“Food and music are the two best things in life.”
By the 1970s, legendary American pianist and vocalist Wladzio Valentino Liberace, better known simply as Liberace, was the world’s highest-paid entertainer. Known for his lavish outfits and flamboyant fashion, he publicly denied being gay in his lifetime — and even sued those who alleged that he was — yet he emerged as an icon of the gay community. Elton John himself has said that Liberace was the first gay person he saw on television, becoming his instant hero. Interestingly, some cultural historians have argued that Liberace also inspired the high-rolling, bling-encrusted imagery of hip-hop culture — a mecca of verbally explicit homophobia — with at leastone book framing him as a pioneer of hip-hop’s luxe lifestyle.
An aficionado of finery in all its forms, Liberace had an especial passion for gastronomy — a lesser-known aspect of the icon’s life, obscured by his musical fame and role in gay culture, and yet very much a vital undercurrent in both, and a fine addition to the secrets obsessions of great creators. Besides the seven pianos in his Hollywood mansion — including a diamond-studded white upright one, a gold-leaf grand with two keyboards, and a magic Baldwin concert grand with a see-through glass top, which traveled on tour with him — Liberace also had seven dining rooms in the house, a symmetry bespeaking the two parallel loves of his life: music and food. Indeed, as a lover of unusual vintage cookbooks, I was utterly delighted to find a rare record of the latter in the 1970 out-of-print gem Liberace Cooks! Recipes from His Seven Dining Rooms (public library) by the renowned food critic and arts patron Carol Truax, who befriended Mr. Showmanship in the late 1960s and took him up on the invitation to visit his Hollywood home so he could record for posterity his flair for cooking — which she did, beautifully.
Liberace and his mother and brother George in the informal dining room (Photograph: Bob Plunkett)
Liberace’s love affair with food started early, in large part as escapism from the grim realities of the Depression while he was growing up. When he was four, his parents would have musical evenings and they’d egg him on to get into the act. At seven, he got his first real music teacher and began working hard at the piano. By the time he was a sixteen-year-old high school student, he had his own act called the Mixers — and, curiously enough, in it was the seed of his passion for cooking. He recalls:
We’d mix the music, make a medley as it were, and get the crowd mixing — but as I think of it now, I think food has something to do with it. … [Food and music] are the two best things in life.
He eventually began teaching a cooking class — but not to girls: to the football team. He bribed them into signing up by saying the Mixers wouldn’t play at their dances unless they took the class:
They signed. Nobody thought they’d learn a thing, and their fathers didn’t want to come to the father-son banquet, they thought they’d be poisoned; but they came, and they got a pleasant surprise. Next year, thirty-six boys wanted to take the class.
And so his mastery of cuisine was born. At the same time, Liberace was busy getting ready to make his debut with the Chicago Symphony, which launched his career, but his culinary passion remained ablaze. When he eventually became a worldwide music celebrity and earned his way to a Hollywood mansion, he had it built with seven dining rooms, extending his famous extravagance to the physical architecture of his culinary experience for different occasions — besides the regular dining room, he also had one each for buffets, cookouts, midnight suppers, banquets, watching TV, and DIY dining in the kitchen. He only ate in the standard dining room when he was merely hungry — the rest he used when he was in the mood or entertaining for the respective occasion.
Liberace and Carol Truax in the kitchen (Photograph: Bob Plunkett)
In Liberace Cooks, of which I was fortunate and dogged enough to track down a surviving signed copy, Truax takes us on a tour of all seven, offering some of Liberace’s signature recipes for each occasion. We begin at the regular dining room, which “seats eight at the most” and is designed for indoor-outdoor eating. There, Liberace serves such treats as:
Alan: The rest of this article, complete with Liberace's recipes, is located at http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/10/07/liberaces-little-known-cookbook/
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