Liberace's life 'Behind the Candelabra' in Palm Springs

• Liberace was longtime Palm Beach resident
• Fans kept vigil at Palm Beach home when Liberace died in 1987
• He owned 4 houses in the city

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. -- To tell the story of Liberace's final years, one must go "Behind the Candelabra" and cast some light on lesser-known chapters of Palm Springs history.

The late, flamboyant pianist owned 11 homes, including residences in Malibu, Sherman Oaks, the Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, Lake Arrowhead, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Trump Towers in New York. But Palm Springs was integral to his personal and professional life.

Liberace died of HIV/AIDS-related ailments in February 1987, three weeks after being treated at Eisenhower Medical Center for what his staff called "the effects of a watermelon diet." Hundreds of friends and tourists kept vigil outside of his Palm Springs home as rumors of his real illness became rampant. When death seemed imminent, his attorney, Joel Strote, said Liberace chose his Palm Springs home to die because "I think he wanted to rest in the place he loves. He's always thinking about his fans. He wants to be remembered as he was — an entertainer. I think it's nice that fans are here and supporting him."

That house, on Alejo and Belardo roads and known as The Cloisters, will be depicted in Sunday night's HBO movie based on the book "Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace" by Scott Thorson, Liberace's lover between 1976 and 1982. Some scenes were shot in a Palm Springs home formerly owned by George and Rosalie Hearst. Others were shot at 696 N. Monte Vista, where a viewing party will be held attended by Debbie Reynolds, who plays Liberace's mother in the film and who now says she helped keep Liberace's sexual orientation a secret when they were friends.

The Cloisters was one of four Palm Springs houses owned by Liberace, not counting the home he bought for his mother behind the Cloisters. His older brother, George, also owned a house at 665 N. Monte Vista until his death in 1983, three years after their mother, Frances, passed away.

It's been reported that Liberace's mother directed George to watch after his brother, called Lee, so he wouldn't be caught cavorting with gays in Palm Springs. But friends and business associates say Liberace didn't just socialize with one group.

"He had a group of friends from Las Vegas, he had a group of friends from Los Angeles, he had a group of friends from Palm Springs and they really didn't mix," said Steve Garey, 55, a pianist and friend of Liberace's for the last six years of his life. "He really wasn't involved in the gay community. He was involved in show business."

But many show biz colleagues had second homes in the desert. Michael Douglas, who plays Liberace in "Behind the Candelabra," spent many holidays at the Palm Springs home of his father, Kirk Douglas, and he said at a January 2011 Palm Springs Art Museum function, "I ran into Liberace a couple times" in Palm Springs. Kirk Douglas was the only local celebrity that attended Liberace's Palm Springs memorial at Our Lady of Solitude Church.

Palm Desert resident Jerry Weintraub, who produced "Behind the Candelabra," knew Liberace from the 1960s on. He called Liberace "a character — a flamboyant character.

"When I used to go to his houses in Palm Springs and in L.A., he used to have that car that we used in the movie — a Rolls Royce," he said. "We used to go in through the garage at his house and he used to serve us champagne and caviar in the back of that car. That was the bar. I thought that was pretty cool."

Born Wladziu Valentino Liberace on May 16, 1919, in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis, he got his first big break from the late Palm Springs resident Maxine Lewis, who was entertainment director of the Last Frontier when Las Vegas had only two casinos during World War II. Lewis told The Desert Sun in 1997 Liberace called her after hearing she was interested in his services and sought $550 a week — $200 more than he had been earning. Lewis offered $750 a week and called it a wise investment.

"He was the most famous act in that room," she said. "You couldn't get a table."

The late Palm Springs resident Don Fedderson produced Liberace's first TV series, "Liberace," in Los Angeles in 1952 after seeing him perform at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, the Palmer House in Chicago and the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. A year later, the show was syndicated across the country and Liberace was hailed for his short, popular arrangements of classical piano and lavish style.

That summer, his director, Duke Goldstone, invited him to stay at the Lone Palm Hotel in Palm Springs, owned by another one of his TV stars, big band leader Horace Heidt. It was 110 degrees and the town was practically deserted. But Liberace loved the atmosphere and solitude. He soon bought his first Palm Springs house.

His best friend was Fedderson's soon-to-be ex-wife, Tido Minor. Lewis booked him at the Chi Chi club and his appearances became social highlights of the 1950s and '60s.

