Homme fatale Scott Thorson

A man who has led an unusual and confusing life is Scott Thorson, entertainer Liberace's live-in lover who met the pianist when only 16. Officially, Thorson was Liberace's chauffeur and bodyguard, but in private, much more. Those Americans who remember him at all will see in their mind's eye a blond man who looked like a younger, bigger Liberace.

Liberace, born Wladziu Liberace, began his piano career mainly playing serious music but found he could make far more money playing popular songs while dressed in outfits of ferocious gaudiness, his fingers obscured by enormous rings, and his grand piano tricked out with a candelabrum.

The era of Liberace's popularity was before the great coming out for gays, and he maintained a policy of denial, winning modest settlements from tabloids that ran stories intimating he was homosexual. Most colorful of these journalistic attacks were those of British journalists, who, among other things, claimed that the rainy weather in London was actually caused by the angels weeping over Liberace's arrival there, or a story that described the enertainer's sequined outfits as appearing to have been "spun out of frog spawn."

It was some time after that period in the late 1950s that Thorson came into his life and to the attention of his army of fans. Liberace had taken his pet dog to a vet clinic where Thorson was a helper. By the time Thorson was 17, he had moved in with the exotic pianist and had begun to be showered with lavish gifts, which eventually included heaps of garish jewelry and around 25 luxury cars. Despite all, Thorson has claimed to be basically a heterosexual.

In or around 1981, Thorson had facial plastic surgery to more closely resemble his boss and partner. By this time, Thorson was on cocaine and in that same year, while buying drugs witnessed a savage beating in a hotel room, allegedly at the behest of a gangland strip club owner. Thorson agreed to testify.

Soon thereafter, he was thrown out of Liberace's penthouse by two private detectives. He then filed a palimony suit in the amount of $112 million. Changing lawyers, he went instead for breach of contract and eventually settled with a by then AIDS-ravaged Liberace for a reported $95,000.

Thorson was placed for a while in the federal Witness Protection Program for fear of gangland retribution for testifying in what was being called the Wonderland Gang case. At last report, he was out of protective status and living on disability.