I can't imagine how I made it nearly
forty-six years on this earth and yet have never been exposed (until
just the other day) to the 1955 debacle Sincerely Yours, the first
starring role in a film by pianist extraordinare Liberace. It also
proved, quite swiftly, to be the LAST starring role in a film by
Liberace!
In 1955, Wladziu Valentino Liberace (of
Polish descent) was a monumentally popular nightclub pianist-turned
television star thanks to his The Liberace Show, an intimate,
schmaltzy program in which he engaged the audience in conversation
and sometimes music education while deftly tinkling the ivories in a
unique, highly-individualized fashion. Liberace had made a few brief
film appearances and in 1950 had played a honky tonk pianist South
Sea Sinner with Shelley Winters, but had never carried a movie.
Warner Brothers offered the showman a
two-picture deal in which he would rake in that vast black &
white TV audience for some lavish, high gloss entertainment. For the
first picture, they chose to remake and slightly update a creaky old
property that had been a Broadway play called The Silent Voice.
Filmed in 1915 under its original name as The Silent Voice with Francis X Bushman and then again in 1922 with
George Arliss, the title was changed this time to The Man Who Played
God.
Those both being silent films, the
story was filmed again in 1932 with sound, again called The Man Who
Played God and again with George Arliss. The plot concerned a
successful concert pianist who goes deaf and almost falls apart, but
through the art of lip-reading begins to help people out of various
fixes, in effect playing God. Eventually, he reads the lips of his
fiancee (played by Bette Davis!) and discovers that she is in love
with someone else. Arliss was by then sixty-four years old (and
looked every second of it and more), though he was a tremendously
admired and beloved cinematic figure.
For Liberace's rendition of this august
tale, the title was changed to Sincerely Yours. The lead character's
name had originally been Franklyn Starr and then Montgomery Royale,
but for this version was changed to the presumably less flowery
Anthony Warrin. Previous versions had also included a heavy dose of
mother love, which was eliminated here (even though Liberace was an
avowed mama's boy himself as seen at left.) Liberace's character was a touring piano
showman who employed a crotchety manager (William Demarest) and an
attractive, but understated, secretary (Joanne Dru.)
As the film opens, Liberace is playing
to a packed house with every seat taken up to the rafters. Closer
inspection reveals that only the first two or three rows have people
in them. The rest is an elaborate painting with hordes of painted
faces stacked upon one another! (Hans Koenekamp is credited with
“special effects” of which this was apparently one...)
Eventually, Liberace gets up and asks
if the audience has any requests. Somehow, he's supposed to be able
to hear this throng of people all shouting at once and still pick out
one pea-sized girl up near the ceiling who wants to hear
“Chopsticks.” He agrees to play it and, after the predictably
simple start, proceeds to perform a “wow” rendition that startles
the freckle-faced boy in front of the girl who'd once been derisive
about it.
Next we see Lee (Liberace's real-life
nickname, which I will occasionally use for variety's sake) in his
hotel suite with Dru. Dressed in a gorgeously saturated red robe (a
color that pops up to beautiful effect on several occasions), not green as the tinted photo above depicts, he is
answering fan mail and responding to Dru about personal appearance
requests. His ear-assaultingly nasal voice tosses off pithy remarks
to each thing she says, for example turning down an avocado festival
because they're “too fattening” and an aquarium because he doesn't want to get "seasick."
The concert is taking place in San
Francisco, leading Dru to remark, “You're very popular in San Francisco”
as if we didn't know! There's a feeble attempt to butch Lee up a bit
when it's discovered that he is supposed to be escorting Dru to “the
big fight” and is even betting on the outcome. When Dru mentions a
telegram that has come in, Liberace suddenly bursts into the bathroom
to ask Demarest about it.
Here, in the movie's big beefcake
scene, sixty-three year-old Demarest is shown plopped down in a
bubble bath, scrubbing himself with a brush while smoking a cigar!
Ever the curmudgeon, he blathers and lathers on while Lee searches
for the telegram. It's an invitation he's long dreamed of to play
Carnegie Hall. All he has to do first is allow a representative to
watch him in action beforehand.
As the conversation continues, Demarest
wriggles around in the tub enough to make the viewer worry that the
suds are not going to do their job and keep everything under wraps
that is supposed to be in a mid-1950s movie! Even though this is a
far more likely domestic scenario for real-life Lee than the one with
his female secretary, he seems to take pains not to look at Demarest
during the sequence.
