Liberace really was gay?

Holy crap, I swear that I did not know.

I never really gave it any thought but I always believed that it was a big in-joke. I thought that the guy had a lispy voice and a flamboyant style and that once he became famous and those qualities became his signature, that he played them up for all that they were worth.

Sheesh, all this time I figured that he was probably very straight-laced in his personal life and that the big flaming side-show aspect was a sort of self-aware mocking of stereotypes.

And the Pope’s Catholic, in case you’re keeping score.

Ok, Ok… but do bears still shit in the woods?

The odd thing is that I know (and knew) that Liberace is gay. But have no idea who Liberace is.

Must be a bit of a let down for him to have his legacy amount to “I don’t know anything else, but he was one GAY dude.”

Well, he HAS been embroiled in the odd legal battle. In 1982, his chauffeur and bodyguard, Scott Thorson, filed a $113mil palimony suit. The suit was later “mostly” thrown out of court. The court stated that contracts for sex were not enforceable, though Thorson could sue for assault and battery, breach of a cash settlement agreement, loss of property, and infliction of emotional distress. Thorson would collect $95,000.[sup]1[/sup]

Oddly enough, Liberace once successfully sued a British tabloid for libel for saying that he was a homosexual. He settled for $24,000.

After he died, it was revealed that he was gay. It was an “open secret” among the entertainment field. The London Daily Mirror later asked for a refund of the $24,000 settlement.[sup]2[/sup]

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Liberace is so gay, that he turned straight again. I still don’t want to claim him for my side.

Think of Lee as a drag queen in men’s clothes. :smack: :smack:

Honestly, I bet this would tickle him to no end.

I have, but not often.

Well, sort of…

I saw a T-shirt of Liberace the other day with the slogan “The King of Bling Bling”. I thought it was fitting.

My mother still will not accept he was gay. He was just “a fussy old bachelor who loved his mama… what’s wrong with that?”

According to one biography I read, until middle age he was probably either a virgin or had sexual encounters (and very few of them) with women only until. He began making up for lost time when his mother (who lived with him) became senile and infirm and he spent more time on the road after reinventing himself (the bling bling was a fairly late development- he was a lot more subtley flamboyant for the first half of his career, the chinchilla capes and diamond buttons not coming until middle age [an anachronism that bothered me in A Prayer for Owen Meany, but I digress]). By his fifties he was something of a horndog surrounded by rentboys and was unfaithful to Scott Thorson and his other houseboys. Unfortunately his great sexual awakening coincided nicely with the advent of AIDS.

According to the same source and to Thorson (warning: following is more information than anybody possibly needs on the intimate Liberace), he was primarily if not exclusively a top. He also kept secret from his audience the fact that he was bald (he had MPB and kept his head shaved so that his very expensive toupees would fit well, and then he wore hairpieces on top of the toupee so that he looked like a guy with hair who wore hairpieces) or that he was a smoker (diamond studded case, of course) or that he occasionally snorted coke.

By all accounts he was an incredibly nice and generous person. It’s amazing that his museum remains, almost 20 years after his death, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Nevada (and the proceeds still fund scholarships).

One of the more bizarre moments of his dying was Pat Boone’s wife’s arrest for trying to scale his fence to pray by his bedside (under the Sistine Chapel ceiling).

I think Liberace was that guy Bugs Bunny parodied a few times. Something about “That’s my brother George. George, take this candelabra over to mother.”

Yes. I’m old enough to remember him only for the capes and “I wish my brother George were here.”

Oops sorry. I wanted to add that I also remember him playing on TV and getting a big laugh towards the end by playing “Chopsticks,” but in his own distinctive style. My mother loved it.
I said, “But you won’t let me play chopsticks.”
“When you play it like that, you can play ‘Chopsticks.’”
“But I have to practice it if I want to play it that well, right?”

Apparently not.

Wait. Liberace was bald?

This is secondhand, but (allegedly) Roy Clark had him on as a guest, and Clark dressed up in sequins and shimmery stuff and came out and acted all “aw shucks” and explained that he was only doing this to make his guest feel comfortable, and then introduced Liberace.

Who came on-state in cowboy duds, and bearing a Coleman lantern instead of a candelabra.
The dude went through some interesting times. I agree from what I’ve read that he had no clue that he was gay for a long long time, and only tried it out rather late in life.

And he played the piano significantly better than he’s given credit for nowadays. (Lots of bad taste though)

Is it true that Liberace considered giving up the piano so that he could fiddle with his brother?

Old joke dad used to tell.

Liberace was going to run away with one of my (by marriage) great aunts. Or so she believed and frequently told my grandmother. The sad irony of that has been kept in family lore for decades… It’s nice that they have medication to treat delusions now.

Should you ever come to Las Vegas, be sure to hit The Liberace Museum for enlightenment. Not far from the museum is the house he owned and it can be rented for private parties with a real Liberace look-alike (hey, it is Vegas) playing the piano for entertainment.

Liberace Gay? Geez, next you are going to tell me Tom Cruise is both a Scientologist and [the rest of this sentence was deleted by attorneys representing Mr. Cruise and DMark has yet to post bail to respond to charges filed against him regarding defamation of character.]

No it’s not true. It is true that the Scott Thorson case was dismissed as a simple case of Pianist Envy, however.