good afternoon one of my children said when he knew who was coming on this
program today asked him for his autograph because knowing him he might
sign it in gold my guest has just published his autobiography and that too
is turning into gold and with such a title how can you wonder Liberace
how are you maybe I'm well how are you I'm very well thank you your name is
Vlad Zeile Valentino is that the right way to say what's got it right I
actually never used the name it's pronounced
watchu and of course I wasn't able to pronounce it when I was a kid so
whenever I try people would say gesundheit you know because it sounded
like I was sneezing but it's polish for Walter and I used the name Walter in
school but now my friends call me Li and I like you to call me Li Mei thank you
very much Valentino is after Rudolph Valentino he's about the only screen
idol that was before my time well my mother was a great fan of his
and in fact she named my youngest brother who passed away a few years ago
Rudolph so together we had a Rudolph Valentino
in the family did you think Rudolph Valentino was a very marvelous kind of
hero well I was sort of raised with those kind of movie heroes I remember as
a child my father played in in silent picture houses when they used to have
live music music to accompany the films and I used to well dad used the sort of
babysit me from the theater pit orchestra pit you know and I'd sit in
the front row and I'd look up but all these marvelous people on the screen and
I remember seeing movies with Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky and all of us
see the bearers and all those I think in fact little Valentino dressed up a bit
like you but and before we go on could you please describe your outfit for
people without a color set well we color wise we sort of math I know accidentally
yeah we're sort of wearing Dubonnet or what is another second a burgundy is
another color this jacket is is kind of fun because this jacket really belongs
on the wall you know it should be framed because it's a work of art it's a it's a
form of art called batik and they have never made it into clothing before an
artist in Toronto Canada made some yardage on raw silk of the batik design
which is done with wax and they put wax where they don't want the dye to go and
then they dip it in the dye and then they melt the wax and then they put the
wax over the part that just been dyed and then they apply another color so
this is sort of maroon and fades yes do Pinay or burgundy and then blue and then
the color sort of bleeds into one another and if I ever get tired of it
I'll just frame it and put it on the wall you know it would be very hard to
think of you without this great acclaim that you you have don't you sort of
absolutely live off it well I do now I suppose but I didn't always have it most
people I think have come to know me you know since the television years but I've
been in show business I've been in music since I was four years old and I've been
playing professionally since I was 13 so I've really never known any other life
and I think that if it were taken away from me I would be you know a very empty
person without it it's it's so natural for me to think along the lines of
entertainment and music because I was brought up in it and I was raised with
it do you like playing the piano to soothe yourself well I think when I play
for myself I'm playing mostly to learn music is a never-ending learning process
just when you think you've you know mastered at all somebody comes along
with a with a new sound or a new temple or you know Annie
you're always learning that it's a vast study music and I'm glad it is because
I'd like to think that when I'm 80 you know I'll still want to learn something
that I haven't accomplished you know is this something that you do on your own
which you actually find extremely soothing though because you do lead a
tremendously pressurized life don't you when I do yes I'm on the road and
traveling I I find I have to almost lead the life of an athlete it's it's very
taxing physically because it isn't just the performance but all the things that
go with it you know you're just one person and yet there are hundreds
hundreds of demands on your time everybody wants a little piece of you
and so that's very tiring you know and you have to kind of live the life of an
athlete you got to get your rest you got to watch what you eat and you got to be
careful not to go to extremes when it comes to having a good time for instance
I try to do things in moderation you know and I drink and I smoke but I do it
moderately because I know know that it would have an effect on my performance
if I if I didn't watch it I never drink before performance but after sometimes I
have a couple of drinks to kind of relax man and turn off my adrenaline so to
speak and when I'm when I'm off the road I can completely relax I I can forget
I'm a performer or a musician and I can get involved in other things what struck
me in your autobiography very strongly in fact was the fact that even as a very
small boy you had a very distinct idea that you were someone that you were
going to be someone I felt because you could remember by saying that as a child
you didn't want to go out and go out and be to get dirty like other boys didn't
want to play games and your father used to say you really must go out you're
getting too white you've got to go out and get eggs
that's right you wanted to play the piano did you have a very real idea of
who you're gonna be well it was I've always had a great love affair with the
piano I've tried to play other instruments and they turned me off I
remember my brother George decided that it would be nice if I could play the
violin so he he was a professional violin teacher so my parents said why I
pay all that money for piano lessons you got a brother who could teach you to
play the violin so the first time I heard that both scratch across the
strings it was such an unpleasant sound I said that's not for me then my dad
tried to teach me the French horn and that was even worse the sound that came
out of that horn just put me off forever you know but I I just seemed to have an
affinity to the piano and I worked at it feverishly as a child I suppose because
I wasn't forced to do it in fact my parents would say get away from that
yeah go outside and play you know because it was a constant you
know banging away at the piano it's always think in any way at all apart
from the fact that you loved it do you think that you were in fact trying to
get away from practice the physical poor circumstances of your life at that point
well yes I think music is always a release from the dreary everyday things
that life can be sometimes and to me it was a magic make-believe sort of
transport you know that took me out of this sort of life that we were born into
you know we like I say we we had a very modest family life and and I don't know
I felt as a child I guess when I was playing the piano I was something kind
of special you know and it when I saw that you know the the children in school
you know it it was like a magnet that drew people to me and
I felt this is something wonderful to be able to do something that made people