Dru is in Dorothy McQuire mode here,
the lonesome, pining, buttoned-up secretary, primly admiring her
boss, but doing little to nothing about it. She sports a pair of
cats-eye glasses that make her seem even more bookish and
nondescript. Demarest can see that she has a thing for Liberace, but
Liberace is utterly blind to it.
He trots off to meet one of his old
piano teachers and mentors whose apartment/studio is in town.
Entering the apartment, he sits at the piano and begins to play,
though the maestro isn't there himself. Now we have a “meet cute”
as luscious blonde socialite Dorothy Malone comes in, ostensibly to
procure the services of the piano teacher, but sneaky-pants Lee
pretends to be the teacher!
He listens to her bland, rote playing
and critiques her accordingly, trying to get her to feel the music
when the real instructor finally comes in and blows Liberace's cover.
Remarkably, Malone isn't particularly
perturbed by the trick that was pulled on her and she agrees to go
have lunch with Lee at an Italian restaurant. She's even
understanding when it turns out that Liberace has left his wallet in
another jacket and she has to shell out for lunch!
Thus begins a whirlwind courtship in
which they date and dine all over town. That same first night, while in a supper
club, the celebrated pianist is called up from his table by the
resident bandleader to perform for everyone (something Lee does with
nary a nanosecond of hesitation.) Before playing, he sits on the lip
of the stage, flirting with a quartet of older society matrons, one
frantic, heaving lady in particular. He asks her if she wants to
touch him, which she does, but he explains that up higher on his leg
is where he gets “the message!”
Malone isn't at all jealous of this, of
course, and sits beaming throughout the performance, clearly
beginning to fall for the performer's charisma. As an aside, I
happen to love Dorothy Malone and think she had the most glorious
coloring in her films, with big, luminous eyes and a sensual voice
emanating from a sexy mouth.
Things heat up, so to speak, when he
gets back to the table and kisses Malone. Then, after the patrons
begin to holler “encore!” he awkwardly plants another
tightly-clamped smack against her lips to the delight of everyone.
(In a perfect world, Miss Malone, who is now in her late-eighties,
would be recording a DVD commentary for this movie and relaying her
experiences of this and other scenes during filming!)
In fact, even to achieve this repellent
lip-lock, Liberace required a little help from director Gordon
Douglas, seen here guiding Lee and Malone into one of their smooches.
(Incidentally, the one below that with Dru isn't even in the film as
they are in the costumes from their first scene together!) Anyway, all of the kissing scenes in every respect are cringe-inducing...
The couples' next hot date is to a
museum. The elevator operator recognizes Liberace and prevents him
from following the tour. He instead escorts him to an empty, closed-off, special room in
which pianos having belonged to classical composers are gathered.
Liberace proceeds to take a turn on
each one of these priceless instruments, playing compositions written
by each of the gentlemen in question. Again, Malone looks out
dreamily, enraptured by the skillful playing of her new gentleman
friend (and sporting a great hat.)
Now Liberace has another concert
performance, this one for the benefit of the Carnegie Hall booking
agent. Here Dru is confronted for the first time by “blonde”
Malone who, like Liberace himself, has no clue that Dru is harboring
feelings for her employer.
It's another sold out performance, only
one seat is conspicuously absent next to Malone, and as the show
wears on, a G.I. slithers in to claim it. He's so hypnotized by the
performance of Liberace that he passes the empty seat and plants
himself instead on top of Malone! (Note the deeply saturated red
coat she's wearing.)
After this unusual encounter, the man
(Alex Nicol) takes his own seat and proceeds to lap up the
intoxicating music of the star pianist.
At intermission, Nicol and Malone
strike up a conversation over a drink. He's a composer himself and
the way he languidly leans around on the furniture and beams at the
sight of Liberace, one wonders if he isn't going to try to make a
play for him himself! However, it turns out that he is more
interested in Malone.
During the encore, as Dru, Demarest and
the Carnegie rep look on, Liberace begins to play as suddenly
realizes that he is having trouble hearing the piano. (This is a far
cry from when he could hear a little girl hundreds of feet up in the
air requesting that he play “Chopsticks!”)
In an unintentionally hilarious
sequence, he begins to sweat and fret over the impending hearing
loss, his usually almost expressionless face starting to take on
occasional moments of movement and emotion. He frantically tries to
finish up the piece and get off the stage, even cutting the song
short.
