Liberace
Władziu Valentino Liberace was an American pianist, singer and actor. He was born in Wisconsin to parents of Italian and Polish origin and enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures and endorsements. At the height of his fame from the 1950s to 1970s, he was the highest-paid entertainer in the world with established concert residencies in Las Vegas and an international touring schedule.
He became popular with general audiences due to performances that included showmanship and elaborate costumes and choreography. His critical reception was mixed, with some believing his playing was flashy but lacking in depth.
In 1959, Liberace successfully sued the Daily Mirror for libel after they published an article implying that he was homosexual. Later, in 1982, he was sued by his lover and chauffeur, Scott Thorson, for palimony. He continued to deny that he was homosexual.
Early life and education
Władziu Valentino Liberace was born in West Milwaukee, Wisconsin on May 16, 1919. His grandfather Valentino Liberace was a casket maker from Formia in Southern Italy where his father, musician Salvatore Liberace, was born. His mother, Frances Zuchowski was born in Menasha, Wisconsin, and was of Polish descent. Liberace had an identical twin who died at birth. He had three surviving siblings: a brother George, a sister Angelina, and younger brother Rudy.Liberace's father played the French horn in bands and cinemas, and often worked as a factory worker or laborer. While Sam encouraged music in his family, his wife Frances believed music lessons and a record player to be unaffordable luxuries. This disagreement caused family disputes. Liberace later said, "My dad's love and respect for music created in him a deep determination to give as his legacy to the world, a family of musicians dedicated to the advancement of the art."
Liberace began playing the piano at the age of four. While Sam took his children to concerts to further expose them to music, he was a taskmaster demanding high standards from the children in both practice and performance. Liberace's prodigious talent was evident from his early years. By the age of 7, he was capable of memorizing difficult pieces. He studied the technique of the Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski. At the age of eight, he met Paderewski backstage after a concert at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee. "I was intoxicated by the joy I got from the great virtuoso's playing", Liberace said later. "My dreams were filled with fantasies of following his footsteps...Inspired and fired with ambition, I began to practice with a fervour that made my previous interest in the piano look like neglect." Paderewski later became a family friend as well as Liberace's mentor, to whom the protégé never missed any opportunities to pay tribute.
The Depression was financially hard on the Liberace family. In childhood, Liberace suffered from a speech impediment; as a teen, he was taunted by neighborhood children, who mocked him for his effeminate personality, his avoidance of sports, and his fondness for cooking and the piano. Liberace concentrated on his piano playing with the help of music teacher Florence Kelly, who oversaw Liberace's musical development for ten years. He gained experience playing popular music in theaters, on local radio, for dancing classes, clubs and weddings.
In 1934, he played jazz piano with a school group named The Mixers and later with other groups. Liberace performed in cabarets and strip clubs. Although Sam and Frances did not approve, their son was earning a living during hard times. For a while, Liberace adopted the stage name Walter Busterkeys. He showed an interest in draftsmanship, design and painting, and he became a fastidious dresser and follower of fashion. By this time, he was displaying a penchant for turning eccentricities into attention-getting practices, and he earned popularity at school despite some making him an object of ridicule.
Career
Early career
A participant in a formal classical music competition in 1937, Liberace was praised for his "flair and showmanship". At the end of a traditional classical concert in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1939, Liberace played his first requested encore, the popular comedy song "Three Little Fishies". He later stated that he played the popular tune in the styles of several different classical composers. The 19-year-old played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on January 15, 1940, at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, performing Liszt's Second Piano Concerto under the baton of Hans Lange, for which he received strong reviews. He also toured in the Midwest.From 1942 to 1944, Liberace moved from straight classical performance and reinvented his act to one featuring "pop with a bit of classics" or, as he called it, "classical music with the boring parts left out". In the early 1940s, he struggled in New York City, but by the mid- and late-1940s, he was performing in night clubs in major cities around the United States and "gained national exposure through his performance contracts with the Statler and Radisson hotel chains", largely abandoning classical music. He changed from a classical pianist to an entertainer and showman, unpredictably and whimsically mixing the serious with light fare, e.g., Chopin with "Home on the Range".
For a while, he played piano along with a phonograph on stage. The gimmick helped gain him attention. He added interaction with the audience—taking requests, talking with the patrons, making jokes, and giving lessons to chosen audience members. He began to pay greater attention to such details as staging, lighting and presentation. The transformation to entertainer was driven by Liberace's desire to connect directly with his audiences, and secondarily by the reality of the difficult, top-flight competition in the classical piano world.
