Behind the scenes of "Behind the Candelabra"

[Guest lurkerspeaks]

http://www.thebacklot.com/liberace-behind-the-candelabra/05/2013/

[AdamSmith]

Liberace's Plastic Surgery Left Him Unable to Close His Eyes — Even While He Was Sleeping

The music star also paid the doctor who did his surgery to perform procedures on his live-in lover, Scott Thorson, so Thorson would look more like Liberace!

By Kimberly Potts | Yahoo! TV – 11 hours ago

• 

  CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images - Liberace in the CBS special "Leapin' Lizards, It's Liberace!" (1978)

One of the more bizarre scenes in HBO's movie, "Behind the Candelabra" — and this is a movie with no lack of surreal moments — is when piano-playing superstar Liberace pulls a painting of himself off his wall, shows it to his plastic surgeon, and asks the doctor to surgically make over Liberace's live-in lover, Scott Thorson, to look just like the performer.

The doctor, Jack Startz (as played by a freakishly made-over Rob Lowe), does just that, but only after performing a face lift on Liberace (Michael Douglas) that left his face so tight that he couldn't fully close his eyes, even when he was sleeping (cue another of the movie's more bizarre scenes, as Matt Damon's Thorson tries to awaken a snoring Liberace, whose eyes make him look like he's still awake.)

Did we mention the movie is not a work of fiction? It is based on Thorson's newly rereleased 1988 memoir, "Behind the Candelabra" (Tantor Media), which details his drama-filled relationship with the late, bedazzled star.

[Video: Teary Michael Douglas Calls Return to Work in Liberace Movie a 'Beautiful Gift' After Cancer Battle]

Liberace, who was nearly 40 years older than Thorson when the then-18-year-old moved in with him, began his most elaborate round of cosmetic surgery in 1979, after he saw how he looked during an appearance on "The Tonight Show."

He and Thorson, at a happy place in their relationship, had spent a year traveling through Europe and enjoying the local cuisine at every stop. A scene in the movie shows them happily channel surfing and noshing on popcorn — both having put on a few pounds — until Liberace sees himself on TV. "I look like my father in drag!" he tells Thorson.

Liberace's hairstylist put him in touch with Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Jack Startz, who was known for his work with silicone injections, and whose clientele including many of the city's rich and famous. Startz recommended a face-lift, eye lift, and silicone injections plus a face peel after the surgery.

[Related: 'Behind the Candelabra,' the Book: The 12 Best Revelations from Liberace's Former Lover]

Then, as depicted in yet another of the movie's most memorable scenes, Liberace fetched a painting of himself and showed it to Startz, asking the doctor to make Thorson look like the painting.

Michael Douglas as Liberace in HBO's

Liberace decided he should get his face work done first — so that Thorson would be able to take care of him. Thorson, Startz had decided, also needed to lose a few pounds before surgery, which led to the doctor's prescription of the California Diet. It was a plan that amounted to Startz doling out written prescriptions for various drugs — pharmaceutical cocaine and amphetamines among them, Thorson writes in his book. They helped Thorson shed pounds but gain an addiction to the drugs.

Helene Ballas, Startz's office manager, recently told Allure.com that Liberace's biggest concern before his procedures was that he was going to have to remove his wig (a concern he addresses in another funny scene in the film), but both he and Thorson were unaware of just how many problems Startz himself was juggling.

Financial struggles, growing concerns about the safety and efficacy of his silicone injections, and his own drug issues would eventually lead to the end of Startz's business. In 1985, he committed suicide.

[Related: Rob Lowe Suffered Migraines to Transform His Handsome Face for 'Behind the Candelabra']

Years before he had even met with Liberace and Thorson, and dispensed the drugs that Thorson maintains led to his lifelong drug issues, Startz had gone to rehab for his own drug addictions, Ballas told Allure.com. Thorson, meanwhile, told Larry King in a 2002 interview that Startz even drank alcohol during his surgical session with Liberace.

