76 Facts About Liberace

Liberace was born in Wisconsin to parents of Italian and Polish origin and enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures and endorsements.

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

Liberace's mother, Frances Zuchowski was born in Menasha, Wisconsin, and was 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, and 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; as a teen, he was taunted by 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 ten years.

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

Liberace showed an interest in draftsmanship, design and painting, and he 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.

From 1942 to 1944, Liberace moved 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 was replacing Korla Pandit who parted ways with Snader due to a contract dispute.

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 enthusiasm.

Liberace created a publicity machine that 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, where he stated that he was the only person in the US registered to vote, using only a single name.

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 dependence 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 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 early ones 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.

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.

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 more injury was being woken by his entourage to the news that John F Kennedy had been assassinated.

Re-energized, Liberace returned to Las Vegas, and increasing 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.

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 as well as 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 because 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 he 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 Gilbert Beyfus, one of the great barristers of the period.

Liberace won the suit, partly on the basis of Connor's use of the derogatory expression "fruit-flavoured".

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.

Liberace died in the late morning of February 4,1987, at The Cloisters, his home in Palm Springs, California at age 67.

Liberace had a Catholic priest administer the last rites to him the day before his death.

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 deliberately claimed a false cause of death because 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 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.

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

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.