As Liberace Lay Dying : Why Dick the Bruiser Needed to Bury the Pianist’s Picture by His Father’s Grave, and Other Observations

On the day that Liberace was supposed to draw his final breath, and for the eight days preceding that, George Finney and his wife were camped in their ’74 Dodge in a parking lot across from the entertainer’s home in Palm Springs. Unlike the other people who gathered there by daylight waiting for the man to die, George was not a fan, and in fact, as the vigil wore on he was coming to dislike Liberace even more, because his own dream of redemption was dying in that hacienda, too.

“When this is all over,” George admitted, “then I’ve failed.”

You might know this round man with tears in his eyes better as Dick the Bruiser, the professional wrestler. Until he learned last August that he had leukemia, he was billed as the world’s heavyweight champion, a title once held by his father, the original Dick the Bruiser. But the son inherited more than a career. He took on a debt as well, and for 8 1/2 years now he has been following Liberace around the country in pursuit of a filial grail: an autographed picture to take home to Indiana, to bury next to his dad’s grave.

During those 8 1/2 years, by his own account, George has sat through 288 concerts and been arrested 43 times trying to get close enough to Liberace to carry out the oath he had made at his father’s deathbed. That promise was still unkept. And any minute now it looked as if Liberace would be ducking out on George for good.

“Every time I get a chance, I ring that bell,” George said, pointing to the front door of the compound. “But they slam the door in my face. I climb the trees and look over the walls.” But he only kept coming closer to getting busted once again.

Throughout Tuesday the third of February the radio repeated that Liberace would not last the day. By mid-afternoon there were a hundred spectators lined up behind the low concrete wall of the parking lot, not to mention the network camera crews being kept at bay in the street by cops and security guards. One after another, except for George Finney, they sang Liberace’s praises.

Anna Kaye of Palm Springs, who was born without fingers on her left hand, testified that Liberace inspired her to play the piano. The man next to her, from Kansas City, explained, “He’s just different. I love his clothes. I love his jewelry.” A woman from Ontario remembered “a lovely guy. Lovely music. It’s a shame.”

“He could roll with the razzing,” one man recalled. “That’s how you could tell he was good. “A very common, humble person,” said another. “He was good to his fans.” And another: “He always had a happy smile. He was pleased that you’d like him.” Several people mentioned how he gave to charity but didn’t make a big show about it, the way Sinatra does.

These admirers were not all elderly. A 32-year-old drummer from Riverside said, “I just liked the way he made the piano talk--and his charisma.” The young wife of a man who’d been Liberace’s gardener had just lit a candle at Our Lady of Solitude Catholic Church. “There’s only one like him,” she offered. “He was just himself. Down to earth.” An 18-year-old boy considered, “I don’t think anybody can play the piano like he could.”

Humble Americans themselves, these people appreciated that Liberace, despite his fame, remained a loving son. “He adored his mother,” said a retired local waiter, and a tourist remembered “his devotion to his mother--and that wink, his forever wink.”

Their voices did not convey sadness, but respect, gratitude, acceptance. All except Dick the Bruiser.

Every now and then a fancy car swept into the circular driveway, in front of the 10-foot-tall wrought-iron candelabrum, and visitors got out. The media would yell from across the street, “How is he?” The door to the compound would swing open and the crowd glimpsed figures inside. But we could only make bad guesses. Then the door would swing shut again.

At the age of 41, after two decades in the ring, Dick the Bruiser Jr. looked powerfully bruised himself. His dull blue eyes were sunk deep into reddened sockets in a puffy, double-chinned face. His tousled hair was going gray. His jeans were rolled up country-boy style, and his Pall Malls were stuck inside his T-shirt over the ledge of his belly. His right eye was blinded, he said, from the time the Fabulous Freebergs threw acid in his face in the Superdome. He has a steel plate in his head from the time Rowdy Roddy Piper butted him into a ring post. “It’s not all made up,” he assured me. He showed where he’d been shot in the arm by a 91-year-old woman in St. Pete.

He explained what he was doing here.

