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Buster today goes under his real name of Liberaee. He is still smiling dreamily at the girls. He is also mak¬ ing maybe a million bucks a year and can even afford to buy his own coffee. Liberaee, at 34, is already a living American legend. Unfortunately, however, Liberaee has chosen to make his headquarters in Hollywood, thus laying himself wide open to the charge of being a Hollywood Character. Under any other circumstances Wladziu Valentino Liberaee would merely be a nice guy, a bit on the naive side, playing the piano for a living. Under Hollywood circum¬ stances he is a Character, a Personal¬ ity, a Celebrity, and thus fair game for the poison-pen set. They make fun of him, for outwardly he is the per¬ fect patsy for such shenanigans—a perpetually grinning matinee idol, slightly on the pudgy side, who seems for all the world to be an overgrown little boy dependent on his mother. But the very people who have kidded about him have, on their first contact with him, found him to be the most cooperative of souls, wholly un¬ complicated, not at all temperamental and with a rare sense of humor. Newspaper columnists who have gleefully taken Liberaee to sophisti¬ cated task have been amazed at the vituperative response from his fans. “Go ahead and laugh,” one of Li- berace’s canniest associates remarks, “but the fact is that ‘Lee’s’ sincerity and genuine delight with what he is doing is something that comes across on that television screen.” The most important single factor in the Liberaee legend is the pianist’s mother. His parents were separated when Liberaee was barely out of babyhood. His mother, convinced she had a child prodigy on her hands (Liberaee started playing the piano when he was under five) and deter¬ mined that her boy would have every opportunity possible, clerked by day and scrubbed floors by night to keep her family together. Liberaee has never forgotten it. Everything he does today, he does “for Mom.” The sharpshooters have often won¬ dered out loud why Liberaee has never married, figuring him to be about as eligible as it’s possible for a man to get. Mama’s Boy, they call him. The fact of the matter is that Liberaee has twice come very close to getting married. The other fact of the matter, according to a close associate, is that he will never marry so long as his mother is still alive. For the time being, all his devotion is reserved for her and his music. Three years ago “Lee” was a mod¬ erately successful cafe entertainer who used to take out ads in the trade papers to explain how his name was pronounced. He got his first taste of 6