04/04/2021
At 3.15pm on Easter Sunday, the acclaimed and much loved independent archive TV channel, Talking Pictures TV will be inviting us to spend a brief half hour in the company of Liberace. Władziu Valentino Liberace was a child prodigy at the piano and during the height of his fame, in the fifties to the seventies, was one of the world's top entertainers. With sugary sweet music and outlandish bravado, he captured millions of fans. It is at the height of his powers that the Talking Pictures Channel invites us to join him in an Easter Special originally made for US television in 1955. Showtunes, piano and dancing are the order of the day. Liberace was very much a man of his times, a conservative politically and religiously who was nonetheless flamboyantly gay in private. He sadly passed on from an AIDS related condition in 1987, without ever really coming out or acknowledging his gay identity. Incidentally, gay icon and the last surviving member of the “Golden Girls”, Betty White, revealed in 2011 that she was often used as a cover for Liberace, with press officials implying that the two were romantically involved. They were not, of course, as Liberace had many male lovers. Today, with attitudes towards homosexuality very different even from 1987, so Liberace is celebrated as a gay showman and entertainer of considerable talent.
