Behind the Candelabra

by Scott Thorson

  By the early 1970s he was getting a minimum of $150,000 a week. Net dollars were always more important to him than working conditions. He played the same stadium in Hershey, Pennsylvania, three nights every year, despite a dressing room that consisted of a locker room redolent of dirty jocks and gym socks, where the only privacy was supplied by army blankets hanging on a clothesline. Many other stars would have refused to do a show under such conditions. Lee never balked at things like that. But his normally placid demeanor exploded into anger when he was opposed.

  He was the boss and his people knew it. Heaven help those who didn’t! I remember an associate director on the “Tonight” show who made the mistake of treating Lee like your average, garden-variety celebrity instead of the uncrowned king of the world of live entertainment. First she asked Lee to submit a list of subjects he wanted to discuss with Johnny Carson, and then she told Lee what time she wanted him to show up for the taping. Lee reacted to her somewhat cavalier treatment by failing to submit the required list and by arriving at the studio two hours late!

  Another time, when Lee was making an appearance on Dean Martin’s show, he flatly refused to participate in a skit that called for him to take a pie in the face. The writers had to be called in to do some frantic rewriting in order to satisfy Lee. He wasn’t being deliberately difficult. He simply knew what he wanted. He didn’t mind having people laugh with him, but he’d be damned if he’d put himself in a position where they’d be laughing at him! And he wasn’t used to taking no for an answer.

  That extended to our relationship and, in particular, to the way many of his employees reacted to me. When, after we’d been together six months, I mentioned that I was still having trouble with some of his staff, Lee called a meeting. “The most important person in my life,” he told his people, “is Scott! His job is to make me smile, to keep me happy.” And I did—for five more years.

  12

  I wish I’d known Lee before he became a success. Once his stage act had been defined and polished, once he’d achieved international stardom, his drive, energy, and ambition had no way of venting themselves. The man was a bundle of energy with no place to go. He didn’t know how to sit still, relax, and smell the roses, even during his vacations. Lee was a workaholic who seemed to lack the inner resources to keep himself amused and happy.

  His loyal staff protected him from having to deal with the real world. In fact, Lee lived a sheltered existence, free from almost every worry. He didn’t read the papers, was blissfully ignorant and uncaring when it came to politics or events of national concern. He avoided confrontational situations, using Seymour Heller to act for him.

  When we went home after a show Lee locked himself away from the outside world. No one came to see us without express prior invitation. His need for privacy bordered on paranoia. Even members of his inner circle, old and trusted friends like Ray Arnett, were restricted to a limited number of invitations to Lee’s home each year. After Lee’s performances ended and we went home, the world narrowed down to just Lee and me.

  Christmas was the sole exception to his demand for total privacy. He began planning and talking about the holiday at the end of October and from then on it took on gigantic proportions. Few children, even those young enough to believe in Santa Claus, looked forward to the holiday more than he did. Although he considered himself to be a religious man the spiritual aspects of the season paled in importance before the opportunity to spend. Christmas gave him the perfect opportunity to exercise the power he had over the lives of people who worked for him; to reward or punish each individual by the size of the gifts he gave to each.

  By late October he was hard at work making lists of everything he wanted to buy, literally hundreds of items he planned to purchase personally. At one time he’d used the services of a professional shopper and gift wrapper to send out countless gifts to people in the industry. But that deprived him of the fun of doing it himself. The most dedicated shopper would quail in the face of the task Lee set for himself. But he was no ordinary shopper. He transformed shopping into a quasi-religious experience, a reinforcement of his power. He reveled in spending, gloried in it, devoted a large part of his waking time and energy to it.

  Early in November of our first year together Lee asked me to pick up a check for $25,000 at Lucille Cunningham’s office. The money wasn’t intended for gifts—just decorations. When I remarked that it seemed like an enormous amount to spend on tinsel and baubles, Lee didn’t blink an eye. He made it clear that the $25,000 would go for decorations and incidentals in the Palm Springs and Vegas houses, not for any of the presents he planned to buy. I knew, firsthand, how generous Lee could be. But nothing I’d experienced in our life together up to that point prepared me for the next few weeks.

