Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace (6 page)

The fifties, like the decades leading up to them, were an intensely homophobic period. Muscle cars and macho men were the order of the day. Although Lee knew that many of Hollywood’s most famous and desirable men were gay or bisexual, none of them dared reveal the truth. Lee confessed to me that he began dating women to suppress the growing rumors about his own sexuality. If anyone dared to question his masculinity he needed to be able to flaunt pictures of his latest girlfriend. He had no trouble getting all the dates he wanted and he gloried in escorting well-known entertainers to parties, getting his picture taken with Susan Hayward, Gale Storm, Rosemary Clooney, Mae West, and Judy Garland. He later boasted of having close relationships with many of these women, but Mae West was the only one of his so-called lady friends I actually met. As they say in Texas, Mae was a
hoot!
She and Lee were an unpredictable twosome who enjoyed trying to outdo each other’s outrageousness. Mae was one of the few people in the world who had the courage to speak up to Lee—and he loved her for it.

The girl he almost married didn’t compare to Mae when it came to nerve. JoAnn Del Rio, a Las Vegas dancer, had good looks and a sweet personality. Undoubtedly the entire Liberace family heaved a sigh of relief as they watched her relationship with Lee progress. For a while, it must have seemed as if Lee would finally settle down to a “normal” life and have a family. Lee and JoAnn became engaged in 1953 and even set a date for a wedding—a year away. From all reports, Lee liked JoAnn a lot, a first for him when it came to women. He courted her with gifts of flowers and perfume, gifts that foreshadowed the truly extravagant presents he would later give his male lovers.

When it came to JoAnn, the problem was not that he didn’t like her; it was that he still loved men. After Lee’s death, JoAnn’s father was reported to have claimed responsibility for ending the engagement because he knew Lee was gay. But Lee told me he never planned to walk down the aisle, with JoAnn or anyone else. His engagement served to squelch the rumors about his sexuality—period!

Many homosexual men enjoy relationships with women. There are a few who even come to love them, as friends or as temporary sexual partners. Not Lee! He had to forcibly control his dislike and distrust of most of the women he dated. He complained that all of them were too demanding, an opinion of females that he’d formed in childhood. When I asked if he’d ever had sexual relations with a woman he told me he’d had a couple of experiences, but complained that the way women smelled revolted him. While dating JoAnn publicly, he confessed that he continued to have secret dates with young men. By the end of 1955, JoAnn Del Rio was just a footnote to Liberace’s history.

A man in Lee’s position—famous, wealthy, a star—never lacks for companionship. When he felt lonely he had only to ask one of the gay members of his staff to get him a companion and one would soon be delivered to his doorstep. The older Lee got, the more younger men appealed to him. In that regard, he was a Dracula who never wearied of the taste and touch of youth. By his fifties he preferred dating boys in their teens.

There have been rumors that Lee had an affair with Rock Hudson early in their careers. But Rock wasn’t any more Lee’s type than Lee was Rock’s. The supposed affair never happened. However, the books I’ve read about Hudson’s life reveal startling parallels to Lee’s. Both men had been abandoned by their fathers and dominated by their mothers. As adults the two of them devoted a great deal of time and energy to creating a fictional personal history for public consumption. Neither man could deal with anything distasteful—an argument, the illness of a parent, getting rid of a lover—and both used others to do their dirty work.

Most important, they both had giant egos; they were stars and the rest of the world (friends, lovers, family) damn well better not forget it. That alone would have negated any possibility of those two having a relationship. Men like that cannot tolerate equals. Had Lee and Rock actually met, I think they would have disliked each other on sight. They were much too much alike to fulfill each other’s needs and too egocentric to want to try. Such an encounter would have been more the clash of rutting stags than the true meeting of minds. In the years we were together, Lee never mentioned knowing Rock. Although hundreds of celebrities came to Lee’s shows, Rock never made an appearance. The two men moved in completely different circles, socially and professionally.

Lee’s closest associates were gay men who worked for him. When Lee needed companionship or a sexual encounter he called men he knew and trusted. In turn they’d call a friend, or a friend of a friend, until they found someone who could deliver the kind of kid that appealed to Lee. Then a meeting would be arranged. For Lee, it was as easy as snapping his fingers, and almost as risk free.

