Rock Moment: Liberace, 1980

Take a look at this photo … what can you infer about this person from looking at the picture?  Mmm-hmm, I agree.  OK, so just keep that image in mind or refer to the photo occasionally while you read this strange little tale.

So it’s 1980 and in Orange, Texas (just on the Southeast Texas border with Louisiana) they are opening a beautiful new performing arts venue, the Lutcher Stark Theater.  I have no idea what it’s like now, but at the time Orange was one of those typical Texas towns – most residents’ idea of “high art” was a movie in which Burt Reynolds drove less than 50 mph.  But there were a bunch of rich folk who longed for big-city type entertainment, hence the 1,400-or-so-seat Lutcher Theater.

Their first big entertainer booked was Liberace, long a star on TV and the Vegas circuit and well-known for his kitschy humor and wardrobe and for being, well, refer to the photo above.    When I was a kid I once overheard one of my aunts saying “There are two men I dream about sleeping with … Elvis and Liberace.”  I never could figure that out, because it was flamingly obvious that (see photo above).

So anyway, being a reporter and such in 1980 I had to go to a news conference for Liberace’s show.  Liberace minced in, wearing a one-piece mansuit in some weird pastel and atop his head had a piece that could only fool passed out drunks and little newborn babies whose eyes haven’t opened yet.  Liberace turned to his assistant and lisped “cigarette,” and his butt boy lit a cigarette and passed it to “Lee,” who then smoked the cigarette cradling it in the “v” between his second and third fingers.  Here, look at the photo at right for further reference.

If that wasn’t bad enough, there’s the show – to this day I cannot explain how apparently heterosexual women (OK, they were mostly OLDER heterosexual women) swooned over this guy.  “Lee” even played the part – in the 1950s and 1960s he sued anyone who even implied that he might be anything but a manly man.  A few years after I saw him Liberace was sued by an ex-boyfriend, but he still refused to come out, lest anyone might confuse him with Clint Eastwood.  He finally died in 1987 (in Palm Springs, of AIDS, ahem) and people still asked “Do you think he might have been, ah …?”  

But you know what: who cares if he ever came out and just said it.  If he did, I missed it.  Liberace lived it, and flaunted it, and by doing so basically said “fuck you” to anyone who would judge him for it.  Jokes aside, he was a truly fearless entertainer in an era when it wasn’t cool to be the way he was.

Well, there’s a postscript: go back to that night in 1980, in Orange, Texas.  Or rather, early the next morning.  I’m writing my story for the afternoon paper and the phone rings.  It’s this fire chief, who sounded kind of confused.  “Last night, around 2 a.m., we had this fire downtown … nobody hurt, but it was a real burner,” he said.  And he said there was this guy, who came up on the scene on foot and he was fascinated by the fire and the firefighters.  He talked to some of them, asking lots of questions and just basking in the excitement.  “And I think that might have been Liberace,” the chief said.  “What made you think that?” I asked.  “Well, it was probably the ankle-length mink coat.” 

YouTube: Liberace’s video and opening for his Vegas act, 1981

YouTube:  Liberace meets Phyllis Diller in 1969

Hulu: “Saturday Night Live” skit “Vincent Price’s Halloween Party”