Glass Closet

Hey true weirdos at the end of this episode stick around if you want for a little bonus content and conversation The joke goes like this Liberace arrives at the pearly gates and st. Peter says I think we might have a little problem here Our records indicate Liberace that you once bit the head off a live parakeet at one of your concerts And Liberace says no no no st. Peter now. You're thinking of Ozzy Osbourne now. I might have had a cockatoo Ha ha ha ha no one would have laughed harder than Liberace himself the man you think of as a pompadour Candelabra toting piano playing cheeseball had to laugh his life Depended on it. He was a star and the price of stardom is so very high The cheering can turn the jeering in a heartbeat Because we create the stars. They are ours to worship and destroy Weird stuff Liberace the gifted pianist singer actor and king of over-the-top Gilded bedazzled ruffled satin shirts and lofty pompadour flamboyance I bet your grandma's and great-grandma's all had a big old crush on the man God knows mine did Liberace was everything the men in her life weren't Debonair dripping in diamond rings Surrounded by candelabras and culture with a wink and a knowing smile Delighted by his own suave charm Here was a man who cared about his appearance a man He knew what it meant to be sophisticated a man who appreciated beauty who knew how to talk to a woman an Artist and an icon and a dreamboat The impossible dream To be better far than you are To try when your arms are too weary to reach The unreachable star Guajo Valentino Liberace was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1919 it's a surprisingly homespun origin story for an entertainer who seemed to have stepped fully grown and Fully dressed out of some Hollywood fantasy of European culture Liberace who went by the much shorter and easier to pronounce Lee Didn't come from wealth or privilege He wasn't raised in a castle or on an estate His father Salvatore was a factory worker a laborer and a man filled to the brim with music Something he encouraged in all four of his children Liberace's mother Francis was also musical. She'd been a concert pianist before marrying and having children She was a pragmatic woman one who argued that the family's tight budget Couldn't be stretched far enough to cover both the basics and music lessons or record players and records Salvatore wouldn't hear it to be poor was one thing to live a life without music would be a life of spiritual poverty a Life that he couldn't bear the couple fought bitterly over money, but in the end Salvatore prevailed You

Lee was just four years old when he started playing the piano There was no denying that the kid was some kind of prodigy by age seven He was studying at the Wisconsin College of Music and playing complex classical compositions from memory He had a talent for pop music. He could play by ear He was a beautiful child and clearly gifted though his health was fragile Between medical bills and music lessons these needs strained every resource the family had But you only had to hear the child play the piano to know that this was real talent This is something special The bullying started early Lee was a sensitive artistic child who didn't care for playing outdoors. He didn't want to get dirty They called him a sissy and a mama's boy Teased and tormented by his peers we found other ways to entertain himself when he wasn't practicing music He learned to sell and to cook activities heavily coded as female back then Not so much has changed about that if we're honest Gender stereotypes are harder to kill than Michael Myers By age 10 Lee had begun having crushes on some of his male teachers Feeling confused was the least of it. The boy was terrified that he was mentally ill You can't chalk that up to childish misunderstanding Homosexuality was considered a form of mental illness. It was 1973 before the American Psychiatric Association removed the diagnosis of homosexuality from the second edition of its Diagnostic and statistical manual the DSM it took until 1990 for the World Health Organization to remove it from the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems or the ICD For ten-year-old Liberace his crush on another male was a sign of insanity Not to mention the fact that it was illegal prior to 1982 when Wisconsin became the first state to offer anti-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians Homosexuality was a crime a person found guilty of being gay could be fired from their job Evicted from their housing or denied housing altogether Banks could deny you credit those accused of homosexuality accused could also be denied a driver's license or a passport No matter how honorable your service the military could kick you to the curb Police could raid your home or hotel room without a warrant, but by Fourth Amendment You could be arrested Once arrested you could be forced into psychiatric treatment And if you failed to be cured of your homosexuality You could be institutionalized Forced sterilization shades of Nazi Germany was a thing that could and did happen to hundreds of male inmates in Wisconsin alone between the years 1973 and 1978 In historical terms, that's like ten minutes ago folks were watching the young and the restless on TV singing along to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Laughing at the movie Blazing Saddles most of them blissfully clueless about these unspeakable immoral punishments being doled out by the state cruel and barbaric Punishments served up for the crime of simply existing It's indefensible Now picture a ten-year-old boy living in Wisconsin in 1929 Can you see how having romantic feelings for another male might make him feel guilty and ashamed and terrified

To think at age 10 that you might be clinically insane That the next knock on the door might be the police coming to take you away from your home and your family But wait, you might be thinking It all turned out great for him, didn't it? He had fame and fortune everything anyone could wish for or dream of The homophobic hate police probably left him alone, right? Because he was like super famous and beloved and all that.