As for the results of Startz's work on Thorson and Liberace, a nose job, a chin implant, and cheekbone work did result in the then-20-year-old Thorson resembling his lover, who wanted his "blond Adonis" to look like him because he had considered adopting the younger man. "He wanted me as his son. But at the same time, he wanted me as his lover," Thorson told King.

And though Liberace was initially pleased with his surgery results — which Thorson wrote made the performer appear 20 years younger — Liberace's eyes had changed "in appearance and function," Thorson wrote in his book. "He couldn't close his lids completely. They remained slitted open even when he struggled to keep them shut. At night, when he slept, his eyes would open slowly, and that's the way they would stay … it was odd to wake up at night and see him in bed beside me sleeping soundly … odd and a little frightening."

[Video: When Liberace Battled Batman and Taught the Hulk How to Tickle the Ivories]

Today, Thorson is battling cancer and is currently incarcerated in a Reno, Nevada, jail after being charged with burglary and identity theft in February 2013. He told Larry King he had the chin implant removed more than a decade ago, but with age, he has come to resemble Liberace more than ever.

"Behind the Candelabra" premieres May 26 at 9 PM on HBO.

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/liberace-s-plastic-surgery-left-him-unable-to-close-his-eyes-%E2%80%94-even-while-he-was-sleeping-000515021.html

[RA1]

_{Joan Rivers likely cannot close her eyes at all, based upon the theory of cosmetic surgery causes this.}

_{Best regards,}

_RA1

[Guest NCBored]

I'm looking forward to watching this!

I think Matt Damon looks creepy in that chauffeur's outfit - like a toy soldier or oversize doll. But when he comes out of the swimming pool....

[AdamSmith]

_{Joan Rivers likely cannot close her eyes at all, based upon the theory of cosmetic surgery causes this.}

Except that with Joan the affected part would seem to be her mouth.

Not that I at all object to that.

[RA1]

Except that with Joan the affected part would seem to be her mouth.

Not that I at all object to that.

I think that was true BEFORE any cosmetic surgery.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

...now imagining Joan yakking in the womb!

[Guest FourAces]

I read a review on CNN that basically said the film is not gay enough

[wayout]

I was surprised to see that this was a film for HBO and not theater release. I just assumed that with two stars of the stature of Michael Douglas and Matt Damon that it would be. Perhaps the audience who would be interested in seeing this isn't that big for theatrical release? Just found it interesting and was wondering why.

[RA1]

I think there is every possibility we will see more of this. I have so far thought it was the producers or "powers that be" prognosticating that the money lies with skipping a box theater release and going directly to the CD, so to speak, in this case HBO.

Regardless, we should know that if we follow the money, it will lead to the answer.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

I was surprised to see that this was a film for HBO and not theater release. I just assumed that with two stars of the stature of Michael Douglas and Matt Damon that it would be. Perhaps the audience who would be interested in seeing this isn't that big for theatrical release? Just found it interesting and was wondering why.

Steven Soderbergh happy that 'Behind the Candelabra' landed on HBO

Director says big studios all turned down Liberace film, starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon

By David Hinckley / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Sunday, May 26, 2013, 12:39 AM

Director Steven Soderbergh admits he was stunned when “all the major studios” in Hollywood passed on “Behind the Candelabra,” the story of the long relationship between entertainer Liberace and a handsome young man named Scott Thorson who started as Liberace’s driver.

In the age of “Brokeback Mountain,” Soderbergh figured a gay romance wouldn’t be a deal-breaker when he’d lined up Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as Thorson.

It was.

“They basically said it was too gay,” Soderbergh told TV critics this year. The studios seemed to feel that while the public may love Matt Damon and root for Michael Douglas, the affection is tempered when they’re lounging in the hot tub naked and swapping saliva.

So the movie landed at HBO, which Soderbergh and executive producer Jerry Weintraub say delights them, and it airs Sunday night at 9.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/soderbergh-happy-candelabra-landed-hbo-article-1.1349587

[wayout]

I read a review on CNN that basically said the film is not gay enough

“They basically said it was too gay,” Soderbergh told TV critics this year. The studios seemed to feel that while the public may love Matt Damon and root for Michael Douglas, the affection is tempered when they’re lounging in the hot tub naked and swapping saliva.