happy and gave them pleasure do you think it made you feel sort of also that
you were someone again in in the you know because of the circumstances of
your life of being so poor that this mattered to you that you had to have to
you know be somebody aside from that well I think I was fortunate to live in
a section of Milwaukee which was sort of had a village atmosphere and like I was
the only one who played the piano in that community so whenever there was a
need for music I was always called upon and that gave me a little edge you know
I was a big frog in a little pond you know and then of course after I got
older and branched out into the outside world I found out you know that I was a
very minor segment of the music world and I had to prove myself you know in a
more determined sort of way and was that the cruelest thing that you had to face
which was that you couldn't be a concert pianist as such well not exactly that
wasn't the disappointing thing I suppose the most disappointing thing is when I
left home and discovered you know that the world wasn't really waiting for me
you know it I had to really struggle and I and rather than admit that I wasn't an
immediate success I I did you know other jobs to augment my musical income which
is I gave piano lessons for a while I had 32 students and that that sort of
helped you know but some of my best students unfortunately were the ones who
were most talented who couldn't afford to pay for their piano lessons but I
still taught them because I love seeing a child develop musically in and so I I
did other jobs you know I worked in restaurants and I washed dishes and
things like that but I I think that it was worth all the struggle because the
determination that has been instilled in me by my
family in my early life I think was very valuable to me in my career have you
found me very hard to adjust to the fact that you really are so powerfully rich I
mean almost ludicrously I really never think of it that way I just I certainly
don't count my minute money before I go to bed but I it just seems that you know
after all these years and that these rewards have come to me and I just sort
of appreciate them and enjoy them and I don't gloat over them I feel that I
share them with other people and in fact when I'm away you know for six months my
servants live in luxury you know there and my dogs you know they they have it
very very good sometimes I am I find myself in some little place along the
way that perhaps is the best accommodation that's available and I'm
sort of closed in in a small little place you know and I said what am I
doing here and I have this beautiful home back back in California that I
could be sitting in but yet my my work is my most important and happiest thing
that I do I love performing and when I'm onstage I I feel you know that I'm in
charge you know it's kind of marvelous to be able to take an audience and mold
it into different emotions and and draw not only laughter from them but whatever
the music calls for you know do you think that perhaps have been part that's
why you've never married that that being a bachelor has kept you free to express
yourself as you wanted to well I think my career has been a perhaps the most
interrupting thing because it has always come first and most of the people I've
gotten involved with romantically don't want to play second fiddle to a piano
I tell you something that makes me wonder all the time is if you got
married and you had an extravagant wife how much clothes allowed to do that a
half I wonder well I suppose I would be very generous because I like to see
people well groomed I like to see see them made happy by lovely things how do
you like a woman to look in fact well I like to see women well groomed but not
in a in a in a way that you might consider extreme you know I think that
the chic look is is perhaps the most admired and the most sought-after I
think when for instance when I select something for my sister or my mother I
buy most of their clothes for them I don't mind that
no they I know their sizes and I know what they like and some of the things
that I buy for them really never go out of style I don't believe in fad clothing
you know like there are so many fads in fashion and they're here today and gone
tomorrow and I feel that if you buy something that is basically chic it'll
last forever you know you like a lot of makeup on women not very no how do you
like a woman to act act yes I tell you an example when I was a little girl I
remember thinking I'll never smoke when I'm a mother because I thought mother
shouldn't smoke ha ha dating me if you think about it but um
do you think things like that I'm do you think there are some things that women
shouldn't do they should be women in a particular sort of a way or are you
women's lib well I I've always liked women to behave
like women you know so when they stop behaving like like men and starting to
start to use you know profanity and vulgarity and that sort of thing they
cease being women to me and you know and I've met women who come on very coarse
you know this turns me off and I think a lot of the things about women's late
are admirable but I think it's been distorted you know by certain women who
feel that they're no different from men and they behave like men and I don't
think that's you know what I would admire in a woman I like her to be
feminine and pretty and just speaking a well-modulated voice and to be
well-groomed and not to try to match the men in a in a pub you know and in the
language is something that they used some time do you ever feel when you look
at your life that it's from your book I get sometimes a feeling that it's like a
story you know that you're looking at it like a story and that it's slightly
unreal and then I then that quote you said well in your book again where you
said day is too real for me night is my favorite time I mean as does life seem
unreal to you in that sort of well I suppose it does when you look at it that
way I've had some fantastic things happened to me that well if somebody
back in ol about 25 years ago said predicted you know that some of these
things might happen to me and I said well you're absolutely insane
I could never face the fantastic things that you predicted and yet they have
happened to me and somehow I survived them and I've enjoyed them and if I had
my life to live over again I wouldn't do it any differently because it's been
fantastic I think you have to share the bad with the good and I think all
together at Mol's you into a much firmer and more sensible thinking person and if
anything it's instilled me with a great appreciation for life because even that
was almost taken away from me I mean have you got a nasty thought cuz you
appear to have very gentle nice thoughts don't you ever want to say luck well I
suppose I get a little uptight once in a while and I pushed too far you know
but I have learned the most magic word of my vocabulary is to be able to say no
sometimes can you say yes to signing this for me I would love to and for the
viewer okay that's part of it and there's the other nun genuine without
this part that takes the place of hua Zhu Valentin