“I was always the blackball of the family,” he said. “I could never get nothin’ on my own, never did nothin’ right.” His father was a hard man. “I felt close to him but couldn’t reach him. We fought all our lives, but I always looked up to him.” George recalled beatings, recalled coming home from the Army to find a fork stuck into his mother’s leg. “But I still cared, because he was my dad.” And so the oath, the need to vindicate himself, the stranger-than-strange connection between the brute prince of mayhem and the Sultan of Swish.

“Liberace and the Platters was my dad’s two idols,” he said. “His last night on earth, he watched Liberace’s show on the TV at 8:30. He sat there cryin’ in his chair and at 3 the next morning he died. And I promised him, ‘Dad, I’ll get you a poster.’ ” He also promised to bury the Platters’ albums by the grave, and so he did--eventually committing two crates of records to the soil. “So I’m not a total loser,” George figured. “I got half of it accomplished.” Still, the other half kept eluding him.

“All I was askin’,” he reasoned, “is a $3 poster.” But as hard as he tried, “you can’t get around the man. I wrote him certified letters and never as much as got a letter back.” He kept showing up at concerts to hear music he didn’t like (he would rather have seen Jerry Lee Lewis). “I’ve paid as much as $75 a ticket,” said the Bruiser, “to sit in the 15th row. But that’s the closest I’ve ever got to the man.”

Last autumn, after he had to quit wrestling, George heard that Liberace’s health was failing, so he redoubled his efforts. He and his new wife, Carol, went on the road full time, living off a small government pension. “We followed him to the different hospitals. We’d sleep in the parking lots of the hotels where he stayed. We slept in the lobbies.” Without luck.

In January, they were staying with friends in Arkansas when George heard that Liberace was close to death. So he and Carol sold everything except the Dodge Monaco and enough clothes to fill half the trunk, and they came out to Palm Springs.

They started out with $2,000. But they had car trouble--the transmission, the radiator, the tires. Now, on Tuesday, nearly two weeks later, the Bruiser had turned bitter. He hated Palm Springs. “All four tires flat on the road,” is the way he put it, “and people wouldn’t give us a glass of water.” He said he had only 79 cents left. “We have no way of gettin’ back.” He had looked for work, but nobody wanted to hire a guy who lived in a car.

Carol, a frail and silent woman, had lost 30 pounds, down to 110. George was down to 277. “I’ve lost my pride,” he said. “I’ve lost my dignity.” And he was angry--not so much at the dying man personally, but at those lackeys who stood in the way.

He kept approaching the security guards in the driveway to explain what he wanted. He confronted the Palm Springs police officers who were keeping the street clear. He told them, one by one, about the promises to his dad, about being the blackball of the family. “Any type of pi’ture,” he pleaded. “Just one to take with me, put it in the ground.”

In the beginning, eight years ago, George had sought a photo of himself standing next to Liberace, in living proof of the bond. But over time he saw that he’d settle for less, and now he was desperate. “Even if security signed the poster,” he told the cop. “Even if the police signed the man’s name--I wouldn’t know the difference.”

He turned to me, voice quivering, and tried to get me to understand: “We want somethin’ to take home. Then my trip ain’t all wasted. I don’t know any other way but to climb that wall. And I’ve already tried that.”

A tall wooden flagpole flying the Stars and Stripes poked out the rear window of Dick the Bruiser’s car. It was the flag from his dad’s grave site, and he told a policeman that he’d gladly give it to Liberace’s manager, in return for that one gift. But sympathy was the best that anyone could muster.

How he resented those young security men, who were having a great time walking the compound walls, leaping from roof to roof, some of them looking for all the world like Palestinian guerrillas. “I’d like one of ‘em to hit me in the middle of the street,” so he could file a lawsuit, he said. “I’d be rich. I’d know what it feels like to be rich.” He grinned. “But I’d beat him half to death first.” He talked about driving his car right through the wall.

Carol, who throughout the vigil remained listlessly in the back seat of the car, assured him, “If somethin’ don’t happen, you’d make it happen.”

But the saddest thing was this: Other people in the crowd had autographed photos of Liberace, which they’d gotten, it seemed, without hardly trying. Anna Kaye, the pianist without the fingers on her hand, displayed two pictures in a leatherette frame. A man with wavy black hair showed off a photo he’d received personally from Liberace only a couple of months ago.

