“Liberace denied he was gay”

As a wide-eyed schoolboy, movie legend Michael Douglas had a memorable encounter with America’s most flamboyant showman.

He was instantly charmed by the man with the dazzling grin and the larger-than-life personality.

But it took his new film Behind The Candelabra, to reveal the truth about Liberace’s pristine appearance that day.

Nearly 60 years on, he admits, he finally knows the secret that the pianist hid from the world.

“This car stopped, I think it was a Rolls-Royce convertible,” recalls the Wall Street star, who was visiting with his actor father Kirk in Palm Springs, California, when he met Liberace in 1956. It was a bright Palm Springs day, and between the gold around his neck and his rings, the light was bouncing off him. He had a great smile and not a hair out of place. Of course, now I know why ”

Just one of the revelations in Behind The Candelabra, in which Douglas delivers a superb portrayal of the piano-playing entertainer, is that Liberace relied on wigs to hide his baldness. In fact, he was so mortified by it that, even when he was being wheeled into the operating theatre for plastic surgery, he refused to remove his hairpiece. But what the movie focuses on is the other secret that he tried to hide from his millions of adoring fans.

“He vehemently denied that he was gay and would go after newspapers and magazines, legally,” says Michael.

Liberace who was christened Wladziu Valentino and known as Lee to his friends told his huge, primarily female, fan base he was a confirmed bachelor after having his heart broken by Norwegian figure skater and film star Sonja Henie. He famously sued a British newspaper in 1956 for running a story that he was gay and won.

Now we have Behind The Candelabra, based on a book of the same name by Scott Thorson, who was Liberace’s lover for five years from 1977.

Director Steven Soderbergh already had an idea to make a movie about the great showman before he knew of the book’s existence. He also knew from the very beginning who he’d like to see slipping on one of Liberace’s trademark fur coats.

“It was 12 years ago, when we were making the movie Traffic together, that Steven first mentioned it to me,” tells 68-year-old Douglas. “He says to me, ‘Have you ever thought about playing Liberace?’ and I thought, ‘Is he messing with me?’” Soderbergh put the idea on the back burner until he found Thorson’s book. But by then Douglas had been diagnosed with throat cancer, which he claimed this week was caused by oral sex. The film only covers the last 10 years of Liberace’s life and doesn’t venture far away from his relationship with Thorson, who is played in the film by Matt Damon. By then, Liberace had become the highest-paid musician in the world. The film shows him ordering plastic surgeon Dr Jack Startz, played by Rob Lowe, to operate on Thorson so they’d look more alike.

“He had a very savvy sense of showmanship,” concludes Michael. With that camp style, there was a genuine quality about him and his performances and how happy he wanted to make people that won everyone over.”