  Lucille Cunningham and I had already established an antagonistic relationship, so I wasn’t surprised when she balked at the size of my request. “You’re just like all the rest,” she scolded, “out for what you can get. You just tell Lee he can’t afford to give you that much money!”

  I couldn’t help grinning. Lucille knew very well that no one told Lee anything. But she felt duty bound to try to control his spending and, since she knew he wouldn’t listen to her, she tried to do it through me. “It’s not for me,” I explained, knowing she probably wouldn’t believe me. “Lee wants it for Christmas—and you know how he is, Lucille.”

  She fussed and fumed but, like the rest of us, Lucille didn’t dare say no to a Liberace request. I had the check in my wallet as I drove back home.

  Lee gave me carte blanche when it came to readying the houses for the holidays. That money was mine to spend any way I liked as long as I turned Shirley Street and the Cloisters into a Liberace-style fantasy. I wanted to surprise him, to give him the most beautiful holiday house he’d ever seen, so I asked him to move out while I went to work. For anyone else that might have been an inconvenience. But he still owned his previous Vegas home, called the White House for its pristine white exterior and interior. The White House was fully furnished, ready for immediate occupancy. Lee packed a bag and left, leaving me to my job.

  He kept an entire truckload of decorations from previous Christmases in storage and I had them delivered. Meanwhile I packed up most of the objets d’art that cluttered the rooms, emptied the casino of all the gambling equipment, and put everything in temporary storage. I felt like one of Santa’s helpers who had stumbled across a treasure trove as I began opening the stored crates of ornaments. There were thousands of lights; a dozen reindeer; a life-size nativity scene complete with wise men, shepherds, and a zoo full of animals; fourteen-carat gold lamé cloths to put under everything—a king’s ransom of goodies plus all the things I bought. For the next five days I did nothing but unpack and put up decorations, going without sleep a couple of nights to get everything done in time for Lee’s scheduled return.

  That year we had eighteen huge Christmas trees, more than 350 red and white poinsettias, table decorations, greenery, wreaths—enough candles, lights, and tinsel to stock a department store. Getting everything done required a huge expenditure of effort and unbelievable expense. I spent every one of those $25,000. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine doing all that for one fifty-eight-year-old man’s pleasure.

  It was fun at first but, by the end of the third day of doing nothing but put up decorations, I’d decided that Lee and I were out of our minds. The experience of readying the Vegas house, plus the one in Palm Springs, was pretty far removed from the spirit of “peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” It was damn hard work. Putting up one tree is great, especially when children are around to help. But the only children who would see the house that year were Seymour Heller’s, and they celebrated Chanukah rather than Christmas. Putting up eighteen trees is pure torture. It’s like being forced to eat one rich meal after another, hour after hour, day after day. The senses soon reach saturation and the mind goes into overload.

  Lee, however, wouldn’t have had it any other way. “Too much of
a good thing is wonderful!” Whether it was sex, cars, pianos, costumes, clothes, or Christmas, he lived by those words, overindulging his way through life. When he came back I’d successfully transformed the Vegas house into a winter fairyland. Outside in the glaring Nevada sunshine it might have been 70 degrees, but inside Santa reigned supreme. Lee walked through the rooms, oohing and aahing over everything. “Fabulous!” he exclaimed gleefully, “it looks fabulous!”

  Heaven help anyone who suggested a booking during the holiday season. Lee would have been outraged. He had too much to do—shopping for dozens of people and wrapping every single gift himself. By the time he finished, hundreds of presents surrounded the bases of the eighteen trees.

  As a foster kid I often dreamed of the kind of Christmas I would have liked. But nothing in my wildest fantasies prepared me for Lee’s extravaganza. The holiday culminated in a traditional Christmas Eve dinner, followed by the ritual opening of all those gifts. The people Lee worked with, from the stagehands on up, were invited. It was the only time during the year that most of them saw him socially. A few old friends from his early days in show business were invited too. We were a motley crew at best. Joel Strote, Lee’s attorney, and Seymour Heller, his manager, didn’t strike me as the sort of men who enjoyed mingling with the stage crew.

