Outshining the mere mortals with whom he shares the day such as Hazel O'Connor, Tamara de Lempicka, Pierce Brosnan, Judy Finnigan, Yvonne Craig, Henry Fonda, Debra Winger, Jonathan Richman, Tori Spelling, Woody Herman, Olga Korbut, Robert Fripp, Janet Jackson - and even Christian Lacroix, sweetie - it would have been Liberace's birthday today!
By way of a celebration (and in the interest of recycling, of course!), here's a post I did way back in 2009...
...[In June 1959] the sparkling multi-million-selling entertainer Liberace sued the Daily Mirror for libel (and won!). Gossip columnist Cassandra (William Connor) had described him as:
"The summit of sex - the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. Everything that he, she, and it can ever want… a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother-love... this superb piece of calculating candy floss... the biggest sentimental vomit of all time... a preposterous clown."
Absurd, of course! After all, this is the same "devout Catholic" Liberace who outsold Elvis, broke all the records for ticket sales at Madison Square Gardens and in Vegas, and was "almost married" to the silver screen formation skater Sonja Henie - how could he be gay?
The rest, as they say, is history. In 1982, his former lover Scott Thorson sued for "palimoney" (and was paid off to the tune of $95k!), and (amid a sickening media frenzy at the time) eventually "Mr. Showmanship" died of complications from AIDS in 1987.
But let us not dwell on that when we can have the man himself. Enjoy your weekend Sunday with a bit of sparkle!
The book Crying All the Way to the Bank: Liberace V Cassandra, which gives all the gory details of the fabulous libel trial, was published in June 2009.
And why not visit The Liberace Museum?
Of course, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since 2009 - not least with the success of the infamous TV movie (based upon Scott Thorson's memoir) Behind the Candelabra, starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, in 2013; and the physical home of the Liberace Museum closed in October 2010 (although the collection survives and the link in my post above is till active).
Regardless, the world of camp would have been a lot less sequinned and twinkly without Władziu Valentino Liberace (16th May 1919 – 4th February 1987). All hail.
More Liberace here, here, here, here, and of course (on his centenary) here.