His hearing returns, but then – as
luck would have it – THE night he is to perform at Carnegie Hall,
he's all decked out (in one of his publicized 29 costume changes) and
ready to go on, but then suddenly loses his hearing again! This time
it doesn't come back.
Each time Liberace experiences hearing
loss, he gets this odd, staring expression on his face. You can't
exactly call him “wooden,” more like waxen... His already
angular, semi-dark features sometimes take on a sullen, almost
vampiric quality! Rather than clue the public in on what has
happened to him, a story of his “injuring his hand” is released
to the press.
Since his hearing loss is likely to be
permanent (the only solution being a risky, very serious operation
with no guarantee of success), Liberace takes refuge in his glorious,
all-white penthouse apartment. He is visited by a man who instructs
him in the skill of lip-reading, so that he will eventually be able
to communicate with people, so long as he can see their mouths move.
Malone, who'd been off visiting her
parents, races to see her fiance after his disastrous Carnegie
cancellation, but is halted in the foyer by Dru who tells her as
considerately as she can that Liberace is now deaf.
Malone writes messages on a pad for Lee
to read and he can respond verbally. He feels it best that she go
away for a while and allow him to work on his convalescence by
himself. She reluctantly agrees to leave him, planning to return
after a time.
In order to practice lip-reading,
Liberace purchases a honkin' pair of binoculars and peers down the
balcony into a park across the street. The first thing he sets his
sites on is a gaggle of young boys playing football. He notices that
one of the kids (Richard Eyer) is never allowed to play despite
wanting to desperately. It turns out that the young boy has some
sort of affliction and has to wear braces on his legs.
He also spies on a middle-aged woman
(Lurene Tuttle) who keeps meeting her beautiful newly-married
daughter (Lori Nelson) in the park. The daughter has married in to
society and is apparently ashamed of her lowly mother's station in
life. She deigns to meet her ever-so-briefly every now and again,
shoving money into her palm to make up for the lack of face time she
gives her. (Less observant viewers might momentarily think they are
watching Malone since she and Nelson have similar coloring and
physiques!)
Dru arrives and proceeds to inform Lee
that she has written words to a song that he'd previously composed.
The song is “Sincerely Yours” and there can be little doubt as to
how she feels once he – stone deaf – picks up the lyrics and
proceeds to sing the number as he's playing it for her. Rather than
bring him around, though, this whole enterprise seems to deject him
even further. (And I am ashamed to say that any time “Sincerely
Yours” is played, at the end I am always reminded of the coroner
from The Wizard of Oz who sings “she's really most sincerely dead!”
in almost the same cadence and melody!)
She departs and he staggers out to the
balcony (with dead leaves symbolically dotting the floor) and begins
to contemplate jumping off!
Dru returns, having conveniently
forgotten her purse and gloves (but not her glasses which have, by
now, disappeared into oblivion... What is it with movie women who
just suddenly give up their glasses because they are unflattering and
never have need for them again?!?) She catches on to what Lee is
doing and races to stop him, giving him a bit of a tongue-lashing in
the process.
Despondent, Liberace heads to a nearby
church where little Eyer and his grandfather (and no one else!) are
present, praying. He lip-reads that Eyer needs an operation in order
to have normal use of his legs. Afterwards, he informs Dru that he
wants her to contact the grandfather and make arrangements to pay for
the surgery himself.
He continues his binocular stalking of
Tuttle and Nelson, with Demarest and Dru onhand to the point where
the movie briefly becomes a pale imitation of 1954's Hitchcock film
Rear Window, with Dru in the Grace Kelly part and Demarest in the
smart-talking Thelma Ritter role!
Then out of nowhere one night, he
awakes to find that he can hear the clock in his bedroom ticking! He
can hear again! He darts from the bed and, naturally as his first
act since regaining his aural attributes, proceeds to play his piano
at full tilt. This wakes up Demarest (who lives there, too?!) who
claims he is happy to sit there all night and listen.
Liberace's first order of business now
that he's able to hear again is to don a trench coat and head to the
park where he can listen first hand to Tuttle and Nelson. After
Nelson pulls another one of her “I'm sorry, but here's some money”
moments, Liberace decides to take matters into his own hands.
