–the 6TH IN a 12-part series

A cherub-faced young man strolled down Fremont Street, offering passersby a broad grin and a handbill that introduced him. “Have you heard Liberace?” he would ask. If they had not, Walter Liberace would first give the correct pronunciation of his name, “It is libb-er-AH-chee,” he would say, and then he’d ask them to come to his show at the Last Frontier Hotel. It was 1944, and the young pianist was making his Vegas debut. Sin City would become the entertainer’s home, one of many around the country but more important, it would become the place he would develop his spectacular stage persona. Liberace would pack Las Vegas showrooms for the rest of his life, and after his death, his collection of antiques, custom cars and elaborate costumes would fill a museum that became one of the city’s more popular tourist attractions.

Wladziu Valentino Liberace was born May 16, 1919. Liberace was known as “Lee” to his friends and “Walter” to his family. His mother, Frances Zuchowska of Polish descent, gave birth to little Walter in West Allis, Wisconsin, a Milwaukee suburb. His father was Salvatore (Sam) Liberace, an immigrant from Formia, Italy. Walter Liberace had a twin brother who died at birth. The future virtuoso was born with a caul, which is a thin, filmy membrane that covers a newborn’s head and face immediately after birth. In his family, as in many societies, this was taken as a sign of genius and an exceptional future. Liberace’s father was a musician who played the French horn in bands and provided background music for silent movies, but sometimes when jobs as a musician were scarce, he had to seek employment as a factory worker or a laborer. While his father encouraged the arts in the family and required his children to learn music, Walter’s mother was not musical and thought music lessons and a record player to be luxuries they couldn’t afford. Their mixed views caused a lot of angry family disputes. Liberace later stated, “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.”

Sam’s efforts were not in vain however, Walter was able to pick out tunes at the age of four. His father took the children to concerts to further expose them to music. Sam Liberace was a taskmaster demanding high standards from his children in practice and performance. Walter Liberace’s prodigious talent was in evidence early. He memorized difficult pieces by age seven. He studied the technique of the famous Polish pianist and later family friend Ignaz Paderewski. At the age of eight he was able to meet Paderewski backstage at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee. “I was intoxicated by the joy I got from the great virtuoso’s playing. My dreams were filled with fantasies of following his footsteps… Inspired and fired with ambition, I began to practice with a fervor that made my previous interest in the piano look like neglect.”

In his early teens Walter suffered from a speech problem as well as the taunts from neighborhood children who mocked his avoidance of sports and his fondness for the piano and cooking. His difficulty in speaking drove him to take speech therapy, concentrating on giving his voice a smoother flow, eliminating the effect of listening to one parent who spoke with an Italian accent and another with a Polish accent. The result was a slow, deliberate style of speech.

The year 1929 marked the onset of the Great Depression and talking pictures. Mom worked in a cookie factory, brother George drove a grocery truck and gave piano lessons, sister Angelina worked as a secretary and nurse’s aide. And Walter played the piano for dance classes and washed dishes. Liberace still focused fiercely on his piano playing and blossomed under the instruction of music teacher Florence Kelly who guided his musical development for ten years. He gained experience playing popular music in theaters, on local radio, for clubs and for weddings. He played jazz with a school group called the “Mixers” in 1934, then other groups later. Liberace also performed in cabarets and strip clubs, and even though his parents did not approve, he was earning a tidy living during hard times. For a while he adopted the stage name “Walter Buster Keys.” He also showed an interest in draftsmanship, design, and painting, and he became a fastidious dresser and follower of fashion. By then, he was already showing the knack of turning his eccentricities into attention getting virtues and he grew more popular at school, though mostly as an object of comic relief.

“Except for music, there wasn’t much beauty in my childhood,” he later recalled. “We lived in one of those featureless bungalows in a featureless neighborhood. I hated shabbiness. I’d walk 27 blocks and pay 15 cents to sit in a new, clean movie house when I could have walked five blocks and paid 5 cents to sit in an old, dirty one.” Liberace excelled academically in high school and was active in extracurricular activities – excluding sports… he couldn’t stand to get dirty. One of the West Milwaukee High School’s traditions was “Character Day.” Every student was supposed to dress up as a famous character from history and Walter nearly always won. He appeared one year as Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, another as Yankee Doodle Dandy, and one year he came in full drag as Greta Garbo.