I get why you think that because being a celebrity today might just mean getting away with murder past the OJ But what happened to that sweet little boy that musical prodigy from Milwaukee? shameful and shocking Liberace made his hometown concert debut at age 11 by age 16 He was a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra He was well on his way to a career in classical music That alone was a stunning achievement and more than most aspiring musicians could dream of but Liberace early felt stifled Fanatically loyal as the audience for classical music is it's not a huge fandom By the time he was 21 Lee had a new vision for his future Nothing too crazy. Just you know become the world's greatest and most entertaining piano player. I Will be damned if he didn't do just that It all began in Las Vegas as if there might be any other place on earth more worthy of launching a career with Liberace All it took was one elegant sweep of the piano keys at the last Frontier Hotel and his star Exploded at the end of this first week. They doubled the Brachy's pay in 1944 getting your pay by the end of the first week was a big deal $1,500 a week was like you getting bumped up to almost $27,000 a week today by 1955 when the Riviera Hotel opened its doors star attraction Liberace was pulling down $50,000 a week and the Riviera was lucky to get him Liberace was a giant TV star by the name In the US and in 20 countries more than 35 million viewers tuned in every week to watch You People loved it, of course They did fan clubs sprang up all over the world with more than a quarter million registered members Liberace tailored every show to his fans and he knew just what they wanted Because he made it a priority to read as many of their letters as he possibly could And at his peak that mailbag was stuffed with up to ten thousand letters per week The Liberace show was a roaring success You can imagine how the press ate Liberace up they couldn't have dreamed up anything better if they tried they wrote about his clothes to the fur industry Santa looks like Liberace you bet he did Sporting a white virgin fox fur coat with a 16-foot train do that for a guy The White House press corps couldn't get enough of what Liberace wore to a cocktail party for President Eisenhower a light gray raw silk dinner suit with black satin shawl collar and lapels a ruffled white soft shirt with brocaded bowtie Studs the size of silver dollars a pocket handkerchief white edged with black lace And that was just for the mingling part of the evening when it came time to sit down at the piano Liberace changed into a golden silver lamé number with black alligator shoes Lush was the word reporters used

Liberace stage costumes were Magnificent creations studded with sequins and gemstones. It was opulence on the grandest scale Men Liberace once said to be sure that fans in the farthest seats had as flashy a view as the front row Of course not everyone was a fan of Liberace sparkle and dazzle a columnist for the Washington Daily News named Faye Emerson at this to say now I'm reasonably sure that Liberace is a nice man who loves his mother goes to church and gives to charity some of that money He's always taking to the bank and laughing about but if he doesn't want naughty things said about him He'd better start going to Brooks Brothers for his costumes instead of Christian Dior the naughty things Emerson hinted at were about Liberace sexuality, of course It didn't matter what Liberace wore though. The press would come for him anyway, and in the ugliest ways you can imagine Maybe all the press needed was an excuse and they got one in 1952 in Los Angeles Liberace had an older brother named George also musical George was a regular on Liberace TV show Working as both a violinist and as an orchestral arranger George loved the ladies and was married five times it was a scandal involving his third wife Jayne a Glowing gorgeous Hollywood blonde the catapulted Liberace from the entertainment section of the news to the front page Superstar Liberace abruptly found himself subpoenaed and made to testify in a wild-court case involving George and Jayne a Used car salesman named Harold Frank Declared that he had been the secret side action the love interest of Jayne both before and during her marriage to George But that wasn't all Frank also claimed that the Liberace brothers had launched a campaign of terror against him Frank said both Liberace brothers had intimidated and threatened him Frank said he feared terrible violence at their hands Girl, what this man is saying that Liberace The Liberace went all thug life on Will be better for this That one man Scored and covered scars still strong with his last ounce of courage to reach The unreachable star You Yes however unbelievable that might seem Harold Frank rolled into a California courtroom and accused Liberace of being a scary menace The filing was loaded with allegations about meetings and apartments and what they used to call hot motels or love motels You have to remember now that not only was Liberace a star he was a television star in the 1950s Beamed into American homes every week. It wasn't just expected that he'd maintain a wholesome image It was required Well, George Liberace fought back hard. He and his wife Jayne filed a 1.2 million dollar counter suit Insisting that every word Harold Frank said was a dirty lie. Oh, what a delicious scandal

Accusations of the Liberace brothers hiring private detectives to stalk the car dealer talk of beatings Though to be fair if Liberace punched you in the face wearing all those chunky rings it'd do some damage for sure The legal documents in this case are wild. The girl Jayne is physically nuts about me She was with me in three motels before her marriage She came up to me two days after she was married her own brother-in-law brought her to me Whoa, dude was Harold Frank complying that Liberace act at the part of a pimp Our Liberace would never stoop so low. The man was a megastar for crying out loud But if it wasn't him who then?

Liberace did have an identical twin brother who died tragically at birth Which leaves us with Jayne's brother Charles Shields and the other Liberace brother Rudy Rudy Liberace worked as a film editor for MGM Studios and battled addiction for most of his life. His story had a bitter end Rudy died of liver failure age 36 all alone in a motel in Culver City, California And George and Jayne didn't fare much better Their marriage didn't survive the scandal They were in the process of divorcing in May 1960 when tragedy struck hard Jayne Liberace was a passenger in a single-engine plane flying from Las Vegas to Van Nuys Plane vanished brought down. It was believed by bad weather The passengers were declared dead on July 6th of that year But wreckage of the plane wasn't found until November 29th 1960 nearly six months later Tacky lurid Scandalous and now the gloves were off Reporters harassed Liberace's mother Frances She lived with her superstar son in a lavishly decorated mansion in Sherman Oaks There was a backyard swimming pool Shaped like a piano and painted in black and white an iron fence on the side of the home was decorated with musical notes There was a dramatic fountain in the front that played music as water cascaded over plump stone cherubs At Christmas the Liberace home was so spectacularly lit and decorated That the honorary mayor of Sherman Oaks complained about traffic jams caused by fans Liberace reveled in their adulation He was the highest-paid entertainer in the world, but he didn't hide behind high walls or locked gates His home like his costumes and his persona were meant to be seen and admired He courted the attention but humanity We just can't have nice things. Can we? No No, our impulse to create is matched by our impulse to destroy on Thursday night, July 18th 1957 two masked and hooded men Attacked 60 year old Frances Liberace in the garage of the home. She shared with her famous son She tried to flee but they caught her in the kitchen Striking her and throwing her to the floor and kicking her until she lost consciousness Savage police investigated and at first said that they couldn't find any motive for the attack Frances was badly hurt alive Nothing had been stolen Why would anyone anyone want to hurt Liberace's mother?