  Lee’s family came too. George and his wife, Dora, flew down from Sacramento, Angie and her husband flew in from God knows where, and Frances came from Palm Springs. To my surprise Lee’s sister and brother were not accompanied by their children. Nor were Rudy’s widow and children present. With the exception of Seymour Heller’s wife and children, family groups were conspicuously absent from the party.

  That first Christmas George and Angie seemed somewhat estranged. As I watched them treating one another with a formal politeness, I remembered the story Lee had told me about their past problems. Fortunately, Frances seemed unaware of the strain between her children. Despite Lee’s constant complaining about his mother, I thought she was a delightful lady—outspoken, full of life, and fun to be with.

  The tension between family members was only one of the undercurrents evident when the people closest to Lee gathered in one room. They were always jockeying for position, fighting to get close to him, to get the smile or nod that meant he approved of what they said or did. But, despite the stress and strain, Lee made the party work. He had such a good time that everyone else followed his lead. Gladys had prepared a traditional turkey-and-trimmings dinner for thirty to forty people and it was wonderful. That first Christmas I half expected Lee to sit down at the piano and play carols, even though I’d never seen him play at home before. But he didn’t offer and no one asked. Sing-alongs were part of Lee’s act—not his holiday traditions.

  The two months of preparation had been aimed at the moment when we began opening presents. From beginning to end it took four or five hours. Each gift had to be admired, held up, or passed around. Most of the time Lee’s generosity had no parallel. Arnett, Heller, and Bo Ayars, Lee’s conductor, received extravagant gifts. Angie, Frances, and Dora received furs and jewelry. More practical gifts like color televisions and VCRs were given to lesser employees. Torn paper and trashed ribbons piled high while Lee presided over the ceremony like a jovial genie.

  That first year he gave me two diamond rings, a black mink coat, a white mink jacket, a coyote and leather coat, a sapphire cross, a gold watch wreathed in diamonds, lots of clothes, a Maltese puppy named Georgie, a schnauzer named Precious, and a basset named Lulu. I was overwhelmed, inundated with expensive goodies and barking, untrained dogs. There was no adequate way to thank him. I have been told, by people who were with Lee for decades, that his generosity to me was unparalleled in his relationships with other lovers.

  But Gladys, who’d worked even harder than I to make the party a success, got a token gift. I didn’t understand Lee’s hit-and-miss generosity then, and I don’t now. The pattern repeated year after year and Gladys was usually one of the people he shortchanged. One Christmas I put my foot down and insisted that he give her a fur coat and some jewelry that had been slated to go to Angie, who already had more furs and jewels than she could possibly use.

  Lee’s spending was equally erratic when it came to charity. He was the perfect example of the old saying “Charity begins at home.” I don’t recall him giving to any nonprofit organizations other than the one he later established himself. The almost obscene scope of our holiday extravaganzas took place in stark contrast to the fact that Lee’s generosity rarely reached the genuinely needy. It bothers me now, but that first Christmas, when I was just eighteen, I threw myself into the orgasmic event without a care. Gifts were piled so high in front of me that I couldn’t see over them.

  That holiday seemed to open a floodgate of spending that never closed during the years we lived together. Lee continued to give me valuable presents, often for no reason at all. “Spoiled rotten you are!” he exclaimed gleefully, “and I love it.”

  Lee was constantly giving me jewelry and clothes, and enough never seemed to be enough. I soon learned to copy his wildly flamboyant style, but no matter how far I went I could never top Lee. I still feel sort of awed embarrassment remembering a typical incident. We’d just closed at Warwick, Rhode Island, and five of us had to catch a plane to New York for a meeting at Radio City Music Hall. Since Lee felt the way I dressed reflected on him, I wore a navy blue suit, a white shirt, and fourteen—count them—fourteen gold chains around my neck. But Lee took one look at me and said, “I think you need one more.” He delayed our departure long enough to buy another one which he placed around my neck with immense satisfaction. I looked more like Mr. T than a model for Gentleman’s Quarterly but Lee was enormously pleased with my appearance.

