Władziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987) 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.
Liberace became popular with general audiences through performances that included showmanship and elaborate costumes and choreography. Critical reception was mixed, with some believing his playing was flashy but lacked depth.
In 1959 Liberace successfully sued the Daily Mirror for libel after they published an article implying he was homosexual (which was criminalized at the time). Later, in 1982, he was sued by his lover and chauffeur, Scott Thorson, for palimony. He continued to deny he was homosexual, and died of AIDS-related cytomegalovirus pneumonia in 1987.
Władziu Valentino Liberace (known as Lee to his friends and Walter to family) was born on May 16, 1919, in West Allis, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. His grandfather Valentino Liberace (1836–1909) was a casket maker from Formia in Southern Italy, where his father, musician Salvatore ("Sam") Liberace (1885–1977), was born. His mother, Frances Zuchowski (1891–1980), 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 (who was a violinist), a sister Angelina, and younger brother Rudy (Rudolph Valentino Liberace, named after the actor due to his mother's interest in show business).
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, despite having been a concert pianist before her marriage, 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 age 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 age 7, he was capable of memorizing difficult pieces. He studied the technique of Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Aged 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, and 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 disapproved, 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 a 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.
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-1940s, he was performing in nightclubs 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, a gimmick that 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, the 1940s precursor to music videos. 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 (1945). 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: "[Liberace] used the same sets and took credit for his staring into the camera and breaking that wall. He felt like Liberace stole his soul."