Well there you go. Too gay or not gay enough? lol

Thanks for the post AS, I found that very informative. The comparison with Brokeback Mountain was interesting. Both movies had very big star power but perhaps the difference is that Brokeback was more for a younger audience and as such the topic was more acceptable to them? Just speculating but I do find it fascinating. In any case, I am glad it did find a home at HBO, even though I won't be able to watch it unless it somehow comes out on Demand TV, NetFlix or DVD at some point.

[msclelovr]

I saw Michael Douglas and Matt Damon being interviewed by the BBC. The stars were candid in their view of the caution of the major studios. In Europe, at least, it will be released as a film in cinemas (aka movie theaters)

[msclelovr]

I just found that it's being shown now on HBO and I'm watching it. So far, the film is stylish and engaging. The sex-scenes are realistic, yet shown discreetly. Two surprises for me are the superb acting by Michael Douglas and the cameo by Rob Lowe as the plastic surgeon.

[Guest NCBored]

I just finished watching it and thought it was well-done. The acting was good and the storyline was interesting.

The make-up was impressive - Rob Lowe reminded me of Michael Jackson, at one point.

And I liked the ending! (But no spoilers).

As for it not being gay enough...Liberace/Douglas trying to convince Thorson/Damon to bottom, for a change? (and how many of us have had THAT dream!)

[AdamSmith]

(Sorry, not what I was trying to post. Pls return to yer regularly scheduled whatever. )

[RA1]

Before you apologize or recant there has to be something of substance or semi-substance to "digest".

Speaking of recanting, can wine be put back in the bottle without damage? Just curious.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

I was trying to post a link to a video outtake from "Candelabra." But the thing was so deeply embedded in some other article that I ended up posting a link to some screed about how Queen Elizabeth is actually NOT at all interested in gay rights in the Commonwealth. Or something like that.

Cant. Decant. Recant. Descant.

Repeat.

Which is odd, considering...

Choirmaster: "Why did you stop singing?"

Choir lady: "Well, it says 'Refrain.'"

[RA1]

You left out secant but then trig was not part and parcel of this discussion, was it?

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

Sine. Cosine. Resign.

I hated trig beyond all reason. Give me algebraic topology any day. Anything that features homology and homotopy groups blows my skirt up.

Never mind one of its founders being named Euler, pron. "Oiler."

[RA1]

Your "features" seem to have wonderful beginnings and blowing your skirt up sounds as if it could be fun.

Euler sounds like he could be fun at a party.

But, then, I was always easy.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

Scott Thorson: the lover Liberace remade in his own image

As the film Behind the Candelabra, starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, shows, Scott Thorson lived a life of wild excess with Liberace. Since the entertainer's death, Thorson's existence has been just as strange

This piece originally appeared in the New York Times

• David Segal
• The Observer, Saturday 25 May 2013

Soon after moving into Liberace's gaudy Las Vegas mansion in 1977, Scott Thorson, then a teenage hunk in the foster care system, learned that the jewel-smitten showman could love just as extravagantly as he decorated. Touring the premises before their relationship began, Liberace pointed out some decorative highlights, which included 17 pianos, a casino, a quarry's worth of marble and a canopied bed with an ermine spread. On the ceiling was a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel with Liberace's face painted among the cherubs.

When the pair became a couple, Liberace, who was 40 years older, was just as excessive. He couldn't bear to let Thorson out of his sight.

"We were at a hotel in Florida, and Liberace had the manager give us another suite, with windows that faced the beach," said Thorson, now 54. "He knew I'd be near the water and he wanted to be able to look at me."

Liberace even wanted Thorson nearby when he worked. So for years, Thorson would don a chauffeur's costume covered in rhinestones and drive "Mr Showmanship" on stage in a bejewelled Rolls-Royce. Thorson would stop the car, then open the door for Liberace, who would emerge in a fur coat with a 16ft train.

