The seven deadly sins of Hollywood (1957)

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF HOLLYWOOD talkie? And 'Brando sings' when he made Guys and Dolls? Well, they should have sold the film with the line, 'And now Liberace acts!'" I said Warner Bros, may have thought that wasn't, strictly speaking, true. He ignored the remark and continued to beam his smile all around the room with the doggedness of a radio transmitter. He said, "You know I got into trouble because of what I said about Princess Margaret. I didn't mean any offence. My object in life is to give happiness to people. "The fact that I earn 45,000 dollars a week at Las Vegas is incidental. The public like me to earn a lot of money. It gives them a thrill. Now about the Princess. All I meant was I'd like to meet her because I think we have so much in common and we'd enjoy each other. I know people thought it strange of me to say this, because she is royalty and I'm a commoner. The thing is, I don't think of myself as a commoner." I advised Liberace, when he comes to London, to keep quiet on the subject of why he wants to meet Princess Margaret, and to try hard to think of himself as a commoner. The career of Liberace defies rational explanation. In 1954, at the age of thirty-three, he earned over a million dollars. His TV series has an audience of 35,000,000. When you ask Liberace to explain his success, he does not attribute it to his skill as a pianist. He attributes it to his personality and his innate goodness. In turgid prose, he will explain that his mission in life is to bring happiness to people. " I talked to an archbishop the other day," he said, "and he told me, 'You and I, we do the same sort of work'." His programmes in America now include, as a regular feature, an oration from Liberace in which he "just chats about life". 32