Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace (29 page)

On October 28, 1982, in response to my original “Bombshell” article in the
Enquirer
, Dirk Summers wrote a letter to lain Calder, the publisher of the
Enquirer
, that said in part: “Rarely have I read such a scurrilous attack on an international figure. The issue is not Lee Liberace, but the greed and lies by your source, Scott Thorson.

“I have mand [the misspelling was part of the letter] many documentaries, and in 1975 I was preparing a documentary on prostitution—both male and female.

“We were
bombarded
by calls and letters from prostitutes, both male and female who wanted to be included in our production. One of the male aspirants was Scott Thorson, although he had one or two other names at the time.

“During the course of the interview, he told me of various ‘johns’ that he had ‘turned on,’ and of the kinky experiences (sexual) that he was involved in with numerous men.”

The verbatim quotes are taken from depositions that became part of the court records. The letter, which continued to take potshots at me while singing Liberace’s praises, wasn’t written for Iain Calder’s benefit. In my opinion, it was written to let Liberace know that Dirk Summers was ready, willing, and able to destroy my reputation by proving I’d been a male prostitute. Summers sent a copy of the letter to Seymour Heller, a man he would later describe as “Lee’s alter ego,” along with a cover letter stating that Summers would be more than happy to testify on Lee’s behalf should my suit come to trial. In the cover letter, Summers claims to know that I was arrested for prostitution.

By his own admission, Summers had been deluged with letters and phone calls from male and female prostitutes back in 1975 when he was putting together a show on prostitution. He claimed to have interviewed me at the time, although he said I used an alias. Seven years had passed since that one so-called and admittedly short interview. I’d aged, had plastic surgery, and was using my own name, Scott Thorson, when Summers claimed to recognize me from my picture in the
Enquirer
as the kid he’d met years earlier. It shouldn’t have taken too much intelligence to realize how unlikely it would be that Summers could have remembered me out of the many male and female prostitutes whom he describes as
bombarding
him with messages in 1975. Had Seymour Heller or Joel Strote taken the trouble to investigate Summers’s claims, they would have learned that I was living with a foster family in 1975, as well as going to school. I was not, nor have I ever been, a male prostitute. But it didn’t appear to me that Lee’s people were interested in getting the facts. Their sole interest seemed to be getting a weapon they could use against me in the tabloids, a weapon Summers obligingly supplied.

Summers came to Lee’s attention in the most favorable way. In the days that followed, Seymour Heller made direct contact with Summers, setting up a meeting at Summers’s home on November 6, a meeting also attended by Joel Strote. At that meeting Summers said he had information about my supposed past activities as a male prostitute that could be helpful to Liberace.

On November 8, Summers was contacted again by Heller and Strote, who asked if he would be willing to tell his story to Mike Snow, a reporter for the
Globe.
The next day Snow called Summers, and the two men had a very lengthy conversation that resulted in a new banner headline for the
Globe
’s December 2 issue: WICKED PAST OF THE GAY SUING LIBERACE. The Summers interview began: “He [meaning me] told me he was turning 25 tricks a day.” Since male prostitutes are often the doer rather than the do-ee, that would have taken a runaway libido; a man who can turn twenty-five tricks a day is a better man than I have ever been or will be. The
Globe
story went on to give lurid details of my supposed life as a boy prostitute.

Early in December 1982, Liberace promised to lend his name to a golf tournament Summers said he planned to hold on March 25–26, 1983, at the Dunes Country Club in Las Vegas. Having secured a top celebrity name, Summers was able to raise a great deal of money from would-be tournament sponsors. When the golf tournament failed to materialize, Summers ran into trouble with the law and with Liberace. Lee later claimed he had never given Summers permission to use the Liberace name.

Eventually, Summers came to my attorneys, volunteering to say he had never been sure I was one of the interviewees in his proposed prostitution show and that he now realized he’d been completely in error about the entire episode. By then we were suing the
Globe
for defamation of character and Summers’s testimony would have been helpful.

