Tuesday, July 2, 2013

"Too Much of a Good Thing... is WONDERFUL!" (Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace, 1988)

Good morning!

As we've taken to the road for two consecutive weekends on mini-vacations, I have to mention that I've had occasion to note the best parts about taking roadtrips with Matthew: 
  1. He never gets mad at me for insisting we visit the occasional Pocketknife Museum/antique mall/place where a famous playwright was born. Spoiler alert: I am ALWAYS insisting we visit the occasional Pocketknife Museum/antique mall/place where a famous playwright was born.
  2. He makes me laugh and gets us special coffee drinks, the better with which to bear the burden of long-term car captivity.
  3. He always does all the driving, sans complaint. I hate being in a car, much less driving, so this works in my favor on long trips.
  4. He lets me put whatever I want on the radio the WHOLE TIME. This could be anything from my marathon George and Tammy mix cd, to 1930's delta blues, to interminable audiobooks of my choosing.
As much as I love my family, I am the living veteran of dozens of family car trips that began, middle, and ended in circumstances fraught with tension, seat-kicking, and pregnant silences. I can't tell you how comforting it is to know that if we have to drive five hours south for a good time, I won't spend most of the five hours down there listening to a dramatic re-enactment of the old radio show The Bickersons, featuring me in a starring role.

Part four of my above list of praise figures into today's post, because it is all about the book we listened to on the way back from Atlanta, and finished on the way up to St. Louis. Folks, have you heard the good news about Liberace

What is with EITHER of these covers? Do you want me to not read the book, or what?

Now, you might be thinking "What red-blooded American male would spend 5 hours in the car listening to a book-on-CD of Liberace's teenage boyfriend's life with the most twinkling of Vegas stars?" LUCKILY, the one I'm getting married to in September!

Scott Thorson's memoir, Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace, is an OLD SCHOOL catty celebrity memoir. Claws are out, ladies and gentlemen. Claws are out. Thorson, who spent a rough childhood bounced around foster homes, met the still-in-the-closet-though-who-ever-thought-he-was-not-openly-gay Liberace in 1976, when he was all of sweet seventeen. The famed pianist was taken by Thorson's blonde, impish good looks and immediately hired him as a "personal assistant". Thorson appeared in that powder blue livery you see on the original publication's cover as Liberace's on-stage "chaffeur". Do you know about the part of the Liberace stage show where the Big L would show up in a Rolls Royce ON THE STAGE? They didn't call him "Mr. Showmanship" for nothing.

I am not kidding. See the video here, see around the three minute mark,
complete with Thorson introduction!
Their relationship lasted five years, during which Thorson enjoyed incredible wealth and luxury. Liberace was famous during his career for the over-the-top nature of his personal and professional lives...why have one piano when you can have twenty? If one chandelier is fabulous, then forty chandeliers are forty times as fabulous! Nothing succeeds like excess, as another gay icon once said. Besides the fact that they owned something like twenty dogs at one time (?!), I have to say probably the most shocking part of the book is Liberace's insistence that Thorson get plastic surgery to...get this...LOOK MORE LIKE LIBERACE. "I want us to look like family!" he says, at one point even dangling the possibility of formally adopting Scott. Now, in the early 80's, when gay marriage was still a distant dream, maybe it would make sense to adopt your much younger lover in order to make sure a legally binding bond existed between the two of you, to make sure your loved one was not left destitute at the time of your demise. AND YET. I am still given a case of the heebies thinking about a man forty years his troubled, confused boyfriend's senior, blurring the younger man's sense of identity with the promise of "belonging". It all just seems too weird. Also, why would you get surgery to look like Liberace?! No shade intended, but he's no Cary Grant!

Thorson post surgery. What is with that chin? That was one of the main things
Liberace wanted him to have, a chin implant! And for what? (source)



The lion's share of the text is the regular "oh I never thought I could get used to THIS style of living" memoir you get from someone who was intimately acquainted with a famous celebrity. The thing that always gets me about these books is how SIMILAR the story arc runs. Celebrity meets civilian, woos civilian, introduces civilian to a life of luxury heretofore undreamed of, celebrity becomes controlling of civilian, civilian doesn't have enough time/opportunities to pursue own interests, celebrity and/or civilian get involved in drugs, the two break up, years later, the civilian writes a book. Thorson picked up a nasty drug habit  a little before and definitely after the plastic surgery incident, where he was prescribed amphetamine cocktails to lose weight by Liberace's doctor, and just ran with it. The spin out that was precipitated by Thorson's increasing drug use, and Liberace's own infidelities, broke up the happy Thorson/Liberace home, but Scott wasn't going out without a bang. He initiated a groundbreaking, same-sex palimony case, the first of its kind, in 1982 against the entertainer, alleging that he had been promised salaries and long-term employment that abruptly ended when he and Liberace's relationship did. They settled out of court in 1986, and Liberace died the following spring. Sad, sad, sad.

Doesn't he look kind of like a lamp here? (source)

Reading this book through the lens of 2013, it's interesting to think of how deeply Liberace's fame dipped after his death. While he was consistently one of the highest paid and beloved floor acts of all time, making money hand over fist on packed venues and lucrative souvenir contracts, before this movie came into production, I just barely knew anything about him. He spent a lifetime creating, nurturing, and maintaining an image that, once he was gone, began immediately to fade into obscurity. His museum, once visited by tourists in droves in the early eighties', closed in 2010 due to low attendance. Isn't that strange? I think it's the specific burden of the stage performer-- had he been in the movies, there would still be footage to back up his iconic status, but the record releases and videotapes of his show are a paltry second-best to what I've heard of the "magic" he could create during one of his live performances. Even Thorson admits of his former lover that the man could make a room light up, and have each of the seats in his sold out shows feel like the front row at an intimate, command performance. I feel sorry for Liberace that his legacy, in 2013, depends on a dramatization of what must have been one of the most painfully public invasions of his closely guarded private life.

source

That said, I'm extremely interested to see the HBO movie based on the book. In the hands of director Steven Soderbergh, I'm sure some of those identity issues will come to light, along with a more sensitive reading of the whole story than perhaps Thorson's own account allows for. 