In another sequence reminiscent of a
Hitchcock film (this one, Vertigo, yet to come! Maybe Hitch was inspired by
this movie!), Lee takes Tuttle on an all-expenses-paid shopping and
beauty spree, selecting just the right gown, shoes and hat for her
and treating her to a nail and hair styling experience. We gays just
love makeovers, so its a great and happy occasion in the movie to see
Tuttle transformed from the dowdy, forlorn mom into a vivacious lady.
(Lady for a Day or A Pocketful of Miracles anyone?)
Liberace has a charity event scheduled
in which he's to entertain and raise money by taking song requests
for $100 apiece. (Note that even after shelling out dough to gussy
up Ms. Tuttle, there was no way he was going to be outdone himself.
He's sporting a sequined tux jacket!) He utilizes Tuttle (who now looks like the 7th place finalist in a June Allyson look-alike contest) as a glamorous assistant.
Attending the event is Tuttle's
daughter Nelson along with her new husband and her in-laws. Note
that the husband is played by a young Guy Williams. Also note the
presence, just at the back of Liberace, of The Underworld's favorite
movie extra Leoda Richards! See here and here.
As Nelson is confronted with her all
new mom, to the eventual delight of everyone present, Leoda Richards
is placed to where her face is right in the sight line of anyone
looking at the star. You will find this to be the case in movie
after movie in which Ms. Richards was employed.
Things seem to be going along
swimmingly now except, right as the evening is ending, Liberace loses
his hearing AGAIN! As it's Christmas, he and his cohorts Demarest
and Dru are decorating the tree, with Dru in another of those rich
red costumes by Howard Shoup. She has decided to leave Liberace for
parts unknown, knowing that Malone will soon be back to claim him for
herself.
Little Eyer comes by, accompanied as
always by his grandfather, and can now walk normally. He is given an
appropriate present from Liberace while Liberace receives one from
Eyer. Contained within it, though, is a St. Christopher medal that
Eyer used in order to remain brave for his surgery. This sparks
Liberace to consider going ahead with the high-risk ear surgery that
may restore his hearing for good.
Things take another turn for the worst,
though, when Lee is standing on his balcony and, once again with the
binoculars, sees Malone arrive, yet not head up to his apartment.
She instead goes to the park (how fortunate that everyone goes to the
same park bench in the same section of the park for every telling
moment of his or her life!) There she meets with the ex-G.I. Nicol
and Liberace can see that she is only staying with him out of
obligation and has fallen for Nicol romantically.
Once upstairs, Liberace explains what
he's seen to Malone and frees her from her promise to him so that she
can be happy with the man she truly loves. He then proceeds to go
under the knife and see if he will ever hear again.
Once again, unintentional titters
spring from the Norma Desmond-ish bandage get-up he is wearing. Even
more chuckles come our way when the bandage comes off and he is left
with an unruly mop of long salt-and-pepper curls that just out from
his head against the crisp white hospital pillow.
I'm not usually one for spoilers, but
if you thought this movie was going to end on a sad note, you must
not be very familiar with 1950s musicals... Liberace finally gets to
play Carnegie Hall and all of his old friends are on hand to
celebrate with him. He actually plays a certain song for each one of
them, indicating them with his hand as their turn arrives.
The biggest shocker of them all,
though, is when he inexplicably pops up off the piano bench and
proceeds to perform a flighty, flouncy dance routine! He begins
whirling and hopping all over one side of the stage to the delight of
everyone in the theatre (and in front of the TV!) Everything is
neatly sewn up in time for the end of the movie.
In Sincerely Yours, Liberace provides a
lackluster, painfully in-over-his-head performance in which the
audience is simply asked to suspend its disbelief far further than
they ought to have to. However, no one can deny that the man knew
how to play the piano entertainingly. He plays (and plays and
plays!) here deftly and compellingly and it's easy to see why people
found him entertaining. It's just that a dramatic and romantic
leading man he was NOT.
This film's failure was so pronounced
that Warner Brothers would rather pay him off than actually proceed
with the second picture he was meant to star in! Over the course of
his colorful life, he had more than one occasion in which he “cried
all the way to the bank,” whether it be scathing reviews despite
sell-out houses, "slanderous" magazine articles that he fought over and
won or this instance of being paid not to work! At one point,
Liberace was making $300,000 a week to play the piano in Las Vegas
and Lake Tahoe!
Later, he made a memorably amusing
appearance in 1965's satire The Loved One, as a funeral salesman, in
a film that was proud of its claim to have something in it to offend
everyone! His appearance on Batman as a guest villain in 1966
brought that series its highest-ever ratings. Of course the
character was a criminal pianist called Chandell.