The growing sexual permissiveness of the late fifties and sixties had a profound effect on the gay community. Promiscuity, which had been somewhat suppressed, became socially acceptable. Having multiple partners was both pleasurable and chic. Bathhouses, pickup bars, and clubs that existed for the sole purpose of arranging sexual encounters between strangers all thrived in that “anything goes” atmosphere. Lee, who had an insatiable sex drive, took full advantage of the developing situation. He admitted to spending more time thinking about sex during those years than he spent thinking about his act. And he preferred to have a
variety
act—onstage and behind closed doors.

The homosexual community was ideally structured to satisfy all his desires. Gays make up one of the largest subcultures in the United States and, because the majority were “in the closet” then, each gay man had his own network to rely on. Lee never used male prostitutes. He was an intensely romantic man who preferred the thrill of the chase rather than the cold reality of a cash transaction. Young men eager to make a connection with a big show-business personality usually jumped at the chance for a date with him. He used his success, his fame as foreplay. If they pleased him he would keep them around for a while—a week, a month, a year or two. If not, he would send them on their way with a gift. In the gay community money seldom changes hands for services rendered. It’s more a matter of exchanging favors. Lee could be very generous to friends who granted him favors.

During those first years of fame, he became even more skilled at leading a double life. The matinee idol dated glamorous women and then headed for his Hollywood apartment to meet a homosexual lover. Onstage he smiled sweetly and flirted with his fans. In private he built an enormous and expensive collection of pornography that he shared at all-male parties. Although the family never discussed Lee’s sexual identity, they had to know he was gay. His mother may have known too. But she undoubtedly thought there was nothing wrong with her son that the right woman couldn’t cure.

Frances herself played an unwitting role in Lee’s carefully crafted public image. She often attended his performances and he proudly introduced her as “My mother, Mrs. Liberace,” thereby negating Alexander Casadonte’s existence. Lee’s publicity people churned out endless stories about the
first
lady in his life, his mother. But having a mother like Frances could be difficult.

Touring abroad gave him an occasional break from his problems. He said he felt safer, more free to be himself in countries where his name was not yet a household word. In the mid-fifties he was invited to play the famed London Palladium and he jumped at the offer. The Palladium is to stage acts what Nirvana is to Buddhists. To be asked to perform there signaled Lee’s arrival as a star of international magnitude. He would have other, greater thrills, but that first show at the Palladium ranked right up there with his first appearance in the Hollywood Bowl. London, he said, sounded like heaven. Before he returned to the States it was to feel more like hell.

Lee’s enthusiastic British audiences were very much like the ones he attracted in the States—mostly middle-aged, working-class housewives. He enjoyed a huge box-office success in Britain, but the critics united in attacking him. One columnist for the
London Daily Press
launched an all-out war, describing Lee as a “deadly, sniggering, snuggling, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love.” “Fruit,” of course, was the colloquial expression for homosexual.

For the first time in his career Lee was publicly branded as gay and it devastated him. He imagined himself stripped of his fame, success, wealth, and power—all the things he’d worked so hard to achieve. Seeing the
London Press
article made him feel naked in front of the world. His entire career had been jeopardized. Lee burned with impotent rage for days. In Vegas, where he had connections, he’d have known exactly how to handle the situation. He’d have used his influence, his power, or his dangerous friends. But in London he felt helpless. So he struck back in the only way he could. He sued.

Lee didn’t care what the lawsuit cost in time, effort, or money. Money was surely no obstacle to the highest paid performer in the world. In the past he’d used his wealth to attract friendship and love. In England he used it as a tool to buy vindication and revenge. Lee made up his mind to
prove,
for all time, that he wasn’t gay, even if it meant bringing another woman into his life. This time she would be far better known than JoAnn Del Rio.