“Where’d you get it?” the Bruiser asked him, not very cordially.

“I ran into him at Gemco,” the man said.

“I’ve been tryin’ to get one for 8 1/2 years.”

“They’re worth 250 bucks,” the man told him. “And if he dies--God help, I don’t want it to happen--if he dies, they’d go up just like that. To $1,500, at least.”

Locals reminisced about how friendly Liberace was, how they used to chat with him at the Safeway. “At the airport he’d talk to you--stop him at Saks and he’d talk to you.” A boy told how Liberace had once paid his family’s dinner bill just because they happened to sit near him at a restaurant. People told how the showman gave out autographs freely, that famous signature with the stylized piano and candelabrum.

“I’m gettin’ restless,” the Bruiser warned as the day slipped toward dusk. “I’m gettin’ real frustrated.”

Late afternoon. Tour buses were creeping past the house. A van backed up to the garage doors, and people murmured, “Uh-oh!” Were they going to load the body in? A young woman pulled a Jaguar into the driveway and tried to present a stuffed animal at the door, but was turned away. UPS and mail trucks arrived with last-minute sentiments. A black station wagon came up to the side gate, and the media led a stampede: Were they sneaking the body out the back way?

Dick the Bruiser scrutinized the scene through the binoculars hanging from his neck. When the lawyer for the estate held a press conference in the driveway at 5:30, the Bruiser surged forward with the media. But the cops spotted him and sent him back with the rabble.

It was a very long day. Two cameramen played chess in the dust beneath their tripods. Video vultures swapped tales about getting beaten up on the job, about which cities threw the best Super Bowl parties. One crew kept trying to bounce its signal off a helicopter hovering overhead. A technician remarked, “We did this during the Chino Hills murders and it worked much better.”

A teacher from a nearby elementary school approached the police line with a get-well card from her students. “I need to give this to somebody,” she said. “I don’t care who.” When the cops wouldn’t take it, she turned to a reporter. “Can I give it to you?”

A man from Minneapolis commented. “I wonder how many people’d be here if Jonas Salk was in there dying.” A man from Kansas asked me, “What’s your best prediction? Can I go back to the swimming pool?” An RVer from Saskatchewan ventured, “I don’t think the rich are happy. Something was missing in his life.”

A tall man, blond and effeminate, demanded to know from the guards if his telegram had gotten through. Since Saturday, he said, he had received three visions about Liberace and now he was here to help. “I’m a healer,” he explained, “and if he truly is dying in there, I would try anything. Voodoo. Black magic. Anything. But they’re inside dividing up the furs.”

The front door opened and the healer thought he saw a man in black robes inside. Later, he had yet another vision--a body bag being carted out the back door. But it turned out to be just a sack of dirty laundry.

“It would be lovely,” the healer mused, “to have him open the door and say, ‘Thank you so much for caring. I’m fine!’ ”

But nothing happened. Nothing at all. Darkness came down and the crowd faded away, leaving only five or 10 of the most curious still staring at the house with the tiled nameplate on the wall: “Casa de Liberace.”

George and Carol Finney sat in their car, the nose of it pressed right up to the low block wall, directly across from the dying man’s door. At some point George would go to sleep in the back seat where there was room to spread out, and she’d sleep in the front with the one blanket they had. When George got cold, he’d start the engine and flip on the heater--and study the compound for clues.

At 7:15 that night, I brought them a large pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms and a six-pack of Bud. It felt like a party. Maybe they had cause to celebrate, the burden about to be lifted for better or worse. And they were grateful for the gesture. But they passed on the beer, because neither of them drink.

By now, George had conjured up a vision of his own. “After this is over,” he pictured, “everybody’s gone, and I’m still sittin’ here in the parking lot.”

Next morning, Liberace was not dead yet. It was going to be a hot one; not a cloud in the high desert sky. The crowd was sparse.