He eventually began to incorporate more
and more glitz and glamour into his act, with staggering beaded
costumes, oversized, elaborately decorated pianos and eye-boggling
sets and festively-costumed supporting performers. He was over,
over, over-the-top and the public loved it. He was also a deeply
closeted homosexual who wanted his audiences to never know the truth,
right up until his death from AIDS in 1987 at age sixty-seven.
The recent cable telefilm Behind the
Candelabra (2013) features Michael Douglas in a rather astounding
performance as the later-in-life Lee, a gold-plated, sexually
controlling ghoul far removed from what he seemed like in the
beginning with his simple black tuxedos and demure pianos. I will be
very surprised if Douglas doesn't take home the Emmy, the Golden
Globe and the SAG for his startling turn as Liberace.
Though Dru was an attractive lady (the
older sister of Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall) who costarred
in several notable films including Red River (1948), She Wore a
Yellow Ribbon (1948) and All the King's Men (1949), I have never
really been able to warm up to her. To me, she has always projected
a very artificial type of acting that I can see right through, though
maybe I have yet to see her at her best. Married first to singer
Dick Haymes and then to John Ireland (and later to two other men, the
last marriage a success), she died in 1996 of lymphedema at the age
of seventy-four.
Conversely, I have always loved Malone.
Having kicked around in movies since the early-'40s, it wasn't until
she went blonde that things really began to click for her. Sincerely
Yours was but only one of six movies she had released in 1955. And
1956 brought the delicious Written on the Wind, which scored her an
Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. In 1964, she segued to TV with
the highly successful primetime soap Peyton Place, eventually making
her last movie appearance in 1992 with a cameo in Basic Instinct.
She is still with us today at age eighty-eight.
Method-actor Nichol was a useful
supporting player in many western and war films of the 1950s, with
his villainous turn in James Stewart's The Man from Laramie (also
1955) a standout. He played Paul Anka's drunken father in 1961's
captivating Look in Any Window, which was profiled here not too long
ago, soon after moving to Europe for acting opportunities there.
Back in the U.S. By 1970, he played Shelley Winters shiftless husband
in Bloody Mama, but was retired by 1976. He died of natural causes
in 2001 at the age of eighty-five.
Millions of TV viewers fondly recall
Demarest as the cranky Uncle Charlie of Fred MacMurray's TV series My
Three Sons (1965 – 1972), though he'd been a film actor since the
mid-1920s! Having appeared in a small role in 1927's The Jazz
Singer, he was years later nominated for an Academy Award for The
Jolson Story (1946), all about Al Jolson, star of The Jazz Singer.
He lost to Harold Russell of The Best Years of our Lives. A 1968
Emmy nomination was lost to Hogan's Heroes' Werner Klemperer. When
he retired in 1976, Demarest had been acting on screen for fifty
years. He passed away at age ninety-one in 1983 of prostate cancer.
Nelson had been a performer since her
toddler years, ultimately winning a movie contract at age seventeen.
She played one of the daughters in a couple of the Ma and Pa Kettle
movies in 1952 and 1955 and costarred in the Black Lagoon sequel
Revenge of the Creature (also 1955.) By the dawn of the '60s, she
was working more on television, but abruptly quit to get married.
Upon her divorce in 1971, she did one episode of Family Affair, but
little else after that, marrying again in 1983 to a man she remains
wed to now at age eighty.
Tuttle played many varied characters
from caring confidantes to dithering idiots in many film and TV
projects from the early 1930s on. She had diverse roles in films such as Mr.
Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), Niagra (1953), Psycho (1960)
and even Walking Tall (1973.) She was also an invaluable radio
actress sometimes providing every female voice on a program. Her
work on Diahann Carroll's Julia netted her an Emmy nomination in
1970, but she lost to Karen Valentine for Room 222. Tuttle died of
cancer in 1986 at age seventy-eight.
Eyer had also done some Ma and Pa
Kettle films in 1954 and 1956, but not the same ones as Lori Nelson.
In 1955, he played Fredric March's young son in the hostage drama The
Desperate Hours, but is probably best known for playing Gary Cooper's
boy in 1956's Friendly Persuasion. After his agent died when he was
sixteen, Eyer left the business and ultimately became an elementary
school teacher. He's still alive today at age sixty-eight.