Sonja Henie had been the world’s premiere figure skater in the 1920s and thirties. She’d parlayed ten world championships and three Olympic gold medals into an enormously successful show-business career. Blonde, blue-eyed, she had an attractive figure and, more important, a celebrity name. Sonja was seven years older than Lee and her fame was waning when they met. I think mutual need drew them to each other. Together, they generated more publicity than either one could separately. The aging skater merited a lot of space in movie magazines and tabloids when she became the woman Liberace spent his evenings with. Lee used his romance with Sonja as proof of his sexual preference.

Lee’s acquaintances describe Sonja as a motherly type; but Lee told me they had an affair. If he was being honest—and with Lee you could never be sure—it would be his last relationship with a woman. After the London court case came to an end Lee never again felt the need to camouflage his true nature by dating ladies. In 1959 Lee was completely vindicated and his name cleared. On June 9, 1959, the
New York Daily News
ran an article under the headline I’M NO HOMO, SAYS SUING LIBERACE. Before the year ended Lee was completely vindicated; his name and reputation were freed of any blemish.

Lee’s lawyers had managed a miracle. They’d actually convinced a judge and jury that black was white. Lee was awarded a $22,500 settlement. He gave every penny of it to charity. Never mind how much he’d spent during the three-year legal action; Lee had been officially, in a court of law, cleared of any suspicion of homosexuality. He’d have gladly spent a fortune to achieve that goal. In 1987, after Lee’s death, there were reports that the
London Daily Press,
feeling they’d been had, was considering suing Lee’s estate to get that money back. From 1959 on Lee turned to the courts whenever he failed to get his way by other means. His lawyer soon found that handling Liberace’s considerable legal affairs provided a lucrative livelihood. Given Lee’s stubbornness, his power, and his money, he usually got what he wanted by simply wearing his opponents down. When Lee and I finally confronted each other in a court of law, the bitterly contested case dragged on for five years.

In the coming years Lee’s vindication in the British courts would have one penalty. As America’s social climate became increasingly liberal, other gays came out of the closet. Lee felt compelled to keep his silence. “I can’t admit a thing,” he said, “unless I want to be known as the world’s biggest liar.”

After winning the case Lee went on to an escalating series of triumphs. ABC signed him for a TV variety show that ran in 1958 and 1959. He was in even greater demand as a live entertainer and set new attendance records wherever he appeared. The money came rolling in faster than even he could spend it. He sold his Sherman Oaks property and bought Rudy Vallee’s fifty-room house in the Hollywood Hills. Lee also acquired a mansion in Las Vegas, another one in Palm Springs, and a place in Malibu overlooking the ocean. He had the power he’d always wanted. And he’d finally distanced himself from his family. According to Lee, it hadn’t been easy.

At the beginning of his “white heat” period, his family had made an all-out effort to become indispensable to him. George was an intrinsic part of Lee’s early act and Angie went on the road with her brothers too. Lee promoted her to his manager and, from that position of responsibility, whether true or not, Lee told me that she convinced him that George was taking advantage of his position as favorite brother. Lee never knowingly permitted anyone to take advantage of him. Whether he was right or not in this instance, he dropped George from the act. When Lee’s income plummeted under Angie’s stewardship, he dismissed her as well. The turmoil capped the Liberaces’ already troubled relationships, resulting in a prolonged period of estrangement during which Angie worked at other jobs while George’s career sagged.

Meanwhile, Rudolph, the youngest of the Liberace children, passed away. He left behind a widow, Isabel, and four children. Lee drifted away from Rudolph’s widow and children just as he drifted away from George and Angie. He couldn’t turn his back on his mother as easily, but he did the next best thing. He moved her into the Hollywood mansion and then spent most of his time elsewhere. For the first time in his life, at the age of forty-five, Lee felt relatively free of his family and, based on what he told me, from what he regarded as their never-ending demands. His life seemed to hold endless happy possibilities; he had everything to live for when a bizarre accident almost ended everything.

In the fall of 1963 Lee was playing the Holiday Inn in Pittsburgh, part of his regular circuit. He felt sick after the opening of the engagement and got progressively worse with each succeeding performance. On November 22 he woke up late in the afternoon, as was his custom. A cold sweat bathed his body when he got out of bed to turn on the television, running through the stations searching for one of his favorite soap operas. That particular day all the network shows had been cancelled in favor of a steady stream of news programming. Lee soon learned that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.