Liberace at Home: Inside the Larger-Than

For Liberace, style was substance. Yes, the pianist was once the world’s highest-paid nightclub performer and had a unique musical talent. (He became famous for playing, in his own words, “classical music with the boring parts left out.”) But Liberace was perhaps most beloved for his sassy patter with the audience, over-the-top costumes, and unforgettable performance style—which often involved him being driven onto the stage in a Rolls-Royce. The entertainer, who described himself both as “Mr. Showmanship” and “a one-man Disneyland” was born Wladziu Valentino Liberace to Polish and Italian immigrants in West Allis, Wisconsin. He grew up poor during the Depression and helped support his family by playing piano in saloons. Fleeing his parents’ acrimonious divorce, the narrow-minded neighbors who mocked him for practicing piano, and the humble homes of his childhood (his mother ran a grocery store out of one), Liberace went on to become Las Vegas headliner and a television star. He bought homes in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Palm Springs and decorated them in his own inimitable style. As Scott Thorson, who claimed to be Liberace’s lover, wrote in his memoir Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace, “crocheted pillows were a strange contrast to the decorator sofas, inexpensive paintings clashed with walls covered by French silk moiré, blown-glass souvenirs cheapened priceless commodes.… Years later I would know that the theme was palatial kitsch.” In the press, Liberace carefully developed a narrative of his life as a bachelor and never publicly acknowledged his alleged homosexuality; the performer even successfully sued a British tabloid for libel when they hinted at his private life. But beyond the headlines, the entertainer’s homes were a refuge where he could live life on his own terms, surrounded by his own decadent design choices—mirrored walls, piano-shaped pools, and all. In life and in decorating, he followed and often quoted the advice of his good friend Mae West: “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.” These 10 images capture just a taste of the maximalist fever dream that was Liberace’s home life. Piano man By 1953, having hit it big on television with The Liberace Show, “Lee” (as friends called him) moved from his starter home in North Hollywood to a mansion he had built on Valley Vista Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, California. Working with an architect, “I contributed my own ideas all the time,” biographer Darden Asbury Pyron, author of Liberace: An American Boy, quotes him as saying. “I made little sketches of the things I wanted. I picked out everything, from hardware to furniture.” True to “Mr. Showmanship” form, Liberace leaned into his signature theme. There were piano-shaped planters, pianos etched into the bottoms of lamps, and miniature pianos on shelves punctuated by piano bookends—and of course, there was the $10,000 Baldwin Concert Grand with a clear plastic lid pictured in this 1954 photo. Family gathering Liberace seldom played piano for fun; having practiced so much in his childhood and showing up for two nightly performances when he was on the Vegas circuit was enough for him. But he made an exception for the second wedding of his sister Angelina in 1955. Here, the siblings are shown at the reception, held at Liberace’s home. Their brother George, a bandleader and violinist who often appeared onstage with Lee, accompanies him on the violin. Their mother and all three of the entertainer’s siblings eventually moved near Liberace’s Sherman Oaks compound. Here, the home’s piano theme is visible in the key-studded wallpaper. Making merry Liberace went all out decorating his Sherman Oaks home for Christmas in 1955—note Santa playing a neon piano, topped with Lee’s signature candelabra, over the door. The spectacle came with sound as well as light, with Liberace piping music through the door. In Liberace: An Autobiography, the musician attributed his “extra special love” for the holidays to “my childhood lean years when we always had to pull ourselves up by our financial bootstraps and enjoy some of the things we had deprived ourselves of all year.” During the Depression, his mother, who worked for a time at a cookie factory, brought the reject baked goods home for decorating. House tour In 1956, Liberace welcomed journalist Edward R. Murrow into his home for an episode of the CBS celebrity interview program Person to Person. In the performer’s bedroom, the bed—featuring an upholstered bed frame shaped like a grand piano and topped with a monogrammed coverlet—stole the show. A side table holds a lamp shaped like Liberace’s trademark candelabra. Inspired by the Chopin biopic A Song to Remember, which depicted the 19th-century virtuoso playing candelabra-accessorized pianos, the Vegas headliner