Band camp ... one of Liberace's many sparkling pianos.Credit: Jeff Greenberg/Lonely Planet
A monument to the over-the-top life of Liberace shows Carol West that too much glitter is never enough.
'Do you mind if I pop out and slip into something more spectacular?"
Michael Douglas immortalised the term "greed is good" in the film Wall Street but I've a feeling he'll become just as famous if he utters that campy phrase when playing the role of Liberace in the coming Steven Soderbergh biopic of the entertainer's life.
It takes someone with a lot of chutzpah to out-dazzle Las Vegas and while Elton John and Cher do their best, no one holds a candelabra to Liberace, "Mr Showmanship", who is part of glitter gulch history.
Las Vegas isn't known for its cultural institutions but the Liberace Museum, crammed with cars and costumes, is a perfect fit in a town where nothing exceeds like excess. About 20 minutes from the Strip in an unprepossessing part of town, the museum's contents occupy two buildings and provide a fascinating insight into an opulently original entertainer.
An elderly woman with heavy mascara, who could have been a vaudeville girl in her day, directs us to the curved wall of black-and-white photographs that trace the Liberace family's journey to the US in 1906. His father was one of 4.6 million Italians who entered through Ellis Island after 1880. Born in 1919 in Wisconsin, Walter Valentino Liberace was the youngest of three and showed precociously early signs of musical brilliance.
Dropping the "Walter Valentino", he became known simply as Liberace in 1942 and performed in Las Vegas for the first time in 1944 at the Last Frontier Hotel.
The photographic images of him with the rich and famous, taken over four decades, are a fascinating history of both the man and the town where, on April 19, 1955, he was paid a whopping $US50,000 a week at the new Riviera Hotel, becoming the highest-paid performer in the city's history.
His act was a mixture of virtuoso piano playing and high-camp showmanship. Elton John pales alongside Liberace's most outrageous appearances at Radio City Music Hall, when he emerged from a Faberge egg like a rhinestone cowboy, wearing a bright-pink feathered cape trimmed with butterflies, sequins and jewels.
An avid car collector, Liberace's idea of a three-piece suit was to drive on stage in a rhinestone-encrusted Rolls-Royce wearing a $750,000 black diamond mink cape lined with 40,000 hand-sewn rhinestones and play at a Baldwin rhinestone-covered grand piano. Seamstresses wore sunglasses to cut down the glare when stitching the stones - weighing 68 kilograms - to the cape's lining.
The museum has many of his customised cars on display, including a Rolls-Royce with mirrored mosaics and another painted in stars and stripes, which he matched with red-sequinned shorts for his performances during 1954.
The conservative matrons of Palm Springs couldn't miss him picking up friends from the airport in a cream 1957 English taxi cab, gold gull-wing 1972 Bradley or hot-pink Volks-Royce - a 1970 Beetle convertible modified with a Rolls-Royce kit - his name picked out in rhinestones on a pink silk drop-top.
Wildly popular in both Australia and England, during the 1960s Liberace created an English dandy persona off-stage, buying a 1962 Phantom V Landau, the same as that driven for the royal family, who were great Liberace fans. However, the outrageous showman was also a quiet collector of impeccable taste, furnishing homes in Malibu, Palm Springs and Las Vegas.
An exhibit shows that he lived at The Cloisters in Palm Springs in regal style, amassing exquisite collections of tableware and glassware that reflected his love of antiques. An outstanding collection of European pianos, many played by him over his long career, show what a bowerbird he was - he once bought a small museum's entire collection to own a priceless piano made in 1788.
A bouffant Liberace cut the ribbon to open his museum on April 15, 1979. Across the parking lot, piano keys wrap around the front of a building that contains his most famous costumes and accessories: dazzling bow ties in every shade, rhinestone-encrusted cowboy boots and a jewellery collection of chunky bling and massive knuckle-duster rings.
Too much was clearly never enough for Liberace. Eschewing concert pianist black tails, he wore a white suit of tails in 1952 at the Hollywood Bowl and after breaking that mould, he created a dazzling career, the more outrageous the better. Gold lamé quickly followed, then classy tuxedos were sprinkled with sparkles before costumier Frank Acuna introduced him to brocade.
To some, Liberace's wildly extravagant, show-stopping costumes and furs show little discretion or taste but they entertained and delighted his audiences for 40 years.
He was often presented to the royal family and was one of the few who could wear more feathers and diamonds than the Queen Mother. Silver suits, a violet costume trimmed with ostrich feathers and another festooned with hot-pink turkey feathers all weighed a tonne. He used to kid his audience about the multi-hued "lasagne" costume, saying: "I wear it when making lasagne - it doesn't show the stains. As for the virgin mink coat, it took forever to get the pelts!"
The writer was the guest of V Australia, Tourism California and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
TRIP NOTES
The Liberace Museum, 1775 East Tropicana Avenue (at Spencer), Las Vegas, open seven days, 10am-5pm (Sundays, noon-4pm). Phone + 1 702 798 5595, see liberace.org.
Guided tours Monday to Friday, 11am and 2pm. Entry fee $US15 ($16) or $US10 for seniors . A shuttle bus collects from major hotels for a $US2 tip.
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