TV Radio Mirror (Jan - Jun 1959)

massages to his exercise program. He still continues this regime from his home in Palm Springs, which is only a short distance away from a gymnasium run by two friends of Liberace's — a married couple who have available every possible piece of equipment a muscular-minded man could want. Liberace's extraordinary loss of weight brought one problem with it. At first, he thought he'd have to have his entire wardrobe altered, but his tailor took one look at the slim, lithe man with the muscular body and said, "You can't do it." "Why not?" said Liberace. "You can't take six inches out of a waistline," said the tailor. "You used to have a 38 waistline. Look at you now!" Liberace looked — and saw what the tailor meant. Where, previously, all his clothes had been tailored in a desperate effort to conceal his spare tires, he was now a man with no spare tires to conceal. All the lines of his wardrobe were wrong for him now. He gave away most of his street clothes to friends and acquaintances. However, in his closet there still hangs his stage wardrobe — a glittering assemblage of some of the most glamorous clothes ever collected by one man. Liberace used to say, "Every actor should dress glamorously." On stage, he dressed to the hilt. Among his seventy different outfits, there was one solid gold jacket, which cost about $2,700 — and was worth it, in terms of the publicity it attracted. There were also two jackets with glass bugle beads, and one jacket with hand-made rhinestones imported from abroad. "I used to try to glitter on the outside," says Liberace, with a shrug of his nolonger-padded shoulders, "because I was self-conscious about what my body looked like, under the glittering clothes. I wanted my clothes to gleam and sparkle so that people would concentrate on what I wore, rather than on how fat I was." It may very well cost Liberace $100,000 to replace his wardrobe. So far, he has been able to salvage only two jackets — those with the glass bugle-beads. His tailor took those completely apart, cut the jackets down and reset the sleeves. His other stage costumes hang in the closet, mute testimonials to the fact that Liberace was once a fat man. Today, every outfit Liberace wears, whether on the stage or at home, is made to fit, not conceal the contours of his body. 'In addition to looking better, Liberace feels infinitely more energetic since he lost those forty pounds. "Formerly," he admits, "if anyone asked me to undertake something that sounded like a lot of work, I'd turn it down. I just didn't have the energy for anything that was too strenuous." Now Lee is bursting with energy. It was after he'd lost about forty pounds that ABC came to him with an exciting offer for the new TV show. However, the program would be on five days a week. To film it, Liberace would have to come in from Palm Springs to Los Angeles three times a week. And, on two of those days, he'd have to prepare four of the shows. "Where formerly I'd turn down anything that INVEST IN U. S. SAVINGS BONDS NOW EVEN BETTER *'^*'^¥■4■^^^^^^■i^i^^>^>^.l^.l^.l^.4■'^■'^■**'^■><■^<^■>' » strenuous, now I regarded it as a challenge," he says. "Though it meant working twelve or fourteen hours a day, I was happy to sign." Not only does Liberace put on two shows a day each Monday and Thursday, but when he has an audience, he entertains especially for it after the show, giving encore after encore of the audience's favorites. For these special studio audiences, Liberace puts on performances for which thousands of dollars would ordinarily be paid by concert-goers. When Liberace first began breaking boxoffice records all over the country, some of the critics scoffed at the idea of a man parlaying a beatific smile, a melting look and candelabra into a fortune. However, they were wrong. It takes far more than a smile and candelabra to win public love. "The personality people assume I have," says Lee, "is the exaggerated side of my real personality. I think I have more depth than has been made known to the public. When I made personal appearances, people who had preconceived ideas about me seemed to re-discover me. Even when those preconceived ideas were favorable, many of them told me that they had never realized the more serious, deeper side of my personality. So now, in my television appearances, I try to emphasize not only those qualities for which I have become known, but also that side of me which appealed to audiences when I appeared on various stages." So different is the real Liberace from the exaggerated idea that most of the public has held that even his voice is different. Not long ago. Jack Benny, planning a show in which the voice of Liberace would sneer at him from a TV set, asked Liberace to record some lines for Columbia Records. Lee duly recorded them. When Jack Benny heard the so-called "wild lines," he said, "But they don't sound the way I wanted you to sound. You just don't sound exaggerated enough." As it turned out, the real Liberace sounded so little like the publicized concept of him that Jack Benny had to use Dave Barry to sound the way Liberace was supposed to! In the new Liberace program, Lee has as much verve, enthusiasm and eagerness to please as ever; but he hasn't the exaggerated effervescence that was once pinned on him by some critics. Even the candelabra on the new program appear to be somewhat subdued, in keeping with this new, fascinating side of Liberace's personality. Jdowever, the change in the candelabra effects is not due to any attempt on his part to give the public a different impression of himself. "The effect is subdued," he says, "because this is a daytime show and doesn't call for romantic lighting effects. At night, one might want to go in for dramatic heightening or lowering of candle light. But that wouldn't be appropriate in a daytime show. "Losing forty pounds changed my entire life," Liberace concludes. "My whole mental attitude has changed. Where formerly I felt listless and tired, I now want to be on the go all the time." In spite of all the strenuous work called for by his show, Liberace now has energy to spare for other things. When he isn't appearing on TV or going to a gym, you'll sometimes find him lugging furniture from one of his homes in Palm Springs to another, or landscaping. As he digs into the soil to get it ready for some favorite desert plant, his smile flashes and seems to light up the landscape. Now that he's lost those forty surplus pounds, Liberace has discovered that the real sparkle — on TV or in person — comes from within, not from glittering "props" and rhinestone-studded jackets. SSI/ MONEYSAVING STYLE CATALOG Join the millions of families who shop and save by mail from this bright, colorful catalog. 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