By the time I got there, Dick the Bruiser had sold his collection of wrestling magazines out of the trunk, for $10, and had sent Carol out for breakfast for the three of us. Sausage with the eggs, or bacon--he gave me first choice, insisted on it. As we ate in the car, he pondered what might happen to those security guys if they gave him trouble today. He showed me the ax handle next to his seat, didn’t care about the consequences. “I’ve done time,” he muttered.

Yet, with the morning still fresh, his spirits were good. He saw now that there would be life after death: There’d be managers left to deal with, agents, secretaries. “You know,” he reflected, “I’m going to be disappointed if he snaps out of this. Have to kick ‘im in the chest and get it goin’ again.”

Liberace’s fans, meanwhile (so vastly more polite than the fans the Bruiser had once played to), were assembling in ever greater numbers behind the block wall, letting the media men have the front row to themselves. They respected those cameras, whose presence had lured many of them here in the first place. And Dick the Bruiser recognized the power of the media, too, to turn the tide of human affairs. The crew from the Cable News Network moved over to interview him and once again he told his sad story.

At 2:05 in the afternoon, a black Mercedes limo pulled into Liberace’s driveway and the passengers were ushered inside. The media were told that a statement was forthcoming and they started setting up. The CNN cameraman informed the producer, “We’ve got only five minutes of tape left.” The producer asked, “What’s on the last 10 minutes we shot?” and was told, “That big guy over there.” The producer said: “Burn him!”

Now events were turning quickly. One of the private guards motioned the Bruiser to come over. It was the same guard who’d consented to take a message into the compound. So the Bruiser crossed the street, and the young man handed him a tiny scrap of cardboard. “Will this do?” he asked, sincerely.

It was nothing but half of a matchbook cover, torn off, with an imprint of Liberace’s signature on its face. The Bruiser took it in his sausage fingers, turned it over to see if there might be some note written on it, then turned it face up again. He stood there in the middle of the road, shaking his head, almost amused, it seemed. “A piece of trash,” he finally murmured. “This just ain’t gonna get it. I waited eight years for this ?”

The CNN man called out the instructions from headquarters: “They want the statement. Not the meat wagon!”

At long last, just after 3, a member of the family emerged from the house, along with Liberace’s manager, Seymour Heller, and the announcement was delivered (a full hour after it had been announced in New York):

“Liberace passed on this afternoon.”

The media people shouted out their urgent questions, and in the commotion somehow the Bruiser caught Heller’s attention. I couldn’t make out the exchange but he reported back to me, “Seymour promised to talk to me. After this is over.”

The crowd now spilling into Liberace’s flower beds grew to 200 or more, in hopes of seeing the body being borne away. A Chevy wagon swung into the driveway, the tailgate was opened and a gurney was rolled into the compound.

The Bruiser hustled back to the Dodge and called impatiently to Carol, who still sat inside: “ The flag !” She brought it out to him. Carefully he wrapped it around the pole and shoved his way back to the front of the mob.

Now he fell silent, fixated. He stood quietly, the flag propped straight up before him, his head bowed, his forehead pressed tight against the cloth as if in deep meditation or prayer. Except that his eyes were open, steeled, riveted to the front door, watching for opportunity, for the sight of Seymour’s hound-doggy face.

The corpse came out in a blue canvas bag with a black strip across the middle so it wouldn’t slide off the gurney. Family members stood in the doorway for one last look, and some of them were crying. Where was Seymour? Then the door slammed shut again.

The Bruiser waited. An older woman asked him about the flag and he told her the story, throwing in a few mean comments about wealth and privilege. A young man offered the opinion, “You can’t blame other people for your troubles,” and the Bruiser came at him menacingly. “Make my day!” he challenged.

Ten minutes later a guard told the Bruiser that Seymour Heller was too upset to meet with him but would be glad to accept the flag from his father’s grave, along with an address to which “some mementos” could be sent.

The Bruiser borrowed my notebook and wrote out a request which began: “Sir all I wanted was a signed Pitchur of him. . . .”

At the bottom he put “P.O. Box 272, Indio, Calif. 92201.” He handed the flag and the message over and watched them disappear into the compound. Then he went back to his car to wait.

After dark, he was still there waiting. In the morning he would ask for work. If he didn’t find it, the rent on that post office box would run out by the end of the week.