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, “Three Little Fishes,” which he played in the style of several different classical composers. His big break came in the same year with an audition for Dr. Frederick Stock of the Chicago Symphony. His audition was flawless, and he was invited to play at the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee. The twenty year-old played the Pabst on January 15, 1940, performing Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto under the baton of Hans Lange, for which he received strong reviews. In the meantime, he found a spot with the Jay Mills Orchestra, a popular dance group. When the band went on a radio show, and Walter was introduced, the manager of the Chicago Symphony heard it, and complained to Stock. “I don’t care if he played on a street corner with the Salvation Army Band,” said the maestro. “He will play with us.” The symphony requested only one thing, that Walter Liberace change his name until after the concert. That was why, for the next six months, he performed as “Walter Buster Keys.” Sometime in 1942, perhaps emulating his idol, the great Paderewski, Walter Liberace dropped his first name altogether. His friends would thereafter simply call him, “Lee.”

Between 1942 and 1944, “Lee” Liberace moved away from straight classical performance and reinvented his act to one featuring “pop with a bit of classics” or as he also called it “classical music with the boring parts left out.” Liberace was moved by the film A Song to Remember, about the life of Polish composer Frederic Chopin. He was especially impressed by the elegant candelabrum atop the piano whenever Chopin played. He decided to borrow the image. In the early 1940’s, he struggled in New York City, but by the mid and late 1940’s, he was performing in nightclubs in major cities around the United States, largely abandoning the classical concertgoer. He changed from classical pianist to showman, whimsically mixing serious with light fare, e.g., Chopin with “Home on the Range.” For a while, he played piano along with a phonograph record player on stage. The gimmick helped gain him attention. He also added interaction with the audience, taking requests, talking with the patrons, cracking jokes, giving lessons to chosen audience members and 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 from the reality of the difficult competition in the classical piano world.

In 1943, Liberace appeared in a couple of Soundies, the 1940’s precursor to music videos. He reprised two flashy numbers from his nightclub act, 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.

While performing at the Mount Royal Hotel in Montreal in 1944, Liberace received a call from Maxine Lewis, the entertainment director at the Last Frontier Hotel. She asked him if he would be interested in playing Las Vegas. He said he would. She asked how much he was currently making. “Seven hundred and fifty a week,” he lied. His salary was actually $350, but Lewis agreed to pay the $750. Liberace sized up his opening night audience and decided to delete several of the classical pieces, concentrating on boogie-woogie and popular tunes. The audience went wild. Maxine Lewis called him to her office, where she tore up the $750-per-week contract and gave him a new one for $1,500. Later, he would sign a ten-year contract with the hotel at an even higher salary.

Las Vegas became Liberace’s principal performance venue. He was playing at the best clubs, finally appearing at the celebrated Persian Room, with Variety proclaiming, “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 box office.” The Chicago Times was similarly impressed: “He made like Chopin one minute and then turns on a Chico Marx bit the next.”

Liberace worked tirelessly to refine his act. He dressed in white tie and tails to be better seen in large halls. Besides clubs and occasional work as an accompanist and rehearsal pianist, Liberace also played for private parties, including those 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.” He had to have a piano to match his growing presence, so he bought a rare, oversized, gold-leafed Blüthner Grand, which he hyped up in his press kit as a “priceless piano.” Later, he would perform with an array of extravagant, custom-decorated pianos, some encrusted with sequins and mirrors. He performed for Hollywood stars such as Rosalind Russell, Clark Gable, Gloria Swanson, and Shirley Temple. Lee Liberace created a very successful publicity machine which helped rocket him to stardom. In 1950, he performed for music-loving President Harry S. Truman in the East Room of the White House. Liberace began to expand his act and made it more extravagant, with more costumes and a larger supporting cast. His large scale Las Vegas act became his hallmark, expanding his fanbase dramatically, and making him wealthy in short order.