So! What have you been reading lately? Have you seen the Liberace movie yet? Any thoughts on the glittering lifestyle of one of the world's most famous 20th century entertainers? Let's talk!

Gotta skedaddle, but I'll see you back here tomorrow (hopefully with some pictures of the stuff I bought last weekend)! Til then.

                           

15 comments:

  1. I love the Libster! Fascinating man! While I'd heard of this boyfriend, I've not read much about him or really known of that back story. You've informed me this morning, chick! What a 'weird, wild' relationship! And what IS with that chin?? At first the whole 'adoption' thing freaked me out, but I suppose you're right that back then it was the only way to be sure that a same sex partner would be 'taken care of' in the even of death. So, actually quite good thinking on Lib's part.
    It's sad that his museum closed. I'd have absolutely gone!
    I want to see the Liberace film! And now I want to read Scott's book too!! The last book I read...while ohsobored at work Saturday...was 'Eating Your Way Across Kentucky'. Surprisingly informative...should I ever venture into the wilds of ye olde Kentuckee.

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    1. I wonder if they'll reopen the museum if the movie generates enough interest...? We can dream! I can't wait to see the movie, have heard nothing but good things about it.

      Should you "eat your way across Kentucky", you'll have to tell me how accurate the book was, haha! I love food travelogue books. Jane and Michael Stern's "Road Food" is one of my favorites of all time.

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  2. i LOVED the hbo movie! the costumes! the make up! the constant yipping of dogs in the background of their scenes at home! you are going to love it! the final scene is like a scene from my dreams, including "the impossible dream" from man of la mancha! see it as soon as you can!
    and matthew sounds a lot like travis. he drives everywhere and listens to me sing along to the dream girls soundtrack or listen to the SAME david sedaris audiobook for the 15th time with no complaints. here's to our sweet boys!

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    1. I have to see that dang Liberace movie, it needs to come out on dvd or streaming already! And three cheers for life partners who-let-us-do-what-we-want, dude. I wouldn't have 'em any other way! :)

      Have you read the new Sedaris book? I have the book-on-audio of it, am about 3/4ths through. SO. GOOD. How is he consistently so good?

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  3. oh wait i have to mention that last photo of liberace! i want that on velvet with crystals over my mantle! that CAPE!

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  4. I watched the HBO movie a few weeks ago, and I loved it. Matt Damon is amazing, so watchable, and so is Michael Douglas. Rob Lowe has a small but striking role as the drug-pushing plastic surgeon!

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    1. Everyone keeps telling me Rob Lowe steals every scene he's in, I love him. Looking forward to watching this x 1,000,000!

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  5. I'm with Rae and Sarah! The HBO movie is literally still playing on repeat in my mind. SO GOOD! It doesn't disappoint in any capacity. Damon and Douglas (AND ROB LOWE) are fantastic. It really made me want to read more about him and I immediately added the book to my "to read" list. Growing up in the 80s/90s, I only really heard allusions to Liberace but never knew much about him.

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    1. Me too! It was interesting that even in between all the "Lee promised me this but I never got it" and "I thought Lee was being ridiculous" of the text, there's also a lot about how hard Liberace worked and how he built this insane entertainment empire one brick at a time, from the ground up.

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  6. What a fun/enlightening/thoughtful post! I really don't know much about Liberace, but I'm dying to see that HBO movie. I have a major crush on Matt Damon, so I'd see it for him alone, but it sounds fascinating. Rob Lowe as creepy pusher/surgeon has got to be the most perfect casting ever!
    Very interesting that Lib thought to adopt his boyfriend as a way around the legal system. Thank God we're well on the way as a country to a time where that type of end-around won't be neccessary!

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    1. Haha, all the gossips sites have been featuring still upon still of Damon in a tiny Gold speedo...still a heartthrob after all these years! Rob Lowe is great-- I didn't really have any kind of opinion on him until I read his memoir, "Stories I Only Tell My Friends". It's in my top 20 celebrity autobiographies, SO interesting and SO well written.

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  7. The HBO movie was very well done indeed. My husband recorded it for us to watch as I had no clue it even was created nor set to air. Matt Damon was wonderful, Emmy award perhaps as well as Michael Douglas! It was a happy moment too when I realized Michael Douglass was healthy enough to act in a pretty big role such as this. I thought he was near death a few months ago! This is a great summer movie to watch, especially after you listened to the book!

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    1. I saw Michael Douglas choke up on a press junket for the movie, where he said it was so amazing that he had this wonderful project to leap into right after his illness, and how he thought working helped his recovery. I'M getting choked up thinking about HIM getting choked up! I can't wait to see the movie.

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  8. This is a seriously great blog post. You had me laughing when you mentioned he looked like a lamp b/c my Grandma had a lamp with a dandy chap porcelain figurine at the base. At the time, I considered this lamp to look like Cinderella's prince charming but now I realize it looked more like Liberace. I'm gonna check this HBO flick out. Well-written and humorous blog post as always. Thanks for the good read!

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    1. Thanks so much! I love to hear from people out there in reader-land. From what everyone's been chiming in, the movie is supposed to be PHENOMENAL, I hope it lives up to my (high, be-sequined) expectations!

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