Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace by Scott Thorson, Alex Thorleifson Read Free Book Online

vernacular, he’d “tricked around” with a series of lovers, many of them struggling performers too. After ten years on the circuit, he was familiar with gay hangouts in every city where he appeared—and he had frequented them all.
    Overnight fame altered his freedom of movement. The “matinee idol” didn’t dare risk being discovered in a gay bar or bathhouse. Lee felt absolutely certain that the vast majority of his fans—middle-aged woman, working-class families—would drop him in a minute if they learned who and what he really was. He couldn’t risk being found out, having his homosexuality become public knowledge.
    Fortunately he’d developed widespread contacts in the gay community over the years as well as building a personal staff, many of whom were gay men. From the late fifties on, Lee would turn to these men when he needed companionship or an evening’s recreation. Lee met his gay friends or had assignations with potential lovers in his North Hollywood apartment, a place whose existence his mother never suspected. Although he tried to keep his homosexuality completely hidden from her, other members of the family told me he used the apartment a lot. No one knows if Frances guessed why Lee spent so much time away from home.
    By the time Frances had entrenched herself in the Sherman Oaks house, the rest of the family had moved to California too. Lee’s enormous success was the catalyst that reunited them. Other family members recall this as the happiest period of their lives. George, a talented violinist in his own right, was an intrinsic part of Lee’s act in those days. On the whole, the Liberaces had never done better. Their prospects seemed excellent. But it didn’t take long for all the old jealousies to resurface.
    According to Lee, George took advantage of Lee’s hard-won fame. Angie, although married and raising a family, joined the show as well. On the road, he remembered being under Angie’s and George’s watchful eyes and at home he had Frances to contend with. He felt he’d sacrificed his personal happiness, his need for a private life, for his family. Inevitably, Lee rebelled. Regardless of the publicized image of saccharine familial bdevotion, Lee said he wasn’t close to any of them. He resented their constant presence, their interference in his life, and he resented his mother most of all. From the “white heat” years until her death in 198o, he would never feel free of his obligation to her.
    Lee was the kind of person who didn’t like to dwell on the negative aspects of any situation. Back in the 1950s, his troubling family relationships were easily overshadowed by his booming career. Every entertainer who has given numerous interviews comes to dread being asked the same questions over and over. There was, however, one question Lee never tired of answering. If reporters didn’t ask, “How did the outrageous costuming start?” he prompted them.
    Liberace’s popularity on television led to a flood of offers asking him to do concerts all over the country. One of the most exciting, from Lee’s point of view, was an opportunity to give his first concert at the Hollywood Bowl. For those who have never been there, and that included Lee himself back in 1952, the Bowl is a breathtakingly beautiful outdoor amphitheater that seats twenty thousand people. Before the concert date Lee drove out Hollywood Boulevard and up Highland to look the place over. He arrived, paced the stage, feeling an uncharacteristic anticipatory stage fright, and then he walked to the back of the huge amphitheater. It was a long climb to the top.
    “From that distance,” Lee told me, “the stage looked like a toy. I pictured myself playing a black Baldwin concert grand, surrounded by a symphony orchestra all dressed in black. And I knew I’d fade into the woodwork if I wore black too.” Lee made up his mind to break with tradition. Instead of the conventional black tuxedo, he planned to wear a set of