Such a sad, sad story; why does it provoke a chronic case of the
giggles? "Liberace," the ABC movie airing Sunday night at 9 on Channel
7, is an authorized but ridiculous film biography of the glitzy
entertainer.
An unauthorized, and presumably more colorful, version will air one
week later on CBS. It's breakthrough time at the networks again.
Andrew Robinson, notorious for his portrait of a psychotic killer in
the first "Dirty Harry" movie, plays the pop pianist in ABC's film,
which jumps and stumbles through Liberace's life from his youth in
Milwaukee through his death of AIDS in February 1987. Robinson does a
caricature that seems fairly respectable compared with the utter
laughability of the script.
One problem may be that authorization. Although the film depicts
Liberace as protesting published reports of his homosexuality -- he sued
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Confidential magazine as far back as the '50s, it seems -- it never
deals directly with the subject. As portrayed here with clinical
ambiguity, Liberace apparently never had a lustful thought in his life.
He befriends strangers but only because, he says, of his weakness
for life's "strays." Jamie James, played by John Rubinstein, dangles his
toes in Lee's piano pool when they first meet and tells him longingly,
"You're kind of special." But that's as far as that ever goes.
Then the evil Scott Thorson (pudgy Marius Valainis) appears on the
scene, later to humiliate Liberace with the palimony suit that was the
Share this articleSharedelight of the tabloids. There's one achingly funny shot in which
Thorson drives one of Liberace's Rolls-Royces off the stage and into a
couple of musicians in the wings.
Actually, the cars are the best actors in the film, or at least the
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most amusing things to look at. They include a hulking Buick convertible
and a cute baby-blue Ford Thunderbird. In addition, Rue McClanahan gets
to root around the premises, and what premises, as Liberace's bossy,
prudish mother, who in one scene tries to trick him into the sack with a
female fan planted in his boudoir.
Ma, how could you!
However little dignity Liberace's show-bizzy life had while he was
living it, he probably deserves better than a muddled dud like this
film. It isn't only crummy, it's awfully cheap-looking. Some of
Liberace's baubles and furs were used, but the stage sequences don't
look half so lavish as Liberace's performances.
Worse, in tiptoeing around their subject, the filmmakers failed to
capture what it was that made Liberace, however one may have tried to
resist, so goofily entertaining. He played a mean piano, and he always
looked happy doing it.
Not mentioned is Liberace's one-movie film career. He starred as a
deaf concert pianist in the all-time kitsch bomb "Sincerely Yours." Bad
as that was, it looks like a masterpiece compared with the ABC film.
It's sincerely nobody's.
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