Liberace vs The Daily Mirror: The Libel Trial Where He Lied About Being Gay — And Won

Feb 7, 2025
6 min read

Collage of Liberace images in colorful outfits. Text: "Liberace v The Daily Mirror: The Libel Trial That Kept a Secret Hidden" over newspaper clippings.

In June 1959, one of the most celebrated entertainers in the world stood in a London courtroom and swore under oath that he had never in his life engaged in homosexual acts and was against the practice entirely. He was lying. The jury believed him. He walked away with £8,000 in damages, the largest libel settlement in British legal history at the time, and sent a telegram to the newspaper he'd just defeated that read: "What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank." Twenty-eight years later, he died of AIDS. His doctor had tried to list the cause of death as heart failure.

The Man Behind the Candelabra

Wladziu Valentino Liberace was born on 16 May 1919 in West Allis, Wisconsin, the son of a French horn-playing Italian immigrant father and a Polish-American mother who had herself been a concert pianist before marriage. He had an identical twin who died at birth. He started playing piano at four, memorising difficult pieces by seven, and at eight met his idol, the Polish virtuoso Ignacy Paderewski, backstage at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee. "I was intoxicated by the joy I got from the great virtuoso's playing," Liberace said later. "Inspired and fired with ambition, I began to practise with a fervour that made my previous interest in the piano look like neglect."

Man in a suit on airplane stairs holds a sign from a smiling woman. The sign reads: "DEAR LEE: Have a good time in Paris- but don't fall for those French Gals." An airplane is in the background.

As a teenager he was mocked for his effeminacy and his avoidance of sports. He played piano in speakeasies and movie houses under the stage name Walter Busterkeys, earning money during the Depression years while his father raged at him for abandoning the classics. By the early 1940s he'd reinvented his act entirely: what he called "classical music with the boring parts left out," mixing Chopin with "Home on the Range" and wrapping the whole thing in candelabras, fur coats, and elaborate showmanship. He was a camp, glittering, outrageously theatrical presence, and middle America adored him.

The Liberace Show launched in 1951 and at its peak reached 35 million viewers a week, making him the highest-paid entertainer in the world through the 1950s and 1960s. His fan base was overwhelmingly female. Critics loathed him. He didn't care.

"What you said hurt me very much," he would tell detractors. "I cried all the way to the bank." The line predated the trial; it was already his catchphrase. In 1955 he got his Hollywood break in Sincerely Yours, in which he played a pianist who goes deaf. The reviews were mixed. His star didn't dim.

The Daily Mirror Article

On 26 September 1956, the Daily Mirror published an article written by columnist William Connor, who wrote under the pseudonym "Cassandra." The piece, titled "Piano Pounding Liberace," did not explicitly accuse Liberace of being homosexual, something that, at the time, was illegal in the UK, but it strongly hinted at it. The passage that drew the most attention read:

The summit of sex — the pinnacle of masculine, feminine and neuter. Everything that he, she and it can ever want… a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love.

The article was laced with innuendo, and the phrase "fruit-flavoured" became central to the subsequent legal battle. In American slang, "fruit" was a derogatory term for a homosexual man. Connor later denied knowing this, arguing his description was meant only to highlight Liberace's excessive mannerisms. Liberace called the piece "the most despicable, cruel and vile piece of writing ever to appear in print." He wasn't wrong about the intent, whatever Connor claimed.

Two men in suits walk confidently on a city street, surrounded by a crowd. One smiles, creating a cheerful mood. Black and white photo. — Liberace leaving the High Court in London

Suing the Mirror

It wasn't Liberace's first brush with the press over his sexuality. In 1957, he'd sued Hollywood Confidential magazine for $25 million after it implied he was gay, and on the very evening he gave his deposition in that case, two masked men attacked his 65-year-old mother in the garage of his Sherman Oaks home, beating and kicking her. The Hollywood Confidential case was eventually settled on a technicality. The Daily Mirror case was different, Liberace wanted to fight it in a British court, before a British jury, where his image as a wholesome Catholic entertainer beloved by mothers and grandmothers might carry more weight. The case was heard at the High Court in London in 1959. Liberace was represented by Gilbert Beyfus, one of the most celebrated barristers of the period.

