for deserving young musical
students, he would be remembered for contributing something important to music.
But most people still know him as a campy showman.
Donning outrageous outfits like his star-spangled
shorts or 200-pound “King Neptune” costume might have won him considerable
attention and money, but without them, he might have won more respect for his
considerable talent. (He had been a child prodigy growing up.)
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