Liberace was called Mr. Showmanship. He may have invented the term … or maybe the term was invented for him.
Liberace was born in West Allis, Wisconsin, in 1919, to Polish and Italian immigrants. His father encouraged him and his siblings to pursue music. Liberace began playing the piano at age four. At age eight, he met his idol, the Polish pianist Paderewski. As a teen, Liberace helped his family during the Depression by tickling the ivories everywhere from local radio shows to strip clubs.
By age 20, he performed with the Chicago Symphony, then began touring the Midwest. But as he played classical music, he quickly realized a couple of things. One was that he loved playing all kinds of music. Also, by being more entertaining, more of a showman, he would make more money and reach more audiences. Accordingly, he dropped the use of his Americanized first name, Walter, using only his last name … an unusual step in show business in that era, and an attention-getter. To attract and maintain audiences, he added a candelabra and wore white tie and tails, then turned to costumes and custom pianos. As he put it, "I don’t give concerts. I put on a show." He certainly didn’t enjoy it when critics belittled his piano playing, but he began to say that he cried all the way to the bank until he finally said, "I don’t cry all the way to the bank anymore. I bought the bank."
Television helped him buy it. In the 1950s, he had his own wildly popular show, and he would make guest appearances on other stars’ programs. These shows contributed to his album sales, including six gold records. They also inspired parodies, some of them affectionate. His success also brought him some unwanted attention: an English reviewer all but openly called him gay after a 1956 performance. Liberace sued the newspaper for libel, testified that he was not gay, and won the trial. Other publications claimed that he was gay, but he always denied it.
His career wasn’t always wildly successful—he never achieved the movie popularity he hoped for, and he had some ups and downs. But he survived. As late as the late 1970s, when he was sixty, CBS filmed his show at the Las Vegas Hilton and aired them as specials.
Indeed, Las Vegas was his spiritual and, for some years, actual home. He first appeared here in 1944 at the Hotel Last Frontier, which you can read more about the history of here. There, supposedly, one day an unassuming man wandered into a rehearsal and Liberace directed him to have a spotlight moved; his assistant for the moment turned out to be Howard Hughes. For more on the history of the Last Frontier, check out this episode of Nevada Yesterdays.
Liberace didn’t quite achieve Hughes’s financial status. But in 1955, he set a new standard: the Riviera paid him 50 thousand dollars a week to open the resort. Early the next year, he was filmed playing the guitar of a young singer playing down the Strip from him … Elvis Presley, who sat at Liberace’s piano. Later, Liberace would earn more than a quarter of a million a week playing the Hilton, where Elvis later starred. There was another connection: when the Hilton opened in 1969 as the International, the first showroom star was Barbra Streisand, whose career Liberace boosted by hiring her as his opening act. But there’s more to the story of Liberace and his ties to Las Vegas.
"I don’t give concerts. I put on a show."Liberace
Liberace headlined on the Las Vegas Strip for four decades—an incredible run that few have matched. As time went on, his shows grew more flamboyant. His costumes included not just rhinestones and sequins. He wore expensive and eye-popping jewelry, floor-length fur coats, capes, ostrich feathers—you name it. For the bicentennial, he introduced an outfit that included red, white, and blue sequined hot pants. He called himself a one-man Disneyland, and he was. As he once said of performing before the Queen of England, I didn’t come here not to be noticed.
But he did a lot more in, with, and for Las Vegas that deserves to be noticed, too.
Liberace actually lived in Las Vegas, although he owned several homes elsewhere. Actually, he owned several here—he bought three hours near the Strip and put them together. Not far away, on Tropicana Avenue, he owned the Liberace Plaza. It included several businesses, a couple of which were his own. One was the Tivoli Gardens restaurant, which reflected his interest in cooking. Liberace published several cookbooks and, in one of his homes in southern California, had multiple dining rooms.
Another was the Liberace Museum. His brother George and then George’s wife Dora ran it. It had multiple buildings and displayed multiple artifacts. Liberace displayed his cars, pianos, costumes, and jewelry. The museum charged admission, and the profits went toward the Liberace Foundation, which supported the performing and creative arts. The Liberace Foundation provided scholarships to undergraduate and graduate students, continuing his legacy for many years.
Unfortunately, the museum closed in 2010. You can hear our original coverage of the Liberace Museum closure on this episode of State of Nevada. It was hard hit by the Great Recession, and its location wasn’t all that convenient to tourists. The collection is still being held, and parts of it have been displayed in a few different locations, including The Cosmopolitan.
Liberace had another legacy that he attempted to avoid. The truth is that he was gay. Like other prominent figures in that era, he apparently felt that he could not be public about that and maintain his stardom. He eventually was the subject of various stories and faced a lawsuit from one of his longtime lovers, Scott Thorsen. HBO dramatized their relationship in a film a few years ago.
And Liberace was one of the first well-known figures to die of complications related to AIDS, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. He was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1985 and died a year and a half later. He did have emphysema and heart disease—he was a longtime chain smoker. But an autopsy showed he died of pneumonia that resulted from complications from AIDS.
After his death, he has remained a pop culture icon, showing up in video games, movies, animated programs … and his foundation and his collection have done much to keep his name alive. So does the fact that, in Las Vegas, he was and always will be … Mr. Showmanship.
For more on Liberace's Las Vegas legacy, check out the story Rhinestone Comeback in Desert Companion magazine.