One other person had played a major role in ruining my name—none other than my half brother Wayne Johansen. Next to the interview obtained from Summers, the
Globe
published an article attributed to Johansen and, again, written by Mike Snow. My half brother had invented a story about my wicked homosexual past, saying I had my first lover when I was eleven. He even soiled my relationship with the Brummets by claiming I had a homosexual affair with Mr. Brummet when I was fifteen. The Summers story had angered me. My half brother’s sickened me. We hadn’t been close for a long time but I never expected him to turn on me in such a cruel and vicious way.

By the end of 1982 Liberace had obviously won the tabloid wars. He had the money, the power, the popularity to make the public believe his side of the story. I don’t begrudge him that brief happiness even though it meant that the public didn’t believe the things I’d said. I don’t even begrudge him his relationship with Cary James.

Lee would win the war in the tabloids and he would win almost all the legal battles, but he wouldn’t win the final fight of his life: the battle against AIDS.

When I filed suit against Lee it didn’t occur to me that I’d be unleashing a drama that would consume the next five years of my life. The Los Angeles Superior Court calendar is a crowded one. On average, it takes four or more years from the date of filing until a plaintiff has his or her day in court. In my case, trial would be set for early spring 1987. By then, the defendant would be dead. Today, the legal documents, summonses, complaints, cross-complaints, demurrers, depositions, copies of items in evidence, fill five large cartons. They represent countless hours of work on the part of a half dozen attorneys and court reporters, as well as many hours spent under oath for plaintiffs, defendants, and material witnesses. My own depositions, numbering more than a thousand pages, make a stack far thicker than this book.

Late 1982 saw Lee and me locked in battle in the tabloids, a war he won handily. From 1983 on we would be caught up in a series of legal maneuvers. As Lee threatened in his
Globe
interview, he was prepared to litigate forever if that’s what it took to win. Joel Strote quickly emerged as Lee’s staunch defender, a man who would stop at nothing to protect his boss. Since the most important part of my case was based on
conversion of property,
Rosenthal soon realized he needed an expert cocounsel, someone with an extensive background in business litigation.

All my other attorneys had been recommended by friends, but Ernst Lipschutz had been recommended by a prestigious New York law firm. He impressed me favorably during our first meeting. He was a soft-spoken man of medium height, with alert, inquisitive eyes. From day one, he looked, sounded, and acted like a polished professional. Lipschutz specialized in business litigation, focusing on business fraud.

At our first meeting he made it clear that he didn’t believe in the kind of grandstanding and playing to the media that had resulted in massive tabloid coverage. Lipschutz said if he came on board he would refuse to conduct the case in the hot glare of media attention. There would be no more press conferences, no more exclusive interviews with the tabloids. He was, he informed us, a lawyer—not a circus master.

I had to agree that the publicity I had received thus far had resulted only in my being branded as a liar and a street hustler. Lipschutz insisted that, from then on, the case would be conducted with as much dignity as we could muster. The first item on his agenda, after agreeing to become cocounsel, was to urge me to drop the ninth cause of action involving the so-called palimony.

That came as a shock. The ninth cause of action was the one the media had focused on, the one that got all the headlines, the one that hurt Lee the most personally. By then I wanted to embarrass him as much as possible. Rightly or wrongly, I felt he’d ruined my life and I’d made up my mind to make him suffer for it.

As Lipschutz talked about the proper way to conduct the case I couldn’t help thinking, Who the hell is this guy, coming in here and telling us what to do after one day on the case when Rosenthal had been handling it for months? The ninth cause of action, based on Lee’s promises to adopt me, to care for me forever, was the most important one from a personal standpoint. Sure, money was a consideration; I’d be crazy to say it didn’t matter. But exposing Lee to public ridicule, holding him up to the world as a liar, was even more important. Those promises had been made in front of a number of Lee’s people. They knew the truth and, unless they perjured themselves, the public would know the truth when I had my day in court.

I also knew Lee would interpret dropping the ninth cause of action as a sign of weakness and I wanted him to know I was prepared to pursue the case as long and as vigorously as he was.