started a tradition of placing one atop the piano before a performance. Pool dude The music-inspired bedroom was basic compared to Liberace’s piano-themed pool, where much of the Person to Person interview took place. Shaped like the lid of a grand piano, its shallow end was lined with black-and-white painted “keys.” The house became so famous that passersby often stole the piano decorations right off the mailbox. This lack of privacy and security (especially after his mother was attacked by strangers on-site) led the entertainer to put the house on the market in 1959 and head for the Hollywood Hills. Liberace installed pools at all his homes, but, Thorson claimed, the performer never swam in them because he wore a toupee and feared “his wig might come off underwater.” A house in the hills “I’ve always been fascinated by the carpet of lights that is the international trademark of the sprawling city of Los Angeles,” Liberace wrote in his autobiography. But he wasn’t just looking for a room with a view. “I wanted a house with some history, some color, some background,” he explained. He found all of that in a 1920s Hollywood Hills development called Hacienda Estates. The mansion on Harold Way overlooked the Sunset Strip, was once owned by movie star Rudy Valleé, and was said to be haunted. The musician, shown here admiring his view in 1971, refurbished it into the 28-room, three-story marvel that his family members called “the palace.” The Olympic-size pool was heated, the garden was studded with statues, and there was a piano once owned by Chopin on display in the golden foyer. The pool bar, naturally, was painted to look like piano keys. According to a filmed tour he gave in 1972, Lee’s favorite possessions in the house were two candelabras once owned by “Mad King” Ludwig II of Bavaria. “He claimed to feel a deep psychic connection to Ludwig,” wrote Thorson. On the road again His hair (real or not) is grayer, his carpet is shaggier, but one thing has stayed constant in this 1971 snapshot: the piano-shaped bed, which apparently traveled with Liberace from Sherman Oaks to the Hollywood Hills. Liberace loved decorating and shopping so much that he opened an antique store, a museum, and a restaurant called Tivoli Gardens to help showcase his finds over the years. Here, the musician is shown packing for his upcoming tour. Soaking it in In 1976, Liberace bought two mansions in Las Vegas and combined them (via what biographer Darden Asbury Pyron called “a huge crystal passageway”) into a 10,500-square-foot, 20-room compound. There was a Moroccan room with a blue tiled floor and a stuffed peacock, a portrait of Liberace painted in the style of the Sistine chapel on the ceiling of the primary bedroom, and a $55,000 marble bathtub with swan spigots. Liberace bathed for the cameras of a 1978 TV special that made lighthearted fun of his over-the-top lifestyle. Though it fell into disrepair after Liberace’s death, the Liberace Mansion—as the Shirley Street compound is now called—was restored by its current owner, who offers private tours and accepts bookings for events. Dressed to dazzle “I support the entire Austrian rhinestone business,” Liberace is quoted as having told Thorson in Behind the Candelabra. The entertainer was known for his over-the-top ensembles including sequins, lamé, and a $300,000 fox-fur coat with a 16-foot train. According to Thorson, Liberace, shown here in 1978 decked out in sequins, toured with 54 trunks’ worth of costumes, which often cost him more than half a million dollars a year—of course, those would have been categorized as work expenses per his contract, which specified he had to rotate outfits and couldn’t wear last year’s getup to this year’s gig. Mirrors were to Liberace’s homes what sequins were to his clothes. His mansion on Shirley Street in Las Vegas featured a “Hall of Mirrors” entryway, a living room lined in floor-to-ceiling mirrored panels, and a mirrored bar. Dog dad Liberace’s dogs had the run of his palatial homes and would even share the entertainer’s bed. “His favorite surprise was getting a new dog,” wrote Thorson, who noted that by the time he and Liberace broke up in March 1982, the performer “had accumulated a grand total of 26” canines. In this 1980 photo, the entertainer is shown with just a few of his four-legged friends at home in Palm Springs. He bought a 32-room abandoned hotel in 1967 and turned it into a getaway he called The Cloisters because of its monastery-like architecture. The Cloisters, which became his favorite home, is where he was living at the time of his death from complications of AIDS in 1987. His dogs loomed so large in Liberace’s life that two rumors circulated regarding his last words. One version quotes him saying, “I’ll soon be with you, Mother,” and the other: “Babyboy, I’ll soon be there to feed you”—a reference to the name of Liberace’s beloved deceased poodle.