His New York City performance at Madison Square Garden in 1954, which earned him a record $138,000 for one performance, was more successful than the great triumph his idol Paderewski had made years previously. By 1955, he was making $50,000 per week at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and had over 200 official fan clubs with a quarter of a million fan members. He was making over $1,000,000 per year from public appearances, and millions from television. Liberace was frequently covered by the major magazines and he became a pop culture superstar. Music critics were generally harsh in their assessment of his piano playing. One critic wrote after a Carnegie Hall concert, “Liberace’s music must be served with all the available tricks, as loud as possible, as soft as possible, and as sentimental as possible. It’s almost all showmanship topped by whipped cream and cherries. Even worse was his lack of reverence and fealty to the great composers. Liberace recreates, if that is the word, each composition in his own image. When it is too difficult, he simplifies it. When it is too simple, he complicates it. His sloppy technique included slackness of rhythms, wrong tempos, distorted phrasing, an excess of prettification and sentimentality, a failure to stick to what the composer has written.”

Even though many critics brutalized him and he became the brunt of jokes by several comedians, he became the highest paid entertainer in the world during the 1950’s and through the 1970’s. Liberace once stated, “I don’t give concerts, I put on a show.” Unlike the concerts of classical pianists which normally ended with applause and a retreat off stage, Liberace’s shows ended with the public invited onstage to touch his clothes, piano, jewelry, and hands. Kisses, handshakes, hugs, and caresses usually followed. A more thoughtful critic summed up his appeal towards the end of Liberace’s life: “Mr. Showmanship has another more potent, drawing power to his show: The warm and wonderful way he works his audience. Surprisingly enough, behind all the glitz, glitter, the corny false modesty and the shy smile, Liberace exudes a love that is returned to him a thousand-fold.”

In later years, Liberace never failed to recall one particular rehearsal. It was afternoon and he arrived for a rehearsal and found no one in the room to assist him except a tall, thin disheveled looking man standing next to a lighting board. Liberace began instructing him in what lights he wanted for his numbers. As he was delivering his orders, Maxine Lewis walked up to the man, who nodded to her. Then she turned to Liberace, “I didn’t realize you knew Howard Hughes.” His next encounter with a Las Vegas legend would be less embarrassing and a lot scarier. In 1947, Liberace made a return engagement at the Last Frontier and, as usual, the audience loved him. After the show, he milled in the casino with the crowd, chatting and signing autographs. Suddenly Liberace felt a hand grip his arm and a gruff voice say, “Hey kid, I want to talk to you.” Liberace protested and moved away. The man followed and Liberace asked a security guard, “Who is that creep over there, the one who looks like a gangster?” “He is a gangster,” said the guard, “That’s Bugsy Siegel.” Liberace was terrified that he had offended a known killer and left to prepare for his second show. Later, he received word that Siegel wanted to see him in the lobby. Bugsy wasn’t angry. He was just trying to steal the Last Frontier’s headliner for his new hotel casino: The Flamingo. He offered to double Liberace’s salary. “A classy act like you should be playing The Flamingo, not this cheesy dump,” said Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who then left Liberace to bite his nails over whether to accept the offer and insult his current benefactor or refuse and risk a very abrupt end to his career. The problem was solved, when a short while later, Siegel was shot dead in his girlfriend’s Beverly Hills, California home.

In contrast to his flamboyant stage presence, Liberace was a conservative in his politics and faith, eschewing dissidents and rebels. He believed fervently in capitalism but was also fascinated with royalty, ceremony, and luxury. He loved to hobnob with the “rich and famous,” acting as starstruck with presidents and kings as his fans behaved with him. Yet to his fans, he was still one of them, a Midwesterner who had earned his success through hard work… and who invited them to enjoy it with him.

George Liberace had become his road manager and Lee Liberace also had hired a press agent, Sam Honigsberg. Together, their efforts saw Liberace’s name recognition rise dramatically. He headlined some of the most prestigious hotels in some of the largest cities in the nation… plus Las Vegas. Liberace’s public persona, that of an effeminate mama’s boy, often brought caustic comments. At a concert in San Francisco, Liberace responded to his detractors with characteristic wit, “I don’t mind the bad reviews, but George cries all the way to the bank.” In an appearance on The Tonight Show some years later, Liberace re-ran the anecdote to Johnny Carson and finished it by saying, “I don’t cry all the way to the bank anymore… I bought the bank.”