well Could it be that Liberace had just sued the gossip magazine confidential for 20 million dollars Confidential thrived on scandal and there was no juicier scandal than the love lives of celebrities The magazine went after Liberace in a big way in July 1957 confidential featured Liberace on its cover with the headline Why Liberace's theme song should be mad about the boy inside the magazine Horton Streete called Liberace fat so and pudgy and spun a Jaw-dropping tale about how Liberace brutally attacked a young male press agent for sex Liberace resplendent in a frilly white lace shirt with red polka dots Minced down the ramp from the plane as news photographers crowded around one of the curvy cuties planted a kiss on his dimpled cheek That's so managed to flash a toothy smile for the cameras, but his heart clearly wasn't in it He had just been introduced to the young publicity man and was getting ideas arriving at the Sheraton Mayflower Hotel He wasted no time in persuading the press agent to join him in his suite for a drink The latter went along with the invite figuring it was his job to keep dimples happy He had no idea that in a few short minutes He would be fighting for his honor and so it was in all innocence that he informed his host Whatever you want I'm your boy with a little coup of delight the beaming Liberace promptly threw his arm around the flax shoulders and simpered that I like So you have to know that Liberace was far from confidential's first target They went after Robert Oppenheimer. And if you're gonna talk smack about the father of the atom bomb What hope does a piano player have but their Liberace issue was deemed so aggressive and foul That it was banned from being distributed in California The scene that followed had all the lively action and wild comedy of a TV wrestling match with a few things added Dimples clamped on a headlock his victim fought to keep from being pinned, but he was at a disadvantage For one thing he was outweighed for another He needed a referee a referee certainly would have penalized the panting pianist for illegal holds Once during the scuffle the press agent let out a yelp of pain and no wonder for luscious Libby It was strictly no holds barred Finally with a sort of combination wrist lock and flying mare the publicity man rinsed loose from his host embrace and fled from the suite Leaving Liberace sprawled on the floor so according to the confidential magazine story the press agent was then ordered back to Hollywood two weeks later and reluctantly Reconnected with Liberace the pair had dinner and drinks at Trader Vic's until it closed after a visit to another spot They headed back to town with Libby at the wheel of his jazzy Cadillac with the black and white piano key upholstery He steered the car into Trader Vic's darkened parking lot and came to a stop Before the young press agent could make his escape He found himself playing a tune you might say on the upholstered piano keys a frantic little number called Let me go lover. He finally managed to break loose once more vowing profanely never again Liberace prevailed though the damage was done and Confidential was forced to settle every lawsuit against the magazine including Liberace's in July 1958 Liberace accepted $40,000 this was the largest payout the magazine ever had to make He instructed his attorneys to take whatever was left after court and legal costs were paid and donate it to charity Whatever relief Liberace felt once the confidential saga was over was short-lived. He was back in court again in 1959 this time suing the British tabloid the Daily Mirror a columnist named William Connor pen named Cassandra

Had thoroughly trashed Liberace They all say this deadly winking snickering snuggling chromium plated scent impregnated luminous Quivering giggling fruit flavored mincing ice-covered heap of mother Love has had the biggest impact on London since Charlie Chaplin this Appalling man, and I use that word appalling in no other way than the true sense of terrifying Without doubt he is the biggest sentimental vomit of all time slobbering over his mother Winking at his brother and counting the cash at every single second this superb piece of calculating Candy floss has an answer for every situation Okay, then you can sure cut the homophobia with a diamond encrusted blade the mirror polished off its Anti-liberace screed this way there must be something wrong with us that our Teenagers longing for sex our middle-aged matrons fed up with sex alike should fall for such a sugary mountain of jiggly Claptrap wrapped up in such a preposterous clown It might help to know that the Daily Mirror was the kind of paper that not only printed hateful diatribes against celebrity But also argued stuff like fat girls have no business expecting to be married Nasty nasty and no one was nastier than William Connor aka Cassandra Time magazine described him as having the disposition of a rabid porcupine This was a guy who once declared that poodles ever guilty of prancing and mincing were the sort of dogs only prostitutes might own When he turned a sour attention to Liberace Connor had only ever watched an episode and a half of Liberace TV show before shredding the man in print It felt very personal to Liberace. He believed that Connor had one goal to brand him as a homosexual Liberace declared that his lawsuit was in response to Connors below-the-belt assault on his morality And he swore on his mother's health that morality is what brought him into that courtroom The 1959 trial was the talk of London Teenage girls wearing buttons with Liberace's photo formed long lines outside the courthouse The public gallery was packed with women Defendant Connor took the stand and argued that he was entitled to his opinions and free to publish them He testified that Liberace's flamboyance made him nauseous That his entire act was cloying and sickening because of what he was trying to convey Convey the gay in other words Connor also admitted that he knew his words would at minimum Lead his readers to see Liberace as an unworthy figure Connor maintained though that he never meant to suggest that Liberace was a homosexual But rather just a big foolish foppish clown Connors defense attorney suggested that the problem was not in what his client had written But in how his words were interpreted in America the lawyer Gerald Gardner Gamely argued that Connor was just saying that Liberace had too much sex appeal Quivering giggling fruit-flavored mincing ice-covered heap of mother love You gotta love a trial lawyer. You really do get in there and earn that paycheck See so much of this case revolved around that one line fruit flavored Connor feigned ignorance at the notion that fruit was slang in the US for homosexual as For Liberace he denied being gay and in any case

