79 Facts About Liberace

Liberace embraced a lifestyle of flamboyant excess both on and off stage.

Liberace's father, Salvatore Liberace, was an immigrant from Formia in the Lazio region of central Italy.

Liberace's mother, Frances Zuchowski, was born in Menasha, Wisconsin, of Polish descent.

Liberace had three surviving siblings: a brother George, a sister Angelina, and younger brother Rudy.

Liberace's father played the French horn in bands and cinemas but often worked as a factory worker or laborer.

Liberace began playing the piano at the age of four.

In childhood, Liberace suffered from a speech impediment, and as a teen, from the taunts of neighborhood children, who mocked him for his effeminate personality, his avoidance of sports, and his fondness for cooking and the piano.

Liberace concentrated on his piano playing with the help of music teacher Florence Kelly, who oversaw Liberace's musical development for 10 years.

Liberace gained experience playing popular music in theaters, on local radio, for dancing classes, for clubs, and for weddings.

Liberace showed an interest in draftsmanship, design, and painting, and became a fastidious dresser and follower of fashion.

Liberace later stated that he played the popular tune in the styles of several different classical composers.

Between 1942 and 1944, Liberace moved away from straight classical performance and reinvented his act to one featuring "pop with a bit of classics" or as he called it "classical music with the boring parts left out".

Liberace began to pay greater attention to such details as staging, lighting, and presentation.

Liberace recreated two flashy numbers from his nightclub act, the standards "Tiger Rag" and "Twelfth Street Rag".

Liberace has an effective manner, attractive hands which he spotlights properly, and withal, rings the bell in the dramatically lighted, well-presented, showmanly routine.

Liberace added the candelabrum as his trademark, inspired by a similar prop in the Chopin biopic A Song to Remember.

Liberace adopted "Liberace" as his stage name, making a point in press releases that it was pronounced "Liber-Ah-chee".

Liberace wore white tie and tails for better visibility in large halls.

Liberace had to have a piano to match his growing presence, so he bought a rare, oversized, gold-leafed Bluthner Grand, which he hyped up in his press kit as a "priceless piano".

Liberace moved to the Los Angeles neighborhood of North Hollywood in 1947 and was performing at local clubs, such as Ciro's and The Mocambo, for stars such as Rosalind Russell, Clark Gable, Gloria Swanson, and Shirley Temple.

Liberace did not always play to packed rooms, and he learned to perform with extra energy to thinner crowds, to maintain his own enthusiasm.

Liberace created a publicity machine which helped to make him a star.

Liberace began to expand his act and made it more extravagant, with more costumes and a larger supporting cast.

Liberace was frequently covered by the major magazines, and he became a pop-culture superstar, but he became the butt of jokes by comedians and the public.

Liberace appeared on the March 8,1956 episode of the TV quiz program You Bet Your Life hosted by Groucho Marx.

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.

Liberace mostly bypassed radio before trying a television career, thinking radio unsuitable given his act's dependency on the visual.

Liberace was particularly displeased with the frenetic camera work and his short appearance time.

Liberace soon wanted his own show where he could control his presentation as he did with his club shows.

Liberace's first show on local television in Los Angeles was a smash hit, earning the highest ratings of any local show, which he parlayed into a sold-out appearance at the Hollywood Bowl.

The 15-minute network television program, The Liberace Show, began on July 1,1952, but did not lead to a regular network series.

Liberace learned early on to add "schmaltz" to his television show and to cater to the tastes of the mass audience by joking and chatting to the camera as if performing in the viewer's own living room.

Liberace used dramatic lighting, split images, costume changes, and exaggerated hand movements to create visual interest.

Liberace employed "ritualistic domesticity", used by such early TV greats as Jack Benny and Lucille Ball.

Liberace began each show in the same way, then mixed production numbers with chat, and signed off each broadcast softly singing "I'll Be Seeing You", which he made his theme song.

Liberace's show was one of the first to be shown on British commercial television in the 1950s, where it was broadcast on Sunday afternoons by Lew Grade's Associated TeleVision.

In 1956, Liberace had his first international engagement, playing successfully in Havana, Cuba.

Liberace followed up with a European tour later that year.

