A Vegas Piano Man: Walter Liberace (1919-1987) | America 250

This excerpt from "The First 100: Portraits of the Men and Women Who Shaped Las Vegas" is presented with permission from the publisher. Copies of the book are available for purchase at LasVegasAdvisor.com.

By K.J. Evans

As he strolled down Fremont Street, the cherub-faced young man with the dark, wavy hair offered passersby a broad grin, his hand and a handbill that introduced him.
"Have You Heard Liberace?" it asked. If they hadn't, Walter Liberace would first correct their pronunciation of his name, "It's Liber-AH-chee," then ask them to come to his show at the Last Frontier resort.

It was November 1944, and the young pianist was making his Las Vegas debut. The 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. 

Wladziu Valentino Liberace was born in 1919. 

His father, an Italian immigrant who played French horn in orchestras providing background music for silent movies, required his children to learn music. Walter was capable of picking out tunes at age 4. By his preteen years, he was playing piano for dance classes.

"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."

He excelled academically at West Milwaukee High School, and was active in extracurricular activities, excluding sports. (He couldn't stand to get dirty.) One of the 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 Haille Selassie of Ethiopia, another as Yankee Doodle Dandy. One year, he came in full drag as Greta Garbo.

His big break came in 1939 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.

Sometime in 1942, perhaps emulating his idol, the great Polish pianist Paderewski, Walter Liberace dropped his first name altogether. His friends would thereafter simply call him "Lee." His trademark candelabrum was borrowed from the film ''A Song to Remember," in which Polish composer Frederic Chopin was shown with one on his piano. 

In 1944, while performing at the Mount Royal Hotel in Montreal, Liberace received a phone call from Maxine Lewis, entertainment director at the Last Frontier. She asked him if he would be interested in playing Las Vegas. He would. She asked how much he was currently making. 

"Seven hundred and fifty a week," he lied. His salary was $350, but Lewis agreed to $750 per week. 

Liberace sized up his first-night audience, and decided to delete several of the classical pieces, concentrating on boogie-woogie and popular tunes. The audience went wild, and 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 10-year contract with the hotel at an even higher salary.

Liberace sized up his first-night audience, 

and decided to delete several of the classical pieces, 

concentrating on boogie-woogie and popular tunes. 

The audience went wild.

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. As Liberace biographer Bob Thomas tells the story, 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. 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."

Terrified that he had offended a known killer, Liberace went to prepare for his second show. After, he received word that Siegel wanted to see him in the lobby. The Bug wasn't angry, just trying to steal the Last Frontier's headliner for his new Flamingo Hotel. He offered to double Liberace's $2,000 per week salary.

“A classy act like you should be playing the Flamingo, not this cheesy dump," said Siegel, who then left Liberace to fret over whether to accept the offer and insult his current benefactor, or refuse and risk a very abrupt end to his career. The problem solved itself a few months later when Siegel was shot dead in his girlfriend's Beverly Hills, Calif., home.

In the fall of 1956, Liberace toured Great Britain. Adoring crowds of women swarmed him at every stop, and groups of male homophobes screamed things like "queer go home” and "send the fairy back to the States."

A scribe for the tabloid Daily Mirror, William Connor, writing under the name "Cassandra," wrote perhaps one of the nastiest reviews ever suffered by Liberace, called him "the biggest sentimental vomit of all time," and went on to describe him as "this deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scene impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love."

It was that crack about "fruit-flavored" that prompted Liberace to sue the paper for libel, and caused him to bluster, "If … my appearances didn't depend on my hands, I would knock Cassandra's teeth down his throat. And I ain't kidding." 

The British High Court ruled in Liberace's favor, and a jury later awarded him $22,400 in damages. 

Liberace was perhaps the most ardent collector of art, antiques and curios since William Randolph Hearst. Everywhere he went, he sought out antique stores, junk shops and garage sales. He sought out and bought rare pianos, one owned by Frederic Chopin, another by George Gershwin. Soon, like Hearst, he had filled warehouses to the ceiling with the objects he called his "Happy Happys." 

However, unlike Hearst, he wanted to display his goodies — all of them. So he bought houses, and incorporated his collections into their startlingly elaborate interior schemes. As his fortune grew, so did the number of customized houses he owned. He explained that while his profession required him to travel, he preferred to own homes in the cities where he worked most. In his life, he owned homes in Sherman Oaks, Hollywood Hills, Palm Springs, Malibu, Los Angeles, Lake Tahoe, Lake Arrowhead, New York and several in Las Vegas. When he was forced to stay in a hotel, he often re-decorated it. 

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 ebullient 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.

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 Riverside County Coroner Raymond Carrillo and autopsied. Carrillo announced that Liberace had indeed been carrying the HIV virus. 

Liberace was buried in a 6-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 candelabra.

Portions of the article have been omitted for brevity and clarity. The views expressed and opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Vegas PBS.