Liberace

LIBERACE (a note)

Al Capone, Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel were all early Liberace fans.  Others included Cary Grant, who would go to Liberace’s shows once or twice a year and visited him backstage without fail.  Clearly a man with a taste for a rich mixture, Lord Montagu had Liberace and Michael Jackson to dinner on the same occasion.  Friends who were allowed to visit Liberace at home soon learned not to expect him to play any of his many pianos—including one once owned by Chopin—for them: ‘he performed only for money, not for pleasure’.  The reason he gave for denying the nature of his final illness was: ‘I don’t want to be remembered as an old queen who died of AIDS’.

Source:

Scott Thorson & Alex Thorleifson, Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace (New York: Knightsbridge, 1990), pp.84, 2.