  I’ve never figured out why he bought me so many things. Of course he could afford it, and he cared for me and wanted me to stay with him, but that doesn’t fully explain the hundreds of thousands of dollars he spent on me. Once, when we were out walking, I admired a passing car. A few days later Lee had a custom Camaro delivered to the Hilton. When I asked why he’d purchased the car, he said it was because I’d admired a similar one. Without thinking I told him the car I’d actually been admiring had been a Rolls-Royce. Within a few days a ribbon-wrapped Rolls was waiting for me on the floor of the Hilton Casino. If Lee was trying to buy my love and loyalty, he was wasting his money. I was deeply committed to him because he cared for me as no one ever had before.

  13

  To my knowledge Lee never invested in stocks or bonds or other aspects of the financial marketplace. He bought, decorated, and sold houses instead with an extravagant disregard for cost. When we began living together he owned the property on Herold Way, the Cloisters in Palm Springs, a condominium in Malibu, and the two houses in Las Vegas. Lee loved to invest in real estate for two reasons. First, property was tangible, something he could see, touch, live in. Real estate, particularly luxurious real estate, held a powerful appeal for the man who’d grown up in that drab, tiny house in West Allis. Second, and perhaps even more important, buying houses gave Lee an excuse for exercising his dual passion for decorating and for spending vast amounts of money.

  Every time Lee bought another piece of property, there’d be unhappy rumbles from his business manager, Jay Troulman, and his accountant, Lucille Cunningham. But he shrugged aside all their well-meant advice. “If I’d have listened to people like that,” he said, “instead of following my instincts, I’d have gone broke years ago.”

  After bringing Gladys to Vegas, Lee put the Herold Way house on the market and sold it for $1.2 million. He gleefully confessed to having paid $80,000 for the house when he bought it years before. With the large amount of capital thus freed, he wasted no time buying a house in Tahoe. We were appearing in Sparks, Nevada, at John Ascuaga’s Nugget (an annual booking) when the deal closed. Every night after the last show we’d pile into the car at two in the morning. I’d play chauffeur and drive the sixty miles back to the house while Lee slep
t. Once we got home we’d both catch a few hours sleep, getting up before noon to go shopping.

  Lee wanted to finish the decorating before his six-week Sparks engagement ended. Spending money was a fever in his blood while he worked on the house, a desire even more compelling than sexual hunger. He just couldn’t stop buying things. After four weeks on that schedule, I gave up—totally exhausted—and told Lee he’d have to shop by himself. He was shocked at my refusal to continue with what he considered a fun project. Not even appearing onstage energized him the way spending money did. He was forty years my senior but he had incredible energy.

  He often hired decorators, only to fire them because he enjoyed doing the job himself. Lee knew what he wanted—excess, excess, excess. After becoming successful enough to indulge himself, he jumped from project to project. Our years together marked the zenith of his spending. His next major purchase was a five-story building on Beverly Boulevard in Beverly Hills. He renovated and refurbished the first four floors of offices, installing huge aquariums to add the luxurious Liberace touch. The parking lot was repaved and glamorized by the addition of large trees in planters. But Lee hadn’t bought the building because he wanted to rent out office space. He intended to turn the entire fifth floor of the building into a penthouse for his personal use. And he had only a four-week hiatus from work to do it.

  We spent the entire time shopping, spending more than $100,000 a week for the entire four weeks in a mind-blowing demonstration of his personal wealth. The fifth floor, which had been a disaster, was transformed into a magnificent private hideaway. The sad thing is that Lee rarely spent time in his various homes after he finished decorating them. We occupied the Tahoe house only when he worked there, three to six weeks a year. The penthouse was a terrific place but Lee treated it more like a hotel suite than a home, rarely living in it for more than a few days at a time.