This routine, which ran for years at the Las Vegas Hilton, is recreated in a forthcoming movie, Behind the Candelabra, which is based on Thorson's autobiography of the same name and stars Matt Damon as Thorson and Michael Douglas as Liberace. The film debuts tonight in the US on HBO and opens in cinemas in the UK on 7 June. One person who might miss the movie's debut is Scott Thorson. He is an inmate at the Washoe county jail in Reno, Nevada, and while the place has its share of amenities – including television – HBO isn't one of them.

Thorson has been held there since February, when he was charged with burglary and identity theft, after buying about $1,300 worth of computer and mobile-phone merchandise, using a credit card and licence that weren't his. He was arrested at the Ponderosa hotel, where he and a man he had just met rented a room for $33.90 a night.

Changed man: Scott Thorson inside Washoe county jail. Photograph: David Calvert/New York Times/Redux/eyevine

"We get a lot of the dregs of Reno, a lot of prostitutes, drug dealers," said Eric Pyzel, a clerk at the Ponderosa, where a nearby bumper sticker reads: "Welcome To Our Country. Just Do It Legally." "The cops are by pretty often. So when they got here it was kind of like, OK, what is it this time?"

On a recent Friday morning at the jail, Thorson was sitting in a small room of white cinder blocks, empty but for a sink and a wall-mounted dispenser of disinfectants. Two officers hovered. Not for the first time in his troubled life, he vowed to clean up.

"This experience has scared me straight," he said, in a slightly nasal tone that sounds vaguely like Liberace. "There comes a time when you've got to take responsibility. You've got to stop lying and face your mistakes."

It's hard to connect this tired and anxious man in a blue prison shirt to the beefcake grinning in photographs in the late 70s. Time, an on-off meth addiction, several stints in prison and what he describes as stage 3 colon cancer have taken their toll. Another reason he looks different: the chin implant is gone. Thorson had it removed in an attempt to reverse one of the creepier episodes in the history of plastic surgery. Early in their relationship, Liberace plucked an oil painting of himself from a room in his Las Vegas mansion and asked a visiting doctor to reshape Thorson's face to look like Liberace's as a young man.

Liberace wanted a toy boy and a son. With sex and fatherhood disturbingly entwined, Thorson wound up with a new chin, a nose job and enhanced cheekbones.

"I was 17 years old," he said, explaining why he went along with a plan that sounds so lunatic. "Liberace had taken me out of a situation with a father who was very abusive, a mother who was mentally ill. I did everything I possibly could to please this man."

The two went on shopping sprees, travelled first-class and spent a lot of quality time with Liberace's shar-peis. Thorson was showered with gifts, including mink coats, an assortment of baubles and a Chevrolet Camaro. They entertained celebrities such as Debbie Reynolds and Michael Jackson.

But it all ended abruptly in 1982. That year, Liberace had members of his retinue forcibly eject Thorson from his penthouse in Los Angeles. It was a break-up caused, in part, by Thorson's drug habit, which he says he developed trying to slim down, at Liberace's urging, on what was called the "Hollywood diet," a cocktail of doctor-prescribed drugs that included pharmaceutical cocaine.

Thorson later sued for $113m in palimony, ultimately losing a highly public battle fought both in court and in the tabloids. He settled in 1986 for $95,000, according to reports at the time.

There was a deathbed reconciliation before Liberace died of a disease caused by Aids in 1987. And that is where Behind the Candelabra ends. But Thorson's life went on, and as he explained in a series of interviews, both in person and via a jail-monitored version of Skype, many of the events that followed are as strange as the ones that came before.

The trick is separating the strange from the unbelievable.

"His approach to communicating with people is always to play it in a manner that reflects best on him," said Oliver Mading, the man Thorson calls his adoptive father as well as his manager. One evening recently, Mading was sitting in the living room of his home a few miles from Reno's downtown. Sitting nearby was his stepson, Tony Pelicone, who met Thorson through a mutual friend a decade ago in Palm Springs, California.

At best, these men sounded deeply ambivalent about being enmeshed in Thorson's life.

