Maybe it’s about Thorson’s lies. Remember, this (Soberburgh, Damon) is the duo who brought us the highly entertaining tale of another master liar in The Informant. I doubt it’ll end up being a straightforward biopic.
Straight woman here, and I’d like to see it. I can’t though, because it’s been relegated to fucking HBO. I want to see it in the theater, dammit.
I’ll watch it if it gets good reviews. I like well made movies and am pretty sure it won’t turn me gay; if the Boy Scouts didn’t, nothing will.
There are actual humans, who aren’t affiliated with his trust, that still deny Liberace was gay?
He was a fucking genius; who cares?
Most people in Spain don’t even know the name “Liberace”, much less who it was, but depending on how it’s treated it’s the kind of campy material that gets lines around the block here.
Liberace couldn’t have been gay. After all, in the 1950s he testified in a libel suit in a British court that he never had engaged in a homosexual act…and won. He wouldn’t lie about such a thing, would he?
The producers have every right to make this film butI plan on missing it like I have with the biopics starring Daddy Spy (Victor Barber) and Garak
(Andrew Robinson).
My parents had front row tickets to see Liberace perform way back in the day. As she tells it "he came out on stage with a flourish wearing a sparkling suit and a stole with those large pom poms on the end. He approached my dad and offered up the pom poms and said “would you like to hold my balls?” My mom says she doesn’t remember any of the concert after that because she couldn’t stop laughing.
That said, Downton Abbey had 8.2 million people tune in for the season 3 finale. In terms of relatability, what’s more so? A love story set in the 50s/60s/70s or the slow decline of the aristocracy in post-Edwardian era Britain? It seems that a good story is just that: a good story.
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That said, Downton Abbey had 8.2 million people tune in for the season 3 finale. In terms of relatability, what’s more so? A love story set in the 50s/60s/70s or the slow decline of the aristocracy in post-Edwardian era Britain? It seems that a good story is just that: a good story.
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Actually, the Earl and the pretty-boy footman could rock a Liberace & Scott Thorson movie.
It was, but he always claimed to be straight-haired.
I feel the need to link to this video of Liberace from the 40s playing “The 12th Street Rag”, and then playing it again in double time. Dude was insanely talented. And look at those young women just swoon over him with their shameful shoulder wagging.
Look, will you stop saying that Liberace was gay!!! In the case of Liberace v Daily Mirror Newspapers Ltd a jury held he had been defamed by being implicated as homosexual. Yes that’s right the Queen’s Bench Division held that…wait “Queens”? Never mind.
Ah, the pre-liberation golden age of the loveable gay guy: Liberace, Paul Lynde, Truman Capote. Now all we’ve got is a bunch of well-adjusted regular joes. Where’s the entertainment value in that? Where’s the self-congratulatory appeal of straights saying “I can prove I don’t hate gays: they’re my favorite guests on Johnny Carson?”
Surprised a lot of people in the Death Pool too.
If a successful flick can be made of an old Limey overcoming a speech impediment, anything’s possible 
You could also say they were your favorite guests on Merv Griffin if you wanted to see Merv get really quiet really quickly.
Outside of Thorson (and even he has loads of good things to say as well as the bad), you almost never hear anything bad about Liberace. He was apparently very approachable to his fans, insanely generous*, a brilliant businessman and promoter**,and all around super-nice guy, though very private about his lovelife (everybody knew he was gay, but it was rarely mentioned even in private and other than Thorson they rarely met his boys).
*Anecdote: I knew an elderly she-columnist for the Montgomery Advertiser who gave a glowing review to a concert Liberace gave in Montgomery, AL, ca. 1960. He so loved the review that not only did he send her a piano shaped ashtray as a gift, but every year on the anniversary of the review she received a card and some small gift (often piano shaped costume jewelry- nothing particularly valuable but a sweet keepsake). She saved it all of course, and while I’m sure an assitant handled the purchasing and mailing of the gift Liberace did sign the card (or at least it looked like his signature). The gifts stopped coming when he died. I always wondered how many people there were who received similar annual gifts, and whether his assistant bought piano shaped nic-nacs in bulk.
**I’ve mentioned before but will here again the source of part of his fortune: Liberace loved to mention that he owned- depending on the particular time- a dozen or fourteen or twenty or however many palatial homes: NYC, Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, several in Vegas, Hawaii, etc.. He really did, but other than a penthouse in L.A. and his Palm Springs house (“The Cloisters”, a former motel) the rest were mostly rental properties and catered to a niche market of A-list entertainers who were going to be in a city for a few weeks or a few months and needed palatial digs while they were there. Elvis, Robert Goulet, Andy Griffith and other entertainers who played the big rooms in Vegas all rented from him for the duration of their gig, and which place he stayed at in Vegas depended on what was available.
His housekeeper, Gladys Luckie, who he called his “second mother” or his “black mother” recently died at the age of 101. As Elvis (who Liberace helped to introduce to on-stage bling) did with his favorite cook and housekeeper, Liberace bought her a house and left her a generous pension.
I have no idea if this will be a good or bad film, but the subject material is certainly interesting and relevant.
Liberace was a wildly successful, wealthy and popular performer who was also flamboyantly Gay but in the closet. People forget that in those “old days”, homosexuality was a crime and still considered a mental illness. Imagine growing up in a society like that, and being as famous as Liberace. Sure, the grandmothers loved him and at least pretended they didn’t know he was Gay - but who knows, maybe some of them did know and didn’t give a damn.
As a historical footnote, I think a good film about this subject will show the behind-the-curtain agony of someone that famous who is forced to keep his private sexual life shrouded in secrecy. What happens when you spend your life in fear? What happens when you are always subject to blackmail and threats? For that matter, there are still many countries and places where being outed as Gay can lead to imprisonment or/or the death penalty.
I am sure a lot of the film will be high camp - it is about Liberace after all - but my guess is the film will also show how difficult and brave it was of Liberace to be who he was on stage - walking that fine line between being honest about himself in his performances, but very careful to hide the fact off stage. What a horrible way to have to live your life.
I thought the story was more about the fact he was making his boyfriend get plastic surgery to look like him than it was about the secret gay life he had.
??
I dimly remember an earlier bio of Liberace-made in the 1990’s? Anyway, the only thing I remember was that Scott showed up on stage (Las Vegas) driving Liberace’s rhinestone-studded limo-and Thorson’s chauffeur uniform was also rhinestone studded. However, Thorson was so zonked out on valiums that he crashed the car-that was funny!
Are you suggesting that Her Majesty is a queen? That would explain a lot, I suppose.
No no, ralph was pointing out that his audience was middle-aged then. Now his fans are largely dead and people currently middle-aged were babies when he was popular.
I know YOU’RE kidding, but the guy had millions of fans like my grandmother, who had absolutely no idea why such a wonderful man never found the right girl.