Posted on 10/15/2010 8:39:25 PM PDT by Borges
Look at this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6dy53OPj8
Liberace was a great entertainer, and a kind and gentle human being.We could use more "bread and circus" like him around these days...
That was nice.
Not long ago in Discount Firearms I was told a woman was robbed at gun point on the busy sidewalk on Maryland Parkway in broad day light near the university. It’s hard to imagine tourists wanting to venture to the edge of the ghetto to go to the museum. We recently drove past a government housing project under construction only a couple blocks away. It was obvious the museum was doomed. When my husband visited the museum in the 70s he said there was only one other person there. I’m surprised it lasted so long. I wasn’t a fan, but as a piano player I appreciated his talent. It’s too bad the contents can’t find a home in another museum.
I agree. I'll miss the museum, too.
My mom was a skilled pianist, and never missed him on TV. I have no recollection of a mention of his sexuality, but that was the 50s for you.
I suspect his crew was selected from a certain "special interest group", who would reject many people who needed jobs.
No AIDS ribbons, no homophobic lawsuits, nothing to remember him by but the sound of crickets and references in Warner Bros. cartoons...
Whatever shall America focus on now?
Seriously now, the real tragedy was the sell-off of the Roy Rodgers museum. Now *that* guy was an American hero.
Robert Walker(1918-1951), from Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train," also bears a resemblance.
Undoubtably he was extremely talented. Always was a gentleman as well. I wish I had heard him live, performing the classics.
Cool story.
Wladziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987), from West Allis, Wisc. His mother was Polish and his father Italian. I remembered being about 7 and walking into my grandfather’s parlor where the grownups were watching some piano show and I saw Liberace for the first time. I had never seen a homosexual or even knew what that was but I knew I’d just seen one.
I went to Los Angeles when I was 19 and got a job delivering sheet music to many TV and movie studios. At one, a receptionist looked weird at me and waved me into a setting room. A few minutes later, Liberace walked in and sat down next to me. I was cracking up and I told him, no, I didn’t want to go to dinner. I said thank you and left. He was very nice to me, like some else said here, but right after I flubbed my Army physical, I was driving to California to see all those blondes I heard about.
Liberace was the second famous person to die, in 1987, from AIDS. Rock Hudson was the first, in 1985.
Liberace had a very good show. When he performed it was like he was a living Baroque museum piece, clothes, music and all. Think Louis the XIV. Everyone, and I mean everyone knew he was gay but no one cared, even then. He was very civil, eloquent and put his audience, the show and the music first. That’s a class act no matter what a person’s private sexual preferences are. My guess is he’d have been very offended being considered gay first before a pianist, philanthropist and performer. I doubt few who saw one of his shows would be willing to deny his talent as an accomplished concert pianist based upon his (unstated) sexual preference or demeanor. That just ain’t right.
“Indeed. The Roy Rogers museum also closed because Rogers has been forgotten by younger generations.”
The restaurant chain keeps the name alive, for now:
http://www.royrogersrestaurants.com/#/home
Also, there’s the Roy Rogers website:
http://www.royrogers.com/
Perhaps physical museums are like snail mail: on the way to the dustbin of history. For those who have to be near the physical objects that one could view in a museum, there was an auction - - - which will scatter the contents of the one museum into the private collections and museum collections that are not as topic-specific. So the heritage will not be gone, simply more diffused.
Liberace was not in the same ball park as Van Cliburn, in terms of technique, accomplishment, and excellence.
thanks for the video link....
..another 'confirming' word is "Divine".
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