"He's not a bad person," said Pelicone, who has a swirl of brown-blond hair and a cigarette habit. "He's just twisted and kind of cutthroat."

Mading: "He'd sell his mother – "

"Then he gives you that smile," said Pelicone, interrupting.

The two admit that much of what they know about Thorson's biography they learned from Thorson and that, at the very least, he has an aversion to telling his life story as a coherent, easy-to-follow chronology. During interviews at the Washoe county jail, Thorson was often evasive and moody, deflecting questions about his past to rage against the people who have declined to put up the $15,000 in bail he says he needs to get out of jail.

"All these people are getting rich from my story," he fumed, "and here I sit."

Earlier this month, he pleaded guilty and asked to enter a rehabilitation programme. He could face as little as probation with a suspended prison sentence to two to 30 years and combined fines of up to $110,000.

What's indisputable is that Scott Thorson is no longer named Scott Thorson. He is now known as Jess Marlow, a change Thorson says occurred when he entered the federal witness protection program as the star witness in the 1989 prosecution of an infamous Los Angeles character named Eddie Nash.

Nash shows up in the book and movie as Mr Y, described as a drug dealer with ties to organised crime who made headlines for allegedly ordering the so-called Wonderland murders, a grisly quadruple homicide that took place two days after Nash's home was robbed of money and drugs in 1981. (The crime is named after 8763 Wonderland Avenue, where the killings took place.)

Nash purportedly learned who had committed the robbery after his underlings beat up porn star John Holmes, an acquaintance of Nash's who later admitted to helping the robbers enter Nash's home.

A fictionalised version of these events turns up in Boogie Nights, with a Nash-inspired figure played by a Speedo- and robe-wearing Alfred Molina.

‘Mr Showmanship’: Liberace in his $55,000 marble bath in 1978. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Thorson says that Nash became a drug source for him in the early 80s and that he later became a partner in Nash's club business. At some point, the two fell out and, by 1988, Thorson was reportedly in a Los Angeles jail for an assortment of charges. There, he says, he was offered leniency by the district attorney's office in exchange for testifying that he happened to be at Nash's home when thugs pummelled John Holmes – which, if true, would make Thorson a kind of Zelig of the Awful. Eleven members of the jury voted to convict. One held out. Nash later admitted to bribing that lone juror, and in 2001, he struck a plea bargain in which he was sentenced to 37 months in prison for racketeering.

Now, in his early 80s, Nash is a free man. And he would like to make it clear that he and Thorson were never partners.

"No, no, he worked for me," Nash said on the telephone. "When Liberace dumped him, he had nothing. He was on the streets. So I took him in, and he worked at the house. He was good for cleaning. Because I lived with eight girls at the time. Beautiful girls. College girls. It was safe to have Thorson around because he is gay. I had a gay cook, too."

Thorson claims that after the trial, marshals in the federal witness protection programme moved him to Florida and gave him a new name. "They had to keep me safe because there was a contract placed on my life by Eddie Nash," he said during one interview.

"It started with the marshals taking me to different locations around the country for seven to 10 days, to make sure no one was following," he said. "Texas, Alaska, Seattle."

It's an intriguing narrative plot point – man forced to get a new face is later forced to take on a new identity. But the story sounds highly improbable to Bill Keefer, a former federal marshal in the witness protection programme. He has doubts because of where Thorson eventually landed: at a Christian-based homeless shelter in Tallahassee, Florida, called the Haven of Rest.

"How much protection could the marshals provide a guy at a homeless shelter?" Keefer asked.

At the Haven of Rest, Thorson found religion. And, instead of striving for invisibility, he shared his life story in front of church congregations. He says that he became a popular evangeliser, even appearing on a Pat Robertson TV show.

"He would share his testimony about his life with Liberace," said Danny Heaberlin, who ran Haven of Rest at the time. "We had pictures of him with Liberace, because the story was so out there, nobody would believe it otherwise."

