'He wanted to maintain an illusion of agelessness': The secret life of outrageous showman Liberace

The glitzy pianist, who famously hid his sexuality, was dismissed as a "vulgar joke" in his lifetime. But a new play gets to the truth of who he was, in private as well as in public.

The outlandish pianist and singer Liberace was such an accomplished purveyor of glitzy escapism that he famously called himself a "one-man Disneyland". During his heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s, he was also regularly described as "the world's highest paid entertainer", a claim that is impossible to verify and may well be untrue.

Still, there is no doubt that he liked to project outrageous wealth on stage. When he performed his final live residency, at New York City's Radio City Music Hall in 1985, Liberace made a grand entrance by stepping out of a giant recreation of a Fabergé egg, wearing a cape made of hot pink turkey feathers.

The man born Władziu Valentino Liberace – but who achieved global fame as a fabulous mononym – died in February 1987 from an Aids-related illness. He had learned around 18 months earlier that he was HIV positive, but never spoke publicly about his diagnosis, just as he always refuted rumours that he was gay. Since his death, however, it has become common knowledge that he enjoyed several long-term relationships with men.

The trial that made Liberace  

Now a new stage play about Liberace, I'll Be Seeing You, which opens this month in Scotland, explores the apparent disconnect between his private and professional lives, as well as the flamboyant piano man's most immaculate deception. In 1959, three years after the Daily Mirror published an article heavily insinuating that he was homosexual, Liberace successfully sued the British newspaper for libel.

The actor who portrays Liberace in the play, revered British Shakespearean Simon Russell Beale, tells the BBC that Liberace made a significant "gamble" by taking the case to court – had he lost, his career could have been ruined. But Beale also observes that the "specific lie that Liberace told" under oath, when he insisted that he was "against the practice [of homosexuality] because it offends convention and it offends society", was "merely part of [his] continuum of lying" – or at least being evasive about – his sexuality. As it transpired, the court ruled in Liberace's favour and awarded him £8,000 in damages – the equivalent to £167,000 ($225,000) today.

Vincent L Stephens, the author of Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music, believes this victory was an emboldening turning point for the nascent showman. "After he won, he gradually became a lot more flamboyant and outgoing in his public persona," Stephens tells the BBC, pointing to the succession of "handsome chauffeurs" that Liberace hired to drive him on stage in his signature Rolls Royce.

One of these, Scott Thorson, sued Liberace for $113 million in palimony in 1982. He claimed that the entertainer had left him penniless after abruptly ending their five-year relationship. Liberace vehemently denied that he was gay and stated in court depositions that Thorson was never his lover. The case was settled in 1986 with Thorson receiving $75,000 in cash as well as three cars and three valuable pet dogs. 

The former driver's 1988 memoir, Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace, was later adapted into an Emmy-winning TV film starring Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as Thorson. Conductor........

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