Beyfus was 74 at the time of the trial and in poor health, and alarmed Liberace by appearing constantly to mislay his papers, an act, it became clear, that was entirely deliberate theatre staged for the jury.

Liberace v The Daily Mirror: In the Witness Box

The courtroom drama that followed was as theatrical as one of Liberace's performances. On the stand, Liberace vehemently denied the implications of the article. Under cross-examination, he declared:

"I am against the practice because it offends convention and it offends society."

Dressed immaculately and exuding his usual charm, he painted a picture of himself as a wholesome, virtuous entertainer, a devout Catholic who upheld traditional values. As biographer Darden Asbury Pyron later wrote simply: "The plaintiff lied." But Liberace's performance convinced the jury.

The defence attempted to argue that Connor's article was fair comment and that Connor hadn't known "fruit" was American slang. The judge and jury weren't convinced. After a three-week civil trial, the jury ruled in Liberace's favour on 16 June 1959. He was awarded £8,000 in damages, equivalent to around £162,000 today, the largest libel settlement in British legal history at the time. When the Mirror suggested, after Liberace's death from AIDS decades later, that his estate might return the money, nothing came of it.

Beyfus, who had called Connor "a literary assassin" in his closing speech, died the following year. He was 75.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLoLSa3qsuA

Aftermath and Further Lawsuits

Liberace's victory cemented his place in legal history, but the whispers about his private life never went away. He continued to present himself as a heterosexual man, occasionally implying he was looking for the right woman to marry. His personal life told a different story.

In 1982, Scott Thorson, a 22-year-old former chauffeur and live-in companion, filed a $113 million palimony lawsuit against him, claiming he'd been in a romantic relationship with Liberace for five years and had been promised financial security for life. In court, Liberace again denied being homosexual, insisting Thorson was merely an employee. The case was settled out of court in 1986 for $95,000. Thorson later wrote a memoir, Behind the Candelabra, which became the basis for Steven Soderbergh's 2013 HBO film of the same name, with Michael Douglas playing Liberace and Matt Damon as Thorson.

The Final Secret

By the mid-1980s, Liberace's health was visibly declining. He appeared gaunt in his final performances. When he was hospitalised in late 1986, his publicist attributed the decline to a "watermelon diet" and the strain of his schedule. On 4 February 1987, he died at his Palm Springs home, aged 67.

Two men in tuxedos smiling. One wears a patterned jacket and necklace; the other, a velvet jacket with rings. Dim indoor setting, glamorous mood. — Scott Thorson and Liberace attending an event at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, April 1979, showcasing their signature glamorous style.

His doctor listed the cause of death as heart failure brought on by degenerative brain disease and emphysema. His lawyer, manager, and publicist all denied AIDS was involved. The Riverside County Coroner, Ray Carrillo, rejected the death certificate outright, ordered an autopsy, and held a press conference. "Mr. Liberace did not die of cardiac arrest and cardiac failure," Carrillo said. The autopsy confirmed he had died of cytomegaloviral pneumonia resulting from AIDS. Carrillo said he was certain Liberace's doctors had known about the AIDS diagnosis "for months, maybe even years."

No charges were filed in connection with the falsified death certificate. The doctor who signed it declined to comment.

Legacy

The Liberace v Daily Mirror case remains a landmark in British libel law — a demonstration of how the fear of exposure could drive a public figure to commit perjury in open court and get away with it. He's not the only figure of his era to have used the courts to protect a secret rather than a reputation. Oscar Wilde tried the same thing in 1895, suing the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel after Queensberry implied he was a sodomite. Wilde lost, was arrested, tried, and imprisoned. Liberace won, pocketed his damages, and carried on performing.

In the same year Liberace was fighting his Daily Mirror case, Alan Turing — the man whose codebreaking work had helped win the war — had already been chemically castrated by the British state as punishment for gross indecency. For gay men in 1959, the choice was between secrecy and ruin. Liberace chose secrecy, and he chose it all the way to the end.

When he died, the Daily Mirror ran a short item noting that he had, after all, been gay. It did not suggest he owed them an apology.