Connor and the Daily Mirror were engaged in a campaign to harm his career and remember to Homosexuality was a crime at that time in the UK This was as big a deal as it gets this went beyond damaging Liberace's image or reputation This was a major publication Insinuating that the man was a criminal and a deviant It's clear as day in the judge's instructions to the jury the question of whether a man is a sexual Pervert is a matter of fact. Thus if one states on truthfully that a man is a Homosexual it is not a defense to then claim that one honestly Believed what he stated in other words according to judge Salmon If you're gonna call a man a fruit flavored mincing pile of vomit, he'd better be able to back that up with some facts Liberace was relentlessly grilled on the stand Some of the questioning might sound hilarious now, but there was nothing funny about the accusations Connors attorney demanded to know if Liberace was in the habit of using scented lotions How about scented deodorant? How about?

aftershave Was Liberace aware that when he entered a room he was accompanied by a noticeable odor Liberace replied very mildly under oath that he certainly did not agree that being clean fresh and well groomed Could be described as having an odor to the question of whether or not he was deliberately oozing sex appeal Liberace answered that sex appeal belonged to Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot And that he did not consider himself part of that club It was all so insane but deadly serious too and Just as he had with confidential magazine Liberace prevailed Minutes before the verdict was read one of the jurors a woman named mrs. Jean friend Smiled and winked at Liberace. He won his case against the Daily Mirror won the largest libel settlement ever awarded at that time in British history 198,000 pounds that's nearly a quarter million dollars in today's money Afterward Liberace joked that the case made him cry all the way to the bank a fabulous victory But Liberace's legal battles were far from over. He'd find himself back in court yet again in 1982 this time it was Liberace who was the defendant his former chauffeur Scott Thorson sued for a hundred and thirteen million dollars after being let go from his position 22 year old Thorson's lawsuit was for palimony like alimony, but in an unmarried live-in relationship Liberace again was forced to deny that he was gay and Once again a tabloid was involved this time It was the National Enquirer publishing a first-person account from Scott Thorson. It was ugly Thorson alleged that he had been in an intimate relationship with the pianist for six years starting when he was 17 a relationship that ended he said Liberace's assistants beat him up and tossed him out of a penthouse that he very much thought he now owned Thorson's lawsuit claimed that Liberace promised him $7,000 a month in exchange for services as Liberace's lover chauffeur bodyguard Confident and secretary. Oh, and yeah throw in some pet care at an additional $30,000 per year in exchange Thorson would also receive living accommodations half of several properties a Rolls-Royce an Auburn sedan and a Chevy van The judge in the case rolled his eyes and threw all of that out But he did rule that Thorson could pursue his lawsuit on claims of assault and battery breach of an earlier cash settlement agreement and the taking of Thorson's personal property infliction of emotional distress and interference with his economic opportunities Writing in 2013 for the UK paper The Telegraph a so-called friend of Liberace's named Michael Thornton Described what went down between the legend and Scott Thorson The two men lived together for four years with a relationship between Libby and boober their names for each other soon became acrimonious Thorson blamed this on Liberace's promiscuity and his obsession with pornography Liberace accused Thorson of addiction to cocaine carrying firearms through airports in his luggage and possessing a Jekyll and Hyde personality in April 1982 when Thorson caught Liberace with an 18 year old boy There was a violent altercation that resulted in Thorson being forcibly evicted from the pianist's home and the locks being changed Liberace might have spanked

