There's nothing more intriguing than a movie star wrapped like a mummy playing someone just emerging from plastic surgery. Think Humphrey Bogart in Dark Passage, Elizabeth Taylor in Ash Wednesday. And now, in HBO's Behind the Candelabra, Michael Douglas playing Liberace, the swishy but closeted Las Vegas piano player. Matt Damon, bleached blond for the role, costars as Liberace's stoned and rhinestoned boyfriend, Scott Thorson, who was almost 40 years younger.
The biopic, directed by Steven Soderbergh and airing May 26th, is based on Thorson's book Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace, published a year after Liberace's death in 1988. The book itself recounts the events of the couple's five-year relationship—and serves as an act of revenge for the abrupt way the performer ended it and replaced his lover the same day with a younger boy toy. Liberace's henchmen hustled Thorson out of the star's penthouse wearing only his pajamas and a fur coat, Thorson writes.
His and His Face-lifts: Rolls Royces, lavish real estate, and dozens of pet dogs were not the only things the lovers enjoyed during their happier days together. Cosmetic surgery played a major role in their relationship. According to Thorson, after Liberace, then 59, glimpsed his aging face on a Tonight Show interview in 1979, he decided he needed a second face-lift. "I look like hell. Why hasn't anyone told me how old I look?" he said.
On the advice of Guy Richard, the hairdresser who styled Liberace's wigs, the entertainer called Jack Startz, a Hollywood ear, nose, and throat specialist. Played in the movie by Rob Lowe—in high-camp hair and makeup bearing no resemblance to his actual suave appearance—Startz was a brilliant surgeon who was eventually brought down by drugs and alcohol, financial problems, and the consequences of doling out silicone injections that left the face of at least one denizen of the movie colony looking like a melting candle. In the words of his oldest son, Jon Startz, "He was charismatic, skilled, innovative—and tragic."
Liberace wanted not just his own face reworked: He hired Startz to surgically remake Thorson, too, into a younger version of himself. The pianist was planning to adopt his boyfriend, Thorson writes, and wanted him to look like his son. Startz outlined an operative plan for the 20-year-old Thorson: a nose job, restructured cheekbones, a chin implant, and, at Thorson's request, a cleft in his chin. When Liberace complained that his "blond Adonis" was gaining weight, Startz prescribed what he called the Hollywood Diet—"cocaine, amphetamines and Quaaludes," Thorson writes.
Wigged Out: This may sound like the plot of B-movie, but it's all apparently true, according to those still alive to remember. Helene Ballas, a Los Angeles aesthetician who managed Startz's office for nearly two decades—she was also romantically involved with the surgeon, who died in 1985—recalls that Liberace wanted to have his operation performed first "so Scott could take care of him," she says. The surgery included a lower face-lift, upper and lower eye-lifts, and a face peel performed by Ballas. The entertainer, who was nearly bald, refused to remove his wig in the operating room, she says. He had to be persuaded before the surgery could begin.
Afterwards, Thornson wheeled the bandaged Liberace across the street to a three-bedroom apartment rented for the occasion. Ballas remembers sprucing it up for the celebrated guest. "I brought sheets and towels, a lace tablecloth, fancy tea cups, and a silver candelabra from my home," she says. Ballas stayed at the apartment with the recovering star for several nights, and Startz arrived every day to change his bandages. "Liberace was the nicest man. He never complained," she says.
Hello, Phyllis Diller: For follow-up visits, Liberace flew in from Las Vegas, and Ballas would pick him up at the airport in her Cadillac. "I was late once and found him waiting patiently on a bench," she recalls. "He gets into my car, and there, in a car beside us, was Phyllis Diller. They rolled down their windows and were talking back and forth while I'm driving. Hi, Lee [Liberace's nickname].' 'Hi, Phyllis.'"
Liberace was solicitous to the people he needed. Ballas often went to his house to check his face and bring face creams she had blended for him. Over the years, he gave her small gifts, including an old-fashioned telephone and a brooch in the shape of a piano. He liked to cook and occasionally invited her to stay for Italian dinners. And his costume designer made a wedding dress for one of Ballas's daughters.
Thorson's operation took place a month later, giving him time to lose 20 pounds. After the his-and-his procedures, "Scott looked pretty good," says Ballas. Liberace, however, was another story. In his book, to be reissued May 14 by Tantor Media, Thorson writes that the entertainer could barely close his eyes after his second face-lift and had to sleep with them slightly open. Thorson, meanwhile, stayed on his "diet"'—and blamed Startz for his growing drug dependence. After six months the surgeon refused to give his patient any more pills. As Ballas says, "Startz controlled people with drugs." But he couldn't control his own drug use, she says. Around 1975, Startz asked Ballas to drive him to a rehab center in Arizona. Within a few days, she says, he called again: "Come and get me," he said.
For much more about Liberace's plastic surgeon, including the Hollywood scandal over his questionable practices and his family's heartfelt response, come back to allure.com tomorrow.
RELATED LINKS:
• Celebrity Plastic Surgery: A Brief History