Always a devout Catholic, Liberace considered his meeting with Pope Pius XII a highlight of his life.

In 1960, Liberace performed at the London Palladium with Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Jr.

On July 19,1957, hours after Liberace gave a deposition in his $25 million libel suit against Confidential magazine, two masked intruders attacked his mother in the garage of Liberace's home in Sherman Oaks.

Liberace was not informed about the assault until he finished his midnight show at the Moulin Rouge nightclub.

Liberace later said that what saved him from further injury was being woken up by his entourage to the news that John F Kennedy had been assassinated.

Re-energized, Liberace returned to Las Vegas, and upping the glamor and glitz, he took on the sobriquet "Mr Showmanship".

Liberace owned an antiques store in Beverly Hills, California, and a restaurant in Las Vegas for many years.

In 1970, Liberace competed against Irish actor Richard Harris for the purchase of the Tower House in Holland Park, west London.

Harris eventually bought the house after discovering that Liberace had agreed to buy it, but had not yet put down a deposit.

Liberace made significant appearances on other shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show, The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, Edward R Murrow's Person to Person, and on the shows of Jack Benny and Red Skelton, on which he often parodied his own persona.

Liberace received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 for his contributions to the television industry.

Liberace has appeared on television as a frequent and welcomed guest on The Tonight Show with Jack Paar in the 1960s, with memorable exchanges with Zsa Zsa Gabor and Muhammad Ali, and later with Johnny Carson.

Liberace was Red Skelton's 1969 CBS summer replacement with his own variety hour, taped in London.

Liberace appeared as a guest star in two compilation features for RKO Radio Pictures.

In 1955, Liberace was at the height of his career when tapped by Warner Bros.

The film was a critical and commercial failure since Liberace proved unable to translate his eccentric on-stage persona to that of a movie leading man.

The experience left Liberace so shaken that he largely abandoned his movie aspirations.

Liberace made two more big-screen appearances, but only in cameo roles.

Liberace received kudos for his brief appearance as a casket salesman in The Loved One, based on Evelyn Waugh's satire of the funeral business and movie industry in Southern California.

The massive success of Liberace's syndicated television show was the main impetus behind his record sales.

Liberace released several recordings through Columbia Records including Liberace by Candlelight and sold over 400,000 albums by 1954.

Liberace believed fervently in capitalism and was fascinated with royalty, ceremony, and luxury.

Liberace loved to socialize and was fascinated by the rich and famous.

Liberace was an experienced pitchman and relied on the support of his vast audience of housewives.

Liberace was represented in court by one of the great barristers of the period, 75-year-old Gilbert Beyfus, QC.

Liberace sued and settled a similar case in the United States against Confidential.

Rumors and gossip magazines frequently implied that Liberace was homosexual throughout his career, which he continued to vehemently deny.

Liberace continued to deny that he was homosexual, and during court depositions in 1984, he insisted that Thorson was never his lover.

Liberace later attested that Liberace was a "boring guy" in his private life and mostly preferred to spend his free time cooking, decorating, and playing with his dogs, and that he never played the piano outside of his public performances.

Liberace was secretly diagnosed HIV positive in August 1985 by his private physician in Las Vegas.

At the age of 67, Liberace died the morning of February 4,1987, at his retreat home in Palm Springs, California.

The coroner determined that, at the time of his death, Liberace was HIV-positive, had pulmonary heart disease, and calcification of a heart valve.

The coroner said that Liberace's doctor had deliberatively claimed a false cause of death, as heart failure is never caused by encephalopathy.

Author Darden Asbury Pyron wrote that Liberace had been HIV-positive and symptomatic from 1985 until his death.

Liberace's body is entombed along with those of his mother and brother at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Liberace was recognized during his career with two Emmy Awards, six gold albums, and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Liberace performed 56 sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall, which set box-office records a few months before his death.

In January 2013, the Liberace Foundation announced plans to relocate the museum to downtown Las Vegas, with a targeted opening date of 2014.

At the time of his death Liberace was said to be worth around $110 million and to have bequeathed $88 million to the Liberace Foundation.

The Liberace Foundation saw the sunset of its in-house endowment fund in 2011.

The original Liberace museum closed its doors in 2010, citing the recession and an outdated, outmoded facility.