In 1943, he began to appear in Soundies. He recreated two flashy numbers from his nightclub act, the standards "Tiger Rag" and "Twelfth Street Rag". In these films, he was billed as Walter Liberace. Both Soundies were later released to the home-movie market by Castle Films. In 1944, he made his first appearance in Las Vegas, which later became his principal venue.
He was playing at the best clubs, finally appearing at the Persian Room in 1945, and Variety wrote "Liberace looks like a cross between Cary Grant and Robert Alda. He has an effective manner, attractive hands which he spotlights properly, and withal, rings the bell in the dramatically lighted, well-presented, showmanly routine. He should snowball into the box office." The Chicago Times was similarly impressed: He "made like Chopin one minute and then turns on a Chico Marx bit the next."
During this time, Liberace worked to refine his act. He added the candelabrum as his trademark, inspired by a similar prop in the Chopin biopic A Song to Remember. He adopted Liberace as his stage name, making a point in press releases that it was pronounced "Liber-Ah-chee". He wore white tie and tails for better visibility in large halls. Besides clubs and occasional work as an accompanist and rehearsal pianist, Liberace played for private parties, including ones at the Park Avenue home of millionaire oilman J. Paul Getty. By 1947, he was billing himself as "Liberace—the most amazing piano virtuoso of the present day."
In 1953, Liberace signed with Louis Snader, a California theater owner and TV producer whose telescriptions—short film clips were used as fillers on local stations across the country. Liberace was replacing Korla Pandit, who parted ways with Snader due to a contract dispute. According to Eric Christiansen, the filmmaker who made Pandit's biopic: " used the same sets and took credit for his staring into the camera and breaking that wall. He felt like Liberace stole his soul."
Liberace had to have a piano to match his growing presence, so he bought a rare, oversized, gold-leafed Blüthner Grand, which he hyped up in his press kit as a "priceless piano". Later, he performed with an array of extravagant, custom-decorated pianos, some encrusted with rhinestones and mirrors. He moved to the Los Angeles neighborhood of North Hollywood in 1947 and was performing at local clubs, such as Ciro's and The Mocambo, for stars such as Rosalind Russell, Clark Gable, Gloria Swanson and Shirley Temple. He did not always play to packed rooms, and he learned to perform with extra energy to thinner crowds to maintain his enthusiasm.
Liberace created a publicity machine that helped to make him a star. Despite his success in the supper-club circuit, where he was often an intermission act, his ambition was to reach larger audiences as a headliner and a television, movie and recording star. Liberace began to expand his act and made it more extravagant, with more costumes and a larger supporting cast. His large-scale Las Vegas act became his hallmark, expanding his fan base and making him wealthy.
His New York City performance at Madison Square Garden in 1954, which earned him a record $138,000 for one performance, was more successful than the great triumph his idol Paderewski had made 20 years earlier. He was mentioned as a sex symbol in The Chordettes 1954 No. 1 hit "Mr. Sandman". By 1955, he was making $50,000 per week at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and had over 200 official fan clubs with 250,000 members. He was making over $1 million per year from public appearances and millions from television. Liberace was frequently covered by the major magazines, and he became a pop-culture superstar, but he became the butt of jokes by comedians and the public.
Liberace appeared on the March 8, 1956, episode of the TV quiz program You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho Marx, where he stated that he was the only person in the US registered to vote using only a single name.
Music critics were generally harsh in their assessment of his piano playing. Critic Lewis Funke wrote after a Carnegie Hall concert, Liberace's music "must be served with all the available tricks, as loud as possible, as soft as possible, and as sentimental as possible. It's almost all showmanship topped by whipped cream and cherries." Even worse, to said critics, was his apparent lack of reverence and fidelity to the great composers. "Liberace recreates—if that is the word—each composition in his own image. When it is too difficult, he simplifies it. When it is too simple, he complicates it." They referred to his "sloppy technique" that included "slackness of rhythms, wrong tempos, distorted phrasing, an excess of prettification and sentimentality, a failure to stick to what the composer has written."
Liberace once stated, "I don't give concerts. I put on a show." Unlike the concerts of classical pianists that normally ended with applause and a retreat off-stage, Liberace's shows ended with the public invited on-stage to touch his clothes, piano, jewelry and hands. Kisses, handshakes, hugs and caresses usually followed. A critic summarized his appeal near the end of Liberace's life: "Mr. Showmanship has another more potent, drawing power to his show: the warm and wonderful way he works his audience. Surprisingly enough, behind all the glitz glitter, the corny false modesty, and the shy smile, Liberace exudes a love that is returned to him a thousand-fold."