On hand as Liberace's doctor is familiar character actor Edward Platt, who worked in many films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Written on the Wind (1956), North by Northwest (1959) and Pollyanna (1960) before gaining fame as Don Adams' boss "Chief" on the comedic spy series Get Smart (1965 - 1970.) Sadly, Platt, who had played so many doctors, policemen and other helpful figures, suffered from depression for years and took his own life in 1974 at the age of fifty-eight.
Making an appearance early in his
career as Nelson's society husband is Guy Williams. Williams had
been playing bit roles for a few years and his part here is hardly
substantial, but by 1957 things would change when he won the part of
TV's Zorro, a role he played with much success until 1961, followed
by Lost in Space (1965-1968), in which he was the show's patriarch.
You can read more about Mr. Williams (and two other “Guys”) here and see more of him here!
He died of a brain aneurysm in 1989 at age sixty-five.
Renowned as one of Hollywood's most
awful movies, Sincerely Yours is certainly not terrific, but it
contains a significant amount of vintage Liberace piano-playing,
demonstrating a hint of the sort of thing that made him popular, and
is a beautifully photographed, elegant sort of film with enjoyably
campy situations and dialogue.
Pains were taken to present this
slightly sticky and more than a little smarmy fellow as a man two
women were simultaneously pining over and it simply didn't come off. Look at this passionate foreign-release poster! Still, in The Underworld, film failures are often treasured more
highly than the ones that turned out right!
7 comments:
Like you, I only saw this film recently (TCM played it a month or two ago)and wonder how anyone who knows me hadn't clued me in on what a terrible/terrific delight this film is.
All I kept thinking about is how much I would have loved seeing it in a theater when I had a chance when it screened at a camp film festival many years ago.
But better late than never, right?
Your post captures my exact thought on everything that's so cringe-inducing about the film, yet makes it so compelling. I just kept watching it wondering how anybody with a brain cell in their heads ever thought Liberace could be straight. Even in fiction you can't buy it! Thanks for letting me relive this awful(ly good) film with all your factoids, backstory, and pics I've never seen! Excellent job!
Thank you for the Cliff Notes version! It is much more fun and enjoyable to read this post than to sit through the movie. To be frank, I would rather have my urethra catheterized with spikes thank see "Lee" as the "romantic lead" in any film offering much less sit through this again! Also, Michael and Matt ruined him for me two months ago!
However, I'm now hot after Nichol and "The Man from Laramie!" I can't wait to see that.
XXOO
I remember sitting in slack jawed horror as this opus ran one day on TCM and wondering how the film makers could have possibly viewed the rushes of this stinkeroo and not realized from day one what a hopeless task they had set for themselves to try and turn Liberace into a movie star.
The movie does have a few pluses. The marvelous Malone, who as you do Poseidon I adore, the lush production design, slick cinematography, the beautiful costumes and one of my favorite character actresses Lurene Tuttle who always gave lovely performances. But it's all for naught when Liberace stripped of all his flash is on screen, a black sink hole from which the picture can't recover.
Thank you my three faithful friends for sharing your own thoughts and recollections about this film!
Sometimes I come upon pics of youngish Liberace, poolside and bare-chested (some of these are located elsewhere on my site) and he was in remarkable shape with a hairy chest, but I can just never get past that hideously nasal drone of a speaking voice he had and the creepy smile... all of which got worse as he aged (and I won't even mention the "hair.")
I'll just ditto the comments here...I can't bear to look at Liberace -- pasty, soft, nasal, doughy...chills up my spine of the wrong kind. However, I adore the supporting cast, from Dru and Malone down to Platt and Demarest. And it's a pretty film to look at. Other than that, I'll grab the clicker and fast forward OUT of the Liberace scenes. The first gay joke I ever heard was about Liberace, my grandfather told me: "What do you call Liberace in a men's room? 'Stranger in Paradise'." Oh Lord, I hope that wasn't offensive to anybody, but I'll take the rap for it.
I Love Lurene Tuttle
She was the owner of Mr Chicken's boarding house in the Don Knotts film... And we all loved the color she picked out for Norma Bates funeral dress: periwinkle blue
I was 5 in 1955, and my Mom and Dad were watching this guy named Liberace play the piano on TV. My mother said she wanted me to play the piano just like him. I told her after 15 to 20 minute that there was something weird about that guy. My mom kept asking me what it was that I didn't like about him, and all I could tell her was 'that there was something I didn't like about him '.
Post a Comment