Confidential magazine and thoroughly trounced the Daily Mirror But the National Enquirer was a whole nother kind of headache story after story exploded in its greasy pages Gleeful reporting on the alleged 400 page FBI file investigating Liberace's sexuality reports of illegal gambling The tabloid called Liberace a sex addict and accused him of having creepy man crushes The rag covered every moment of Thorson's palimony suit right up until the moment when it was settled out of court in 1986 Thorson got $75,000 in cash Three dogs and three cars A year later Liberace died at age 67 in his home in Palm Springs The stated cause of death was pneumonia, but the true cause was HIV AIDS Liberace had been diagnosed with the virus by his private physician and never sought treatment for it, nor did he reveal it Which was just fine as far as the National Enquirer was concerned Since the tabloid was busy printing stories about how Liberace was a sexual predator knowingly infecting other men with AIDS like a sequined serial killer Even after Liberace was long in his grave the Enquirer was still gleefully two-stepping on his bones Nothing, nothing would stop the endless speculation about his sexuality Not even his death It's easy to roll your eyes and dismiss Liberace as some cornball relic of another time He's somebody your grandmother liked bless her heart People giggled at Liberace's adoring female fans Thinking them clueless Not understanding his appeal How his elegance and charm were an antidote to the boorish and brutish behavior that might be waiting for them at home How it was romance they craved And romance was what Liberace offered Men jeered at what they saw as effeminate grandstanding but women They saw right through the extravagant spectacle to a man who doted on his mother They didn't see his silk suits as foppish But as sophisticated Liberace was dressing up for the them He was courting them Wooing them with his music with the warm sparkle in his eyes He went to all that effort just for them Because they deserved to be treated like they were special Liberace made them feel special The thing about Liberace that was both a great strength and an utter heartbreak is this his persona Was his best defense. It was a fortress built of silk and velvet and fur and jewels It was a caricature better than any disguise Liberace lived as one biographer wrote in a glass closet He was hiding but defiantly and in plain sight Mocking Liberace was nearly impossible. He always beat you to the punch line accusing him of flamboyance coded language Was just stating the obvious Calling him a mama's boy more coded language Was simply recognition that he was a loving son providing a home for his widowed mother When he was forced to defend his own setlist under oath What kind of a mortal freak segues from Ave Maria to the beer barrel polka the defense demanded to know?

He had a ready answer Music for Liberace Was a place where the sacred and the profane found common ground He played for the delight of his audience It was the reason he'd left a career in classical music behind So what if the critics jeered and booed? It was never for them Cornball relic or not The darker side of Liberace's story Doesn't belong to another time It belongs just as much to this time our time If you can draw a line from Liberace to Elton John to Freddie Mercury, and you definitely can Then go ahead and follow that same line from Homosexuality is a felony to don't ask don't tell to Florida's don't say gay Sure, it might feel like we've come a long way since Liberace was interrogated about wearing cologne But it turns out we haven't actually traveled very far at all So weird, isn't it?

our fixation and fascination with the private lives of other humans We say stuff like live and let live And then we don't We say stuff like judge not lest ye be judged And then we judge We feel entitled to hound the famous for every detail their personal lives on the grounds that they owe us We gave you stardom we think Now you give us everything we ask for in return And when our stars don't comply We attack We ruin people's lives We do what we say in the name of what is good and right As if warping goodness into hatred makes any sense at all Who knows how things might have played out had liberace been allowed to just be to be who he was from the very beginning So you're gay. So what lots of people are it's just one more aspect of being human Imagine that utopia You don't have to imagine it because it's looking like we're heading backward now back to the days when people were forced to hide and lie and Live their lives in perpetual fear of getting caught caught Being who they are caught Loving who they love People try to defend that bigotry in all sorts of ways Contort themselves into all sorts of tangled up knots When it would be so much easier and so much nicer and so much more civilized to just mind your business Isn't your own life more than you can handle some days?

Don't you want to be allowed to just live? Can't you give that same basic right to everyone else? I'll be seeing you In all the old familiar places That this heart of mine embraces All day through In that small cafe The park Across the way The children's carousel the chestnut tree The wishing well I'll be seeing you in every lovely Summer's day In everything that's warm and gay I'll always think of you that way I'll find you in the morning sun And when the night Is new I'll be looking At the moon, but i'll be seeing You Next time on true weird stuff you're on your way to work and you're in a car accident You're lucky to survive it, but you're pretty banged up. You're gonna need some surgery. So off you go to the hospital and nobody helps you and then Somebody comes toward you with a syringe and you discover they weren't just building atomic bombs during the cold war They were experimenting People on the next true weird stuff Special thanks to our voice actors on this episode. Ashley Palmer Fischer don morgan and our own doc Kary Bowser so max, I I want to start this by saying that Liberace was dogged with accusations of being a predator um, you know for decades and You're gonna have to make your own decisions about that. Um, one of the unfortunate stereotypes that has Traveled alongside being a gay man. Is that that predatory?

um stereotype and so Since we only have the word of Horton Streete writing for confidential magazine or scott thorson who was in and out of jail, you know after the liberace debacle I don't know I don't know, but I I do know this I do know that this man spent as much time Trying to not be convicted for the crime of being gay A conviction that carried with it all sorts of serious consequences including prison time As he did entertaining people And it's kind of disgusting and insane when you sit back and look at that, isn't it?