In the next phase of his life, having earned sudden wealth, Liberace spent lavishly, incorporating materialism into his life and his act. He designed and built his first celebrity house in 1953, with a piano theme appearing throughout, including a piano shaped swimming pool. His dream home with its lavish furnishings, elaborate bath and antiques all throughout, added to his appeal. He leveraged his fame through hundreds of promotional tie-ins with banks, insurance companies, automobile companies, food companies…even morticians. Liberace was considered a perfect pitchman, given his folksy connection with his vast audience of housewives. The sponsors would obligingly send him complimentary products, including his white Cadillac limousine. He reciprocated enthusiastically, “If I am selling tuna fish, I believe in tuna fish.”

Throughout the 1970’s and early 1980’s Liberace’s live shows were major box office attractions in Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Hilton and Lake Tahoe where he would earn $300,000 a week. He maintained homes in both places. No other Las Vegas headliner made more than Liberace. Las Vegas became his legal residence, and he played there 16 weeks a year and four in Reno and Lake Tahoe. Eventually he decided to find a suitable Nevada home. He purchased a very unremarkable tract home. Then he bought the adjacent house and linked them together as one mansion. He then set about giving them the Liberace touch. A reproduction of Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel loomed over his bed; an indoor lagoon had a miniature version of the “dancing waters” show and everywhere were marble, mirrors and gold. He also decided that his collection of “Happy Happys,” which had grown to include several rare autos, works of art, and a desk once used by Czar Nicholas II, constituted the raw material for a museum. His next acquisition was a moderately priced shopping center on East Tropicana Avenue where he personally opened his museum on Easter Sunday in 1979. The museum was a significant Las Vegas tourist attraction, drawing well over 100,000 visitors a year.

In August of 1986, Liberace returned to Caesars Palace for a two-week engagement. It was his final Las Vegas show. His friends, staff and the Caesars stagehands, noticed that the normally vibrant and gregarious Liberace was quiet and spent most of his offstage time in his dressing room. His obviously deteriorating health prompted many inquiries from the media. Liberace laughed them off, explaining that he had gone on a “watermelon diet” that had made him ill. But he was recovering nicely, he added. He remained secluded in his Palm Springs home until he died Feb. 4, 1987, at age 67. The rumors that he was dying of AIDS began even before his passing, but were all dismissed by his staff and family. His Las Vegas physician, Dr. Elias Ghanem, would not comment. His Palm Springs physician, Dr. Ronald Daniels, filed a death certificate stating that Liberace had died of heart failure, brought on by a brain inflammation. However, before the pianist could be put to rest, his body was seized by the Riverside County Coroner Raymond Carrillo and autopsied. Carrillo announced that Liberace had indeed been carrying the HIV virus. Liberace was buried in a six foot tall tomb at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills. The tomb stands between a pair of flowering pear trees trimmed to resemble candelabras.

To Vegas newbies, the name Liberace may mean nothing. The Liberace Museum closed its doors on Sunday, Oct. 17, 2010 due to a faltering Las Vegas economy. For some he may become a faded memory, while others will fail to pronounce his name correctly. Liberace, if not remembered as a great artist, was at best an astute businessman and he knew this of himself. Even though he, like his museum, has left us – his legacy lives on through the Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts. He set it up to help talented students pursue careers in the performing and creative arts through scholarship assistance and artistic exposure. The foundation can be reached at Liberace.org. SLV

The Liberace Museum was designed as opulently as the performer’s stage show, with a neon piano on top of cascading piano keys and sheet music that wrapped around the building. Sadly, the museum with all of the showman’s legacy of Lido de Paris-styled costumes and his pink Rolls Royce closed in 2010, due to the downturned economy.

The Men Who Made Las Vegas is a twelve-part series by Byron Craft, chronicling the growth of Sin City and the men who made it possible.

Issue 61 featuring: Julia Bond, Alexis Ford & Rebecca Miller