But even in the mid-1950s, insinuations of Liberace's sexual orientation were prevalent. He laughed off disparaging remarks with self-deprecating humor and lines such as his famous, "I'm crying all the way to the bank." But his biographer, Associated Press writer Bob Thomas, said Palm Springs provided an opportunity to discreetly indulge in gay relationships.

"No one commented on the comings and goings at the Liberace house, nor his appearances in restaurants with blond young men," he wrote in 1988. "Palm Springs had long observed with tolerant eyes the peccadillos of Hollywood celebrities who enjoyed unwinding and sometimes misbehaving in the desert."

'Piano proteges'

Liberace testified under oath he wasn't gay in two libel suits in the 1950s, earning him $40,000 from Confidential magazine and $53,000 from the Daily Mirror in London. But it didn't make him more cautious in Palm Springs.

His mother described his friends as "hillbillies" and "freeloaders" and said in a public statement in October 1958, "Lee is too trusting. He doesn't know who his true friends are."

The late George Allardice, the leading society singer in Palm Springs from the late-'50s through the 1980s, said Liberace sometimes chose companions unwisely.

"Liberace was the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet," Allardice said in a 1995 Desert Sun interview, "but he always got mixed up with the wrong people.

"One night (in the 1960s), I was singing upstairs at the Ranch Club and Lee came up and from there we went to Perrina's. A maitre'd from the Howard Manor came with us and Lee says, 'Come on back to the house. This was the house with the swimming pool shaped like a piano. So we go back and we were just having a ball. He and (the Howard Manor host) went into the bedroom and the next day, I got a call from Lee: 'He stole my money!' He had thousands of dollars in his pocket.

"I said, 'You should call the police.' He said, 'Oh, no. I don't want any publicity on this.' I felt badly because he met him through me."

Liberace met Thorson in 1976 through his long-time stage director, Ray Arnett. He was hired as a chauffeur and personal assistant, but Thorson wrote that it became a six-year personal relationship in which Liberace paid for a plastic surgeon to make Thorson's face look like Liberace's. The relationship ended in 1982 amid Thorson's accusations of Liberace's promiscuity and his own acknowledged dependency on prescription and recreational drugs. He filed a $113 million palimony suit against the performer in 1982.

Garey, who said he's already viewed "Behind the Candelabra," criticized the film for making Liberace appear "vindictive, mean" and "excessively effeminate." He called it "just a bunch of lies." But another young, blond pianist who knew Liberace in the 1980s, Palm Springs resident Jere Ring, called the book, "the most accurate account of all that went on."

Like Thorson, Ring, 57, said he met Liberace through Arnett. He wound up working for Liberace in 1983 and the two became friends.

"I performed for him in the afternoon and he invited me to stay for dinner at his restaurant (the Tivoli Gardens in Las Vegas)," said Ring. "The way it all happened was, the regular piano man said he wasn't feeling well. They had celebrities coming in and I said, 'Well, I can play,' and I played the evening. The place filled up and Lee said, 'Do you want to work for me?' So I did."

Garey said he was also a platonic friend of Liberace for the last six years of his life, studying piano with him and staying in one of the cottages at the Cloisters. Both Garey and Ring could recite the names of Liberace's close friends, lovers and "piano proteges," but they didn't know one another.

Both said Liberace enjoyed socializing with both gay and straight friends.

"He would bounce around," said Ring. "If he had a party, he liked glamorous women. George died in 1983 and his wife, Dora, ran the (Liberace) foundation. People would bring other people around. He would hang on to people from his former shows. There was a circle of people around Liberace who were self-appointed guardians, if you will."

"He was just the nicest man," said Garey. "If anybody he knew was in any kind of trouble, he would solve it."

The Thorson lawsuit hung over Liberace's head, focusing attention of his sexual orientation at a time when AIDS was being called "the gay disease." Thorson settled out of court for $95,000 in 1986, after learning Liberace was seriously ill. He told The Desert Sun shortly before Liberace's death they had made amends, although he knew Liberace would never acknowledge his homosexuality.

Liberace continued making public appearances and throwing parties the last six years of his life. He gave Desert Sun columnist Allene Arthur a tour of the Cloisters in 1985 as he prepared for an opulent, but intimate Christmas party.

He told Arthur he would offer a champagne toast and everyone at the party would share a Christmas memory. "It's a bittersweet thing," he said, "because people get emotional."