Lipschutz patiently explained his reasoning, saying that the judge was likely to dismiss the palimony cause on the grounds that a contract for sex couldn’t be enforced; that Liberace, Strote, and Heller (who would be far better witnesses than I) would probably be believed if they said that Lee never made any promises to me about caring for me financially. Lipschutz added that, if a judge ruled against the ninth cause of action in a preliminary hearing, we’d be in the unfortunate position of starting the real trial looking like losers. He said our proof was much stronger in the other areas of the case and he wanted to do everything in his power to get us into court looking like winners.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t thinking very clearly in those days. Logically, everything Lipschutz said made sense but, emotionally, I couldn’t go along with it. I wanted to punish Lee and the best way to do that was to go right on reminding the public, through the palimony portion of the case, that Lee was gay. It was his Achilles’ heel.

That proved to be a mistake. Predictably, one of Lee’s attorney’s pretrial activities was to file a summary judgment motion requesting the ninth cause of action be dropped. A hearing on the motion was set for February 1983. Disaster struck when Lipschutz had a heart attack a couple of days before the scheduled hearing. By then I was of the opinion that Lipschutz was better suited to handle some of the aspects of my case. Rosenthal asked for a continuance. But the judge refused to grant one, saying that as long as I had legal representation he saw no reason to delay. Just as Lipschutz had predicted, the judge dismissed the ninth cause of action on the grounds that a contract for sex can’t be enforced.

Lee and his attorneys had won the first of the many legal battles. Then Lee, who’d already demonstrated his masterful use of the media, gave an interview to Neil Karlen of
Newsweek
concerning the results of the hearing. The
Newsweek
article said, in part: “In 1982 Scott Thorson filed a $113 million palimony suit charging that Liberace had promised to support the Las Vegas dancer in exchange for sexual services.

“‘It didn’t take the judge long to decide I was being exploited,’ says Liberace of the case, which was thrown out of a Los Angeles court in February.

“‘I could have stopped the whole thing before it started by paying off,’ he remembers, ‘but that would have been blackmail and blackmail never ends.’

“Today, the tabloid slander finally behind him, Liberace gratefully acknowledges his fans’ willingness to forgive, forget or not care.”

The article made marvelous reading for Lee’s loyal admirers. But it was far from accurate. First, I had never ever claimed to be a Las Vegas dancer. Second, the case wasn’t thrown out of court. The other twelve causes of action had yet to be settled and, despite many attempts to get them dismissed too, would still be pending when Lee became ill. Third, if anyone had been guilty of blackmail, it was Lee when he withheld my property. Fourth, there had been enough slander on both sides of the dispute to last a lifetime. As soon as Lipschutz was back on his feet, he filed a libel action on my behalf against
Newsweek
and Liberace.

My case spawned a number of corollary cases. The original suit included Schmerin, Schnelker, Strote, and Heller as Liberace’s codefendants. Early in the legal maneuvering, Rosenthal decided to drop Strote from the suit to narrow the case’s focus. But he didn’t obtain a release from Strote. Strote filed a suit for malicious prosecution against Rosenthal and me. Liberace, Heller, and Schmerin filed countercomplaints. We filed a libel action against the
Globe,
Mike Snow, and Wayne Johansen. Marie Brummet sued the
Globe
to clear her husband’s name.

Michael Rosenthal was suing Joel Strote for slander, claiming that Strote, in the presence of Rosenthal’s father and others, said: “How is your love life with Scott Thorson? I understand that love blooms between the two of you. Which one of you is the husband and which is the wife?” It’s an unfortunate fact of life that all my attorneys,
none
of whom was gay, would be subject to such speculation. Being a lawyer, Rosenthal struck back in court.

My battle with Lee resulted in two other suits. Tracy Schnelker sued Liberace for the part Schnelker had been caused to play in the whole affair. That case was still pending when Lee died. Last, a criminal case against Dirk Summers had been filed for Summers’s part in promoting and taking money for the bogus golf tournament. By the end of 1983 we were all suit slaphappy. I lost track of the many times I had depositions taken.

We battled every step of the way. Simple things such as the place Lee would be deposed became major points of conflict. He wanted to be deposed in Las Vegas. Inadvisable, said Lipschutz, in view of the fact that the case would be tried in Los Angeles Superior Court. Then Lee insisted on being deposed in Strote’s office. For psychological reasons, Lipschutz didn’t want Lee questioned on what Lee regarded as friendly turf. After Lipschutz filed a motion to enforce a Los Angeles deposition, Lee agreed to be deposed in the Los Angeles court stenographer’s offices.