I like that term you had of the glass closet that he was he was hiding in in plain sight with it but I think the point was made this shouldn't have anything to do with what i'm doing. It just shouldn't But as you were saying people some for some reason I guess maybe part of this is to have a sense of superiority or whatever it is Uh people want to look at people's private lives, especially people who are stars and say that's not right and feel that they can Judge that in a really harsh way the the guy from the daily mirror Oh, let me just say I was telling my husband about william connor the cassandra columnist for the daily mirror Um, you know that expression, um hit dog hollers Right, the call is coming from inside the house. I've read a lot of william connor's columns and You want to talk about um, like I I don't know what was going on with the man But it sure felt like a serious case of projection Yeah And I think that was often the case with a lot of these people that came for Liberace and we see that even now, you know, like, uh, you'll have um a politician or a tv preacher Ranting about homosexuality only to get caught in a motel room You know with a an underage kid like the projection Is so strong And it really comes down to this and I know this is hard for a lot of people I can't imagine we have a bunch of crazy-ass bigots listening to this podcast, but It's hard for people to comprehend That it's none of your business and I know that one defense of this kind of hate criming and hate speech and bigotry is Well, my faith tells me to hate the sin, but love the sinner But gosh, you're awfully Selective about which sins you choose to hate. Do you hate people who eat shellfish because leviticus tells us that's a sin Did you hate the way your daddy used to punch your mama till her eyes were black and blue Or did you mind your business because you were trying to respect your your parents?

Like we are so choosy about which sins we decide to hate and which um Causes we decide are so worthy that we can destroy the lives of other human beings Like that's kind of gross and nonsensical To me and this man is an example a famous example a name Everyone knows even if you don't really know that much about his work or his backstory This is a man whose life was ruined over and over and over again by this Um, so I wanted I had an interesting little thing. I made a note about when you were doing this Do you know elvis also had a twin that died a child birth?

Did you know that? I did and isn't that interesting it is and so they say that when the twin dies at childbirth that the Remaining person gets all the talent. So it's kind of interesting. There was a famous picture of uh, elvis and liberace in the 1950s uh in 1950s Liberace was the biggest thing going on in las vegas as you you pointed out in this story and they tried to do that with Elvis, but his audience was too young for las vegas and he flopped out the first the first go that he had But there's a famous picture of elvis and liberace together, I I think elvis is like Elvis is at the piano, but it's sort of a famous picture that took place during that time I just there's an interesting connection between the uh between the two of them There are so many parallels and you know, it's uh, here's an interesting thing That's just going to infuriate elvis fans, but deal with I mean you got to live in reality people I don't like it any better than you do. I would love to be one of the my little ponies. Okay but like So you didn't you didn't vilify elvis for his sexuality when he clearly had a thing for little girls Teenage girls, he did. I mean there was some clear Shit going on with the king. Okay, and um, everyone wants to you know, kind of skip over that part because it was he was heterosexual and I mean hell we're living in a in a timeline where um some states are um Passing laws that allow child marriages, right? So, you know grown-ass man can marry a 13 year old girl. Y'all are sick Um, that is like some twisted stuff. We need to be better than that. And the fact that we aren't is terrifying So the the gay thing the gay thing really for some people is such a It's such a freaking thing that they can't get past That they are prepared to burn people's lives to the ground for the so-called crime or sin of of being gay and it's Devastating like it's it is a devastating state of being let me please remind you That in 1978 wisconsin was still forcibly sterilizing People for the crime of homosexuality. That's not that long ago. No I mean 1990 that the global world health organization was like, you know, what it turns out being gay is not a form of insanity 1990 A couple years later the internet came along like please do not act like these are the things of the olden days These are the things of this day These are the the the attitudes of this moment and here we are rolling backward You may be a cishet Person you may be a gender conforming heterosexual God guns and guts and good for you. Good for you. I'm glad that you're Peaceful and content in your life. But how do you think that gives you any right or justification whatsoever?

to weigh in on how other people are living you know, they're The idea that a person like this little boy this little musical prodigy in milwaukee at age 10 every knock on the front door Sent him into a spiral because he thought he was going to be taken away because he had feelings for other males How how the hell are you? Okay with that?

What? possible ideology Runs through your veins that makes you like yeah, that's how it should be homos Like it's so baffling to me What's your take max? Well as a as a As a gay friend of mine said one time he goes what's the selling point he'd be ostracized by your family He says why would I choose to do this? You'd be ostracized by your family and society And be scorned and looked down upon. He said oh, those are great selling points, you know Which is the thing that I don't think somebody Does choose to do that? I think that you if you're born that way then it's a short life find love wherever you can You just only have to look at your own You only have to look at your own experience as a human being in this world developmentally Um, when did you know that you were straight?

People always ask uh gay people that when did you know you were gay? Well, when did you know you were straight max? When did you know that you were straight? it's it's not like um It's just it's always been who you are Right, right. It's just it's like it's as much a part of you as your 10 fingers like it's not some thing and No one can make you gay just like no one can make you straight Well, you are who you are And I think for a lot of people they may have certain feelings But they also feel the pressure to do certain things from family and everything else and they think well Everybody must feel this so i'm just going to go ahead and do what everybody wants me to do as far as getting married That sort of thing I think it's a very complicated difficult issue and I don't think there are simple answers to um When you know something like that I have so many people in my life. Um who have Had their own struggle and experience. I have a dear friend who grew up in a very very um conservative and religious family and Um, he never can't he always knew that he was gay always knew He never came out his parents lived their whole lives and passed away Um with no official acknowledgement now what they knew or thought or wondered or believed they took that with them They loved him and he loved them and and it was definitely you know something that He felt he couldn't share he felt that he risked losing his whole family by coming out and then I have people in my family That you know were born at a different time And they are very comfortable They're out and proud and it is what it is and they they fully expect that it's not an issue Because they're products of a different time in a different generation And I know there are people who think that you can pray it away Or you can will it away Or you can maybe legislate it away I can tell you that history teaches us that the last part completely fails. You cannot legislate homosexuality Nor nor is there any conversion therapy that does anything?

