James Wilson revisits Liberace’s libel case
Recently competing for the Palme d’Or in Cannes was the new Stephen Soderbergh film Behind the Candelabra, a biopic of the late pianist and entertainer Wladziu Valentino Liberace. The film charts the relationship Liberace had with the much younger Scott Thorson from the mid-1970s to the former’s death in 1987 from an AIDs-related illness.
In 1982 they separated acrimoniously and Thorson brought a lawsuit known in American parlance as “palimony” (equivalent to a matrimonial claim between unmarried couples), which was eventually settled for a small fraction of what had been claimed (Thorson later disowned the litigation). It was certainly not Liberace’s first experience of the law courts: more than two decades earlier, he had brought a case of his own in England which quickly became a cause célèbre.
At that time his star was ascending; it has been claimed he was the highest-paid entertainer in the world for much of the 1950s-70s. His fame was partly based on his talent as a piano player, but also on his outré costumes and
