David SimsEssays

Liberace Case Proves Juries Are Fallible — and Rumors Are Not Always False

Liberace

by David Sims

WŁADZIU VALENTINO LIBERACE, a pianist who commonly was called by his last name only, was a homosexual who died of AIDS complicated by pneumonia in 1987. Two of his male sexual partners, Cary James Wyman and Chris Adler, were also infected with HIV, with Adler accusing Liberace of infecting him. Both Wyman and Adler are also dead due to AIDS; Adler died at the age of 30 in 1990, and Wyman died in 1997.

Many of Liberace’s friends knew that he was a homosexual. One of them, actress Betty White, affirmed it and added that she was often used as a “beard” [partner on dates to make it appear to the public that Liberace had a girlfriend — Ed.] by Liberace’s managers to counter public rumors that he was queer.

Betty White

Sometimes people don’t want to believe a nasty rumor, despite its plausibility and despite the fact that it later turns out to be correct. And sometimes those people are jurors who have to decide what justice is, and their aversion to the rumor makes them forget their duty to decide without favor.

So it was when William Connor, writing under the pen name Cassandra, described Liberace in terms that might lead his readers in the Daily Mirror to believe that the pianist was a homosexual. (Which, of course, he was.) This was before homosexuality had been normalized by Jewish/Cultural Marxist pro-homosexual political activism. Liberace sued the Daily Mirror in court because Connor had included the expression “fruit-flavored” in his description. Connor wrote that Liberace was:

…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.

William Connor, a gossip columnist who once attacked P.G. Wodehouse for being a “fascist” because Wodehouse told the truth about the relative pleasantness of his brief internment in World War 2 Germany. In 1959, Connor had to pay £8,000 damages, then a substantial sum, to Liberace even though Connor’s thinly-veiled suggestion that Liberace was a homosexual happened to be correct. The jury believed Liberace’s lie that he was sexually normal and had been libeled by Connor. The award was the largest libel judgement in British legal history to that date.

During testimony, Liberace perjured himself by stating under oath that he was not a homosexual, stating “I am against the practice because it offends convention and it offends society.” The jury believed him and ruled in his favor on 16 June 1959, a day that should live in judicial infamy forever as a day when a liar used lies to get money from a truth-teller with the help of a gullible jury.

Liberace would later tell people that, after reading Connor’s description of himself in the Daily Mirror, he “cried all the way to the bank.”

[An obvious and even over-the-top effeminate homosexual, Liberace nevertheless continued to deny his homosexuality for the rest of his life. It says something troubling about the psychological makeup of 1950s-80s Americans that millions of his White middle American, mostly middle-aged female, fans could literally believe that mincing, prancing, pretentious Liberace was just an especially “nice,” attractive, “cultured” man and not a pervert. — Ed.]

By the way, years later Liberace published a cookbook (with co-author Carol Truax) under the title Liberace Cooks. One of the recipes in the book is for “Liberace Sticky Buns.”

* * *

Source: Author

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PPight1931
PPight1931
20 September, 2019 9:36 pm

“Connor’s thinly-veiled inference that Liberace was a homosexual”

You don’t mean inference, you mean implication or innuendo; an inference would have been in Connor’s mind only and not satisfied the test of the law requiring *publication* of the defamatory statement.

Asking the lawyers: can you sue the estate of a deceased litigant proven after death to have secured damages by perjury and deceit?

Another question to the lawyers: why isnt the Federal Government prosecuting the boards of directors of the three principal companies tasked with removing evidence from the crime scene known as 911 ground zero, two of which companies were apparently British?

Kevin Alfred Strom
Kevin Alfred Strom
Admin
Reply to  PPight1931
20 September, 2019 9:58 pm

Correct on the inference — will change that!

Steve
Steve
27 September, 2019 7:13 am

Everywhere I go, I see these effeminate squeamish yet bratty little men with black plastic framed nerd glasses. When I listen to them talk, it makes me sick, the things they say. I wonder what power is responsible for creating such emasculated weasels, and I know it is MSM. Maybe after Trump sweeps in 2020, we can start dismantling MSM and rebuilding the American psyche. Now wouldn’t that be INCREDIBLE ?

JM/Iowa
JM/Iowa
Reply to  Steve
2 October, 2019 2:15 am

And if Trump fails in MMXX? Better to start now, in any way that you can, to take down the jewed media and build ours up. Trust no politician to get the job done.

Stefan
Stefan
Reply to  Steve
8 August, 2020 8:03 am

I gather Trumpstein marched on gay(and kosher) parades in his youth,no? hardly sound.

Stefan
Stefan
8 August, 2020 8:02 am

It seems Liberace was not aviking,then.Amazing vanity.

Walt Hampton
Walt Hampton
22 September, 2021 5:00 pm

Actually, Liberace filed the suit
because he felt he had to. His
thinking was that – if he did not
sue – it would have alienated his
audience of heterosexual
females – and thus would
confirm the homosexual
rumors. It would have been
a career-breaker, and thus
Liberace would find himself
just another unemployed Joe
on the street. I could have
hardly imagined Liberace
applying for employment
as a construction worker.

Arch Stanton
Arch Stanton
5 April, 2022 6:26 pm

  Liberace’s homosexuality was one of those “open secrets”. In fact, it was the first one I remember people talking about during my early childhood. Everyone knew Liberace was a swish faggot, I mean look at how the guy acted and dressed. However, in typically tolerant fashion of white people, the obvious was simply ignored and people looked the other way. In those bad old days of white supremacy, most white people felt where one put his penis was his business, not theirs. It was like that for the queer years of the post war generation. If one did not stupidly flaunt their faggotry or get caught in the disgusting act, they were left alone to indulge their STD practices. The “closet” myth was just so much Jew propaganda excrement… Read more »

Andrew Hamilton
Andrew Hamilton
6 April, 2022 7:02 pm

Liberace’s prominent barrister in that crooked case was a Jew, Gilbert Beyfus (Jewish father, mother probably White, based upon her name).

Over the years Beyfus married three White women, all much younger than himself and in their 20s at time of marriage. (Why don’t these people stick with women of their own race?)

His half-brother, Sir Alfred Butt, 1st Baronet, a full Jew, owned a British theater empire and was a Conservative politician and horse breeder.