Other than inflict trauma and abuse. I know a man who um went through gay conversion therapy And he married a woman and they were married for I want to say seven years Um before the marriage ended And it was devastating He tried so hard to be straight And he wasn't and You know this woman Was heartbroken um It's it wasn't this it wasn't the story anybody wanted And now he's they're apart and she's married to a straight man And he's married to another man and they're blissful And and if your religion prohibits that I hear you. I hear you and um That is a thing for you But you at no time have any right whatsoever to put these people in jail or castrate them or sterilize them Just because that's what your religion dictates Not everybody believes as you do. There are plenty of people who believe in god And a god that allows them to be who they were born to be in his or her image So you this this idea of using the law as a mechanism to in some way control or eliminate this I mean shades of as I said in the episode Shades of nazi germany man, if you're forcibly sterilizing people in 1978 in the heartland because you think they might be gay You and you you got to look at that in the great context Of what humanity has done to each other and say well shit. This is wrong, right?

This is just definitely wrong and that did happen in nazi. Germany. Um did I'm here I was yeah, and it happened here too. In fact the laws in nazi. Germany, uh against Being gay that the laws that were in fact enacted by the nazis Uh remained on the books, I believe until the 1970s Um, I was in a play called bent that uh talked about this and it took place during world war ii and and uh Was involved with this but those but those laws were on the books for a number of years After hitler and his whole gang were out of power. They still had those laws on the books It's so tragic And disappointing And here we go again Like we just made some progress like let people live Honest to god just let people live. I I yeah, I don't understand just live and let live really seriously Just let people it's hard enough for me to take care of what's in front of me to be worrying about what's going on with somebody else's uh sexuality, I don't I just don't care My um, my best friend she's gone now. She died young and tragically, but She was married and she had kids and um The marriage ended and it was it was a mutual thing, you know, just like the wheels just came off that bus and and they parted and um she Entered into a relationship with a woman and came to me one day and she said I realized now that all these things that i've been fighting because I I thought they were wrong and I was ashamed of myself. I realized this is who I am and she was happy She was really happy for the first time and Herself and it was a really cool thing to see and um, somebody said to me we were at a party once and somebody Said to me. Oh, well now that she's out. I I guess um, I can expect that That you're you're going to come out too. You two are so close Which is like some real stupid ass homophobic stuff. Um And I look at the man who said that to me and I said I said listen to me if it were at all possible For me to be in a gay loving relationship with my best friend. You think I wouldn't be doing it?

I'm straight like i'm i'm who I am i'm wired This way for better or worse and some days y'all get on my nerves and I wish I was living with another queen and the two of us were just like Both putting the dishes in the dishwasher instead of leaving them on the counter But like i'm heterosexual Damn it So no, I can't um come out and be in love with my best friend Believe me if it had been an option I would have taken it that kind of like ignorant bullshit That is made socially. Okay, like it's we've allowed in our society for it to be okay to casually crap on people who Such a dumb thing to say Incredibly rude thing to say I will say that a lesbian friend of mine one time we were having a conversation about women and I said I do not Understand women and she said I have bad news for you. I am one and I don't either Oh I have I have good friends. They're two women. They're married. They're so happy and I said to one of them one day God, i'm so jealous of you. What is it like to like?

You know like two women like the house is always clean and You're not like having to remember everybody's birthdays and she looked at me and she said girl. Listen to me. Look at me Marriage is marriage. I don't care who's in it There's always one that remembers the birthdays and one that leaves their dishes on the couch and we just laughed so hard It was such a crushing blow to realize that my fantasies of what it must be like to be Two women together were are just you know fantasies, right?

I just look I don't care. I don't care who y'all sleeping with as long as um, there's consent involved and nobody's underage I really don't I mean sometimes we'll get a story in the news about some guy getting caught in the back 40 with a sheep and I think well, that's I mean Jeepers, gary. I wish you'd been more discreet about that And the sheep could not consent But I I really don't want to um police your bedroom I don't want to legislate what you feel in your heart I don't think anybody else has the right to do that. And I do believe we are. Um We are heading into some dark days Some dark things are already happening Let's and I think let's hope that we're heading into some try to be optimistic that I want you to be I really am i'm going to be optimistic I want you to be but I want you to temper that optimism with action Because these are our brothers and sisters. These are our fellow people And if we are all in fact made in god's image You've got a lot of balls kalita suggesting that god screwed up over here with the barrache or whoever right?

If we are all in fact a reflection of the divine then how about? You don't be such a dick And how about you let other people live their lives and how about you pause for a minute and think about This guy this musical genius who brought happiness to so many middle-aged ladies Who just wanted a man who smelled nice? Who liked nice pretty things who talked to them as though they were special?

right How about you imagine what it had been like for that guy to just have his career without constantly? Being called a mincing fruit flavored mother loving heap of sentimental vomit and worse And i'll tell you this last thing about liberace because it's a mind blower and it should be So back when liberace was a television star And his show was carried in 200 and plus american cities and around the world Liberace did not work for any network liberace Was a syndicated show Something that people only really started paying attention to like when oprah and inside edition came along Did you know that max about liberace did know that about liberace?

