Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Columnist Susan Snyder: Revisiting the legend of Liberace

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at [email protected] or 259-4082.

On her recent visit to Las Vegas, my mom recalled an evening back in the late 1940s when her parents returned home from a dinner show at Detroit's Statler Hotel.

"My mother said there was this wonderful young man playing the piano, and I was surprised. She usually didn't care for floor shows. She was a snob," Mom said.

It happened years before that "wonderful young man" donned feathers, furs and jewels and become known the world over as simply Liberace. And my mom, like half the women in the country, was a rabid Liberace fan.

Well, of course we visited the Liberace Museum on East Tropicana Avenue. It was my pleasure. I'd never seen her so quiet. You'd have thought we were in church.

"Can you imagine?" she said in a whisper. "George Gershwin performed at that piano."

The Chickering grand over which she drooled belonged to Gershwin before it belonged to Liberace. It's one of 12 pianos on display, most of which defy description.

But I'll try.

There's an upright, 1900 Nickelodeon player piano covered with thousands of teeny, hand-placed, mirrored tiles. Its hammers are balls of green glitter, and the front is adorned with peacock-feather etchings and green rhinestones.

There's also a hand-painted French Pleyel that Chopin once played at Versaille Palace. It was used in "A Song to Remember," a movie that was based on Chopin's life. The movie inspired Liberace to use candelabras, the exhibit says.

But neither holds a candle to the rhinestone-encrusted Baldwin grand that has a rhinestone-studded Duesenberg-style roadster in the next room.

Yep, a matching car. No kidding.

The piano glittered and gleamed so brightly, it seemed almost alive. I wondered aloud how Liberace looked at it long enough to play it without going blind. Mom rolled her eyes.

"He knew the tunes, you know," she said.

Jeepers, she was sensitive.

"And I resented that man laughing at all the costumes without reading about any of them," she said after we left.

I was willing to cut the guy a break, if only for the King Neptune costume. At 200 pounds, it's the heaviest of Liberace's legendary getups. Sequins, rhinestones and God-knows-what-all cover the flowing, spangled yards of fabric in shell-pink hues. Think jumbo shrimp.

Or think about a red, white and blue hot pants ensemble that has a matching Rolls Royce. Liberace was over the top, down the other side and around the bend.

And loved. He was honored by the Queen of England, admired by Elvis and blessed by Pope John Paul II. Even the museum's ladies room is a shrine, where fans have covered the stall door with sentiments.

"There will never be another you," Pam Prince, of England, scrawled in November. "God rest your soul in peace. You are the best," Patti no-name euolgized sometime last year.

That's a fact. No ordinary hotel piano player could have lured the accolades of my prim, picky grandmother.

"Daddy hardly said a word," my mom said, recalling that night long ago. "Except he said, 'We just couldn't leave.' "

archive