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Beginning with Liberace’s first libel suit against English columnist William Connor’s 1959 article suggesting he was gay, this biography focuses on Liberace’s lifelong public disavowal of his true sexual life. As soon as Liberace’s early childhood in Milwaukee, the author claims there were telltale signs of his orientation. Proceeding onto Liberace’s means and methods of achieving success, which took off with the early 50’s “Liberace Show” TV program, we are filled in on Liberace’s family and business associates, earlier piano acts from which he learned his approach, and much about the hidden gay side of Hollywood. Tyrone Power, George Cukor, and even Spencer Tracy, among others, are “outed.” Traveling back and forth between the past and the future, the narrative portrays Liberace’s eventual worldwide fame. How Liberace created, marketed, merchandised and most of all protected his brand is also told.
The author’s style is fearless in truth-telling. He has interviewed a large number of the stars and business people that knew the entertainer. He reveals a complex figure who had great libido, great ego, and great knowledge of how to appeal to a mass audience. Meanwhile, his series of “chauffeurs”—younger men who drove him around town and that were really his lovers, progresses from Vince, to Scott, and finally Cary, with many, many others both during and in between. Scott Thorson, one of the first gay lovers to file a “palimony suit” in America, is given harsh assessment. What emerges is a man of contradictions. Simultaneously kind, generous, manipulating, and controlling, the author presents a somehow tragic figure who attempted to control his image even through the terminal stages of Aids. The shameless jockeying for the huge estate as it played out in the courts afterwards is also sad and telling. This is a fascinating biography.
RECOMMENDED by the USR