He was his show was independent And the reason that it was cleared in all of those places Was because the fans and the audience demanded that it be cleared That show was not put on a network and forced down the pipeline the way like um You know with blue bloods or young sheldon or whatever is a network show It was an independent show and there was so much demand And yeah, it's kind of um, you can look at youtube videos. There's tons of them of liberace episodes yeah, it's campy as all get out and corny and You know if if it's not your jam, it's not your jam But man, it was it made a lot of people happy also for a long long time He he did music for the people There's one thing that's true about classical music somewhere around the beginning of the 20th century classical music up until that time had been for the masses, you know, have you ever been to a concert where they have the whole thing where they You have to hold your applause and all that That is a fairly recent invention in classical music in the old days when mozart were performer He had something a piece that he had put up with an orchestra People would hoot and holler and clap the whole time no matter when they felt like it So what what he was doing was he was taking a lot of this music some of it pop Some of the classical too and was bringing it to the masses the way it was presented many years ago for a lot of people It was always meant to be it wasn't meant to be for the sophisticated who dressed up when they went out It was meant for the rabble It was meant for the common everyday person And that's gone Right, that's that's changed. Oh and and you know the thing so the thing about liberace. He was so gifted truly, so so so gifted And when he turned away from classical music to pursue a career as a pop music entertainer the music establishment the critics the whole Industrial musical industrial complex they turned on him And it was almost like they're turning on him gave other people permission To turn on him. Yeah Yeah But but classical music wasn't always that way no, no no, and he You know part of his reason for wanting to break out of the classical world um It was a combination of things he He wanted to play for an audience He didn't want to play in a hushed darkened room where the music was treated as something so other And so special that it couldn't be enjoyed He wanted to be himself He wants to be himself. That's what and that's what he did So a great, um, if you've never seen it if you can find it Um hbo did an original movie starring michael douglas called behind the candelabra which is based on the book of the same name And it's really good. It is a really good movie I I have no idea how accurate it is because what we know about this man is um a combination of his public persona And all of these lawsuits and attacks by the tabloids So You know you gotta you have to understand that when you watch behind the candelabra, you're you're looking at a movie that May or may not be, you know, deadly accurate. Did you ever see that max? It's really no I remember when it came out, but I never saw it. It's really wonderful. Michael douglas does a great job So, you know, I don't care. I'm not here. I'm not, you know, some liberace fan I just remember My grandmother saying to me there used to be a tv show A daytime tv show called the mike douglas show And I don't I don't remember it Well, but like I would be little little and spending the afternoon at my grandmother's house before we moved to wyoming

So, you know, I was like little little like five maybe six years old at the most And my grandmum would watch those daytime shows And if liberace was on and he was a frequent guest on those shows My grandmother would always say the same thing she would say oh sherry he is so refined Well, I come from blue-collar immigrant people You know men who came home from work dirty and exhausted with calluses on their hands and so my grandmother who daydreamed about hollywood and movie stars and You know read those magazines and watched those movies She saw liberace and she didn't see some Fop as the critics called him She saw an elegant man who was just so refined And who was interested in the things that interested her and that was kind of like the secret sauce of that fan base Why can't you let those ladies have that my mother liked my mother liked him because he was a good catholic He was Yes, and good to his mother and good to his mother And why anybody's surprised that a bunch of middle-aged mothers and grandmothers loved a man?

That was good to his mother. Like why is that hard to wrap your head around for god's sakes? So yeah, there you go. I don't know I don't know just man Hey, if you if you have figured out your own life to such an extent that you can mind other people's businesses in such a hateful Way, please write a book on how to master that for the rest of us so that we can all be living our own lives So well, it's a cliche, but it really is true live and let live, huh?

my god My god people you do not want you do not want to end up at the pearly gates I'm having to account for you know, you don't want to see peter st. Peter going to you now listen up deborah Um, boy, you sure did invest a lot of your energy in that one precious wild beautiful life we gave you in attacking your neighbors What's your defense of that going to be?

I thought I was doing god's work. Oh, did you did you read the wrong book? You studied for the wrong test sis like It's just Any who any losers? um Y'all get out there and live and let live and be decent to one another and mind your own damn business And go take a look at a liberace video on youtube because it is some wildly entertaining stuff Thank you for listening to this episode of true weird stuff. Our website was um hijacked and attacked. We can't think why Because true weird stuff runs in the red. It's not like we're going to be able to pay ransom So we've dismantled it and we are rebuilding it and it will be back up and running again soon And we sure do love and appreciate you We'll see you next time on the next true weird stuff And if you listen to us on apple podcast hit the plus button in the top right corner And now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered and we really appreciate it if you subscribe rate and review true weird stuff hit our website true weird stuff.com for show notes and Photos and videos when we have it and bonus content everything true weird is waiting for you at true weird stuff.com And follow true weird stuff on instagram and twitter true weird stuff is a Now! Media production Our executive producer is anthony garcia. The show is written and hosted by me Sheri Lynch along with my deeply weird director Max Sweeten our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr original graphics by kevin nash original artworks by Olivia Axland True weird original music composed and performed by jack griffin and saint nash copyright 2024 Now! Media all rights reserved all wrongs remembered You