Beyond The Candelabra

Hi everyone and welcome to Beyond the Candelabra!

For my maiden post, I wanted to share a set of 10, fan-snapped candid photos from my collection which feature Liberace and his brother George backstage at Chicago’s famous Palmer House hotel in 1957.

Liberace enjoyed a long association with the Palmer House dating back to 1947 when he first played a series of weeks-long engagements at the hotel’s legendary Empire Room. “That’s where I made my Chicago supper club debut you know,” he’d tell The Chicago Tribune in 1976. “I know the Empire Room’s gone now, along with that whole era; but I still remember those days. I’d come into the lobby and go up those stairs, and they’d roll out the red carpet for me. Oh it was marvelous.”

Further reminiscing about his early years at the Palmer House hotel in 1986, Liberace continued:

“I remember a sixteen-week engagement at Chicago’s Palmer House in 1947. A suite was included in my contract, and I immediately went into my act of getting rid of everything that had a hotel logo on it and replacing it with my own things, right down to the stationary.

The suite had two bathrooms, and I coaxed the housekeeping staff into transforming one of them into a makeshift kitchen. Since I carried my own utensils – pots, pans, and dishes – all they had to supply was a refrigerator and an electric stove, which were placed on a temporary platform over the bathtub. My work table was over the john, which was completely hidden by a long white tablecloth. The Palmer House press agent was crazy about my ‘kitchen’ and arranged a photo layout for the Chicago Tribune of me cooking in it. When the photographer asked me to step back to enable him to get a better angle, I accidentally flushed the toilet in the process. We all got a big laugh out of it and, fortunately, the sound effect didn’t show up in the picture.

Actually I turned out some very good dinners in that kitchen. You can be sure I was careful to avoid the flusher whenever I invited my co-workers, the Merial [sic] Abbott Dancers, and an attractive young couple making their debut in my show in the Empire Room, Marge and Gower Champion. Also sharing the bill was a young singer who became the father of two twins during the engagement. Later in my career, he became the famous talk-show host Mike Douglas. At the end of the run, I returned the suite to its original condition. I packed all my kitchen and cooking supplies in their fitted Halliburton luggage cases, and no one was the wiser.”

_{Positive review of Liberace’s performance from The Chicago Tribune in July of 1947.}

_{^{(Photo credit: The Chicago Tribune)}}

In 1959, the Palmer House would even serve as the venue for Liberace’s annual fan club convention which ran from September 11th to the 13th in the hotel’s opulent ballrooms. Media coverage of the event noted that it was expected to be attended by fans from over 200 clubs nationwide and would include “various business meetings” as well as “several parties honoring Liberace and his staff.” Though media reviews for the convention alternated between baffled and snarky, fans interviewed by the Chicago Tribune appeared to thoroughly enjoy the three-day long event which ran concurrently with several Liberace shows at the Empire Room. “He has little ways of letting us know he recognizes us,” Liberace Chicago Talent Club president Maxine du Cray told the paper. “[For example when] Lee got a little thirsty [he] came over to the table and took a drink out of my glass of water. He gave me a little pat on the hand. Things like that that nobody knows.”

Press coverage announcing the 1959 Liberace fan club convention.

^{(Photo credit: The Suburbanite Economist)}

Liberace greets fan club members at the convention.

^{(Photo credit: The Chicago Tribune)}

While I haven’t been able to find much information about what the Palmer House party featured in my specific photos was for, I’d guess that many of the same Chicago-area Liberace fans attended both events in 1957. As far as I know, these photos belonged to a Liberace fan from Missouri named Mabel Graham who was highly active in the Midwestern fan community. Another fan who features prominently in Mabel’s photos is a woman named Marie Nixon (pictured below).

You can view a full gallery of all 10 candid photos on my Dropbox linked here! Interested fans can also learn more about visiting both the Palmer House and the Empire Room by checking out the hotel’s website here.

Hope to stop by and take some photos the next time I’m in Chicago!