Thorson says an east coast mafia don gave him assurances that he needn't worry about Nash. True or not, Thorson was unable to stay on the side of the angels for long. After three years at the Haven of Rest, he says, he started using drugs again, and in 1991, was shot in a room at a Howard Johnson hotel in Jacksonville. Local reports described the crime as a robbery committed by a crack dealer.

"They thought he was going to die," Heaberlin said, "but he kept living and living."

While he was recovering, a life-changing event occurred: a woman from Maine named Georgianna Morrill came to visit. Thorson would later claim she had seen him on TV, spreading the gospel, but that is not how Morrill remembers it.

"I read Behind the Candelabra, and I saw the photo on the back of the book and I heard the Lord tell me to pray for this guy," she said, speaking from her apartment in South Portland, Maine. "I thought, I don't even know this man. But I'm a Christian, and, when God tells you to pray for someone, you do."

She found Thorson through a Pentecostal friend and soon after the two met, she invited him to live with her in a tiny two-storey red house in Falmouth, Maine. Thorson accepted. He stayed for the next 12 years.

It was the second time that he found refuge in someone else's life, but Falmouth was a long way from Vegas, and Morrill was no Liberace. There were periods of domestic calm, with Thorson cleaning up around the house and collecting disability payments that he was eligible for after the shooting. But Morrill wanted to get married, despite all the evidence that the match was a terrible idea. The couple had sex once, she recalls.

"That was enough," she said with a giggle.

Thorson's homosexuality wasn't the only impediment. He drank a lot, and when he did he would sometimes "get stupid", in Morrill's words, prompting her to call the police. Still, she held out hope that one day he would propose. And one day, he did, but with a ring with a pearl on top that she somehow knew he had purchased with a stolen credit card.

"I said to him, 'I'm looking for a diamond ring and one that you paid for yourself,"' she said, laughing. "He got pretty mad that I didn't want it."

Morrill speaks with a note of nostalgia about those strife-ridden years. It's a note you won't hear when you discuss the subject with Thorson.

"Horrible!" he said of his Maine phase. "It was so boring. I hated the weather. Five feet of snow. It was too quiet. I had to get the hell out of there."

Thorson moved to Palm Springs, where he would be arrested a handful of times for stealing groceries and drug possession, among many other charges. Early in this era, he met Tony Pelicone.

"I recently learned that he came by our house to meet someone I was dating," Pelicone said. "Later his house burned and nobody was there to pick him up. So I did, thinking he'd stay for a few days. That turned into 10 years."

Initially, Pelicone was thrilled to meet Liberace's ex, and he introduced Thorson to his mother and stepfather, Oliver Mading.

Mading, a businessman with a background in packaged foods, says he negotiated the Behind the Candelabra movie deal with the producer Jerry Weintraub while Thorson was in prison on drug charges. After his release, Thorson spent his cut of the movie earnings – just under $100,000 – in about two months, mostly on cars and jewellery.

"We always knew Jess without money," Mading said, referring to Thorson by his assumed name. "Not that $100,000 is King Midas's trove, but Jess burned through it like a complete idiot."

Thorson says he's now penniless because of outlays for cancer treatment. The truth is almost beside the point. An assortment of siblings and half-siblings want nothing to do with him, Mading says. His only real assets today are the intangibles that Liberace bequeathed him, most notably, a peculiar place in showbiz history as the kid that Liberace once adored and tried to remake in his image.

"There's always been a love-hate relationship," Thorson said when asked to describe his feelings about Liberace today. "At that time, I was so honored to be in his presence. And I didn't want to go back to my lifestyle in the foster homes, which was pure hell."

Their years together scarred him, he says, and partly explain the troubles that followed. But those years were also the happiest of his life. So although he removed the chin implant, he also had a tribute to Liberace tattooed on his forearm. He rolls up the sleeve of a grey thermal undershirt to reveal an inky cluster of curlicued letters and symbols. In the middle is Liberace's name, surrounded by floating musical notes, plus the years that Liberace lived and a yellow rose.

