The pianist Liberace was born on this date in 1919. 10 things you might not know about him:
His full name was Władziu Valentino Liberace but he was known as Lee to his friends and Walter to family.
He came from a musical family. Liberace's father played the French horn in bands and his mother had been a concert pianist. In spite of that the couple often argued because Liberace’s father wanted to encourage music in the family but his mother believed they couldn’t afford Music lessons and Record players. Nevertheless, Liberace started playing the Piano at the age of three, at first mostly copying what his older siblings were doing. His father soon worked out that he had a prodigy on his hands and enrolled him at the Wisconsin College of Music.
As a teen, Liberace played in clubs and entered competitions. He went by the stage name Walter Busterkeys. He switched to using his last name only in the 1940s, inspired by his idol, the Polish pianist Ignacy Paderewski, who only went by his last name.
Liberace was a showman whose shows included lots of gimmicks and lavish costumes. He stated that he played "classical music with the boring parts left out", and often included pop tunes within classical medleys. Hence the purist critics didn’t like him much and some of their reviews were harsh. Liberace was responsible for popularising the phrase “laughing all the way to the bank” in his response to one rather scathing review. It’s said he gravitated to a TV show rather than a Radio show because nobody could see him on the radio. In the UK, he was a considerable influence on a young man named Reginald Dwight (Elton John).
His home was as flamboyant as his costumes. His house in Sherman Oaks, California had a musical theme, including musical notes on the iron fence and a swimming pool built to look like a grand piano. He wasn’t keen on the Toilet being the focus of a bathroom, either. He went as far as to design a loo that folded away into the wall and actually took out a patent on it.
He appeared in the 1960s TV version of Batman, the episodes The Devil's Fingers and Dead Ringer, in which he played a concert pianist and his evil Twin. Those episodes were the highest rated episodes of the series ever. Interesting to note at this point that Liberace was himself an identical twin, but his twin brother died at birth.
Liberace lost his Hair in middle age, and was so traumatised by being bald that he’d never remove his toupee, even in bed at night. It’s even said that he called a halt to a planned face lift because the doctor wanted him to take the wig off.
If he’d not been a pianist, Liberace might have found fame as a celebrity chef. He loved food and cooking and owned a restaurant in Las Vegas called Tivoli Gardens. In the 1970s he published a book called Liberace Cooks! which featured recipes for pierogi, squid casserole, braised oxtails, and calves’ brains in black butter.
In 1955 he starred in a movie called Sincerely Yours, about a successful concert pianist who goes deaf. It was a big flop, and some years later Liberace would comment “I’ve done my part for motion pictures—I’ve stopped making them.”
He vehemently denied being gay and would sue any newspaper that implied as much. 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. If he needed a female date for an event, he’d often take along Betty White, a close friend who knew the score. Liberace died at the age of 67 from AIDS-related pneumonia.
New!!!
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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