Liberace!!! (1955)

D. George Sidney
Colour

One of the three Robert Mitchum/Jane Russell musicals made by Columbia in the 1950s, but the one that really demands to be taken as a screaming camp classic. A biopic (although I’m aware that’s totally the wrong word) of ‘Lee’ Liberace and Tallulah: “the woman he loved and lost”.

Cole Porter also had a film made in his lifetime where he was portrayed as heterosexual and Hollywood conventional, but then while Cole Porter’s tunes were known, there was no real public persona. Liberace was a whole other matter. When this film was made Liberace was a very public presence, his TV show was still on air and he was a favourite of magazines. Later that year he would make his own film debut (also in a heterosexual role) in ‘Sincerely Yours’. It’s therefore particularly bizarre to watch him impersonated (again that’s totally the wrong word) by Robert Mitchum – a man who had his own very public, and truly different, persona. The results, as you can well imagine, are hilarious.

Mitchum makes no effort to pretend to be Liberace, merely adopting the coiffered hairstyle and the sparkly jackets, but giving no hint of anything which could be summed up as “deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love” – a description of Liberace which appeared this very same year (although he did sue). This Liberace is a young man with a gift for the piano, who works his way up through the clubs, always dedicated to his craft. The ladies like him, but he’s shy and so just concentrates on tickling the ivories. Then one day he meets Tallulah, a chanteuse who blows him away. They begin a torrid affair which throws passion into both of their acts. Eventually though they can take it no longer and tearfully part, Liberace moving on to dedicate his life to his fans.

What we have then is utter fiction, and if the film was about a made up character named Ken Kiperace, one that would be utterly forgettable. However the lights, the glamour, the candelabras and the fact that this is supposed to be about the Liberace, just makes the whole thing a riot. Mitchum doesn’t even pretend to play the piano and just sings in his normal drawling tone. He obviously knows this is nonsense and so has determined to just get through it and pick up his pay cheque – which one imagines must have been sizeable. Russell however (in what is, to be fair, a completely fictional role) is a thirty foot high sex goddess, dancing and swinging her hips and showing her legs at every opportunity. Rarely did she sizzle more radiantly on the screen and – even with him being particularly languid and laid-back (to the point you wonder what kind of cigarettes he’s actually smoking) – the sparks are luminous in this Mitchum/Russell combination. It’s great viewing, all that heat and passion and lust, and then you remember this film is supposedly about Liberace.

Really, do such song titles as: “You’re the Woman for Me”; “Married in the Morning, Divorced by Noon”; and “The Best Looking Girl in Kansas” really have a place in a film purportedly about Lee Liberace?

I think, on balance, probably not.

Obviously it suffers in comparison to Michael Douglas in ‘Behind the Candelabra’, and is based on fact in the same way that ‘Star Wars’ is based on fact; but on its own giddy, eye popping terms, it’s a real treat.