"His favourite flower," Thorson said matter-of-factly, rolling his sleeve back down.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/may/26/liberace-scott-thorson-behind-candelabra?INTCMP=SRCH

[RA1]

Very sad.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

Truly. I hadn't previously seen any one article that laid it all out like this one.

[AdamSmith]

Liberace: the 10 things you need to know

Off to see Behind the Candelabra this weekend? Get up to speed with our Liberace primer

Liberace was always going to be in showbiz

He became a pianist, vocalist, actor and WWF announcer (more on that later), but Liberace was born Władziu Valentino Liberace (or just "Lee" to his friends), which is a slightly more showy name than, say, Reginald Dwight.

Mind you, his older brother was called George, signalling that his parents knew they had to step it up name-wise if they wanted a showbiz breakthrough.

All the signs of his genius were there from an early age

Liberace was born with a caul, which, as you well know, is a piece of birth membrane that remains on the head and was thought to be an omen that the child was destined for amazingness. Other famous "caul-ists" include Lord Byron, Napoleon and, erm, James Iha, who used to be in the Smashing Pumpkins.

He wasn't exactly a classical music purist

A prodigious talent, Liberace learned to play the piano at the age of four and was able to memorise difficult classical pieces by the time he was seven. By the time he started touring America in the early 1940s, his flair for improvisation and a good pull quote emerged after he claimed he'd only play "classical music with the boring parts left out".

Like most musical megastars, Liberace struggled to make the move into film

At the height of his fame, Liberace was keen to move into film, starring in his first movie, Sincerely Yours, in 1955 for Warner Brothers. Rumours are that Doris Day was initially asked to be his leading lady, but the idea was scrapped because the studio felt Liberace's name alone would be enough to sell it. In the end the film performed so badly that Warner bought out the remainder of his contract.

He found a more receptive home on TV

Ignoring a career on the radio because no one could see him on the wireless, Liberace went straight to TV, landing his own show, prosaically called The Liberace Show, in 1952 (the show was broadcast in the UK and was apparently quite a big influence on a young Elton John). Perhaps his oddest TV appearance came in 1966 when he played a dual role as concert pianist Chandell alongside his evil twin, Harry, in the "slightly camp" TV version of Batman. The two episodes he starred in – The Devil's Fingers and Dead Ringer – were the highest-rated episodes in the show's history.

Liberace was adamant he wasn't gay and often sued people who claimed he was

With a penchant for ludicrous fur coats, diamanté-strewn two pieces and, at one point, a fetching purple rinse, Liberace hid his supposed heterosexuality well. In 1954 he announced his engagement to actress Joanne Rio, but the nuptials were swiftly curtailed by her father, who was put off by rumours about Liberace's sexuality. In 1959 the Daily Mirror referred to Liberace as "a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love". He promptly sued them, winning £8,000 in damages, and telling reporters he "cried all the way to the bank".

He wasn't comfortable with being bald

According to a TV documentary released in 2001, Liberace was so traumatised by his hair loss that he would sleep wearing one of his many hairpieces, and apparently once almost refused to undergo a planned facelift after the doctor asked him to remove his toupee.

He was apparently quite the fan of the World Wrestling Federation

In 1985 Liberace appeared as the guest timekeeper at the first ever WrestleMania, joining other guests Muhammad Ali and dance company the Rockettes. Wrestlers scoring wins on the night included the Junkyard Dog, André the Giant and Hulk Hogan.

He had his own museum

In 1978 Liberace opened his own museum, the Liberace Museum, which housed many of his pianos, cars, jewellery and costumes. At its peak, the museum brought in an average of 400,000 patrons a year. One specific exhibit was devoted to fan tributes and included a Steinway piano made out of 10,000 toothpicks. The museum closed in 2010.

Liberace's last meal was breakfast cereal

Liberace died on 4 February 1987 from an Aids-related illness. According to his cook, his last meal consisted of Cream of Wheat hot cereal (it's sort of like porridge), made with half-and-half milk and seasoned with brown sugar.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2013/jun/07/liberace-10-things-to